Abstract

Higher education offers extensive benefits to individuals, economies, and societies. As such, it is critical for institutions to embrace diversity and create an inclusive environment that enables success. Certainly, one of the purposes of higher education is to expand perspectives and world views. This requires a diverse faculty and student body. However, it also requires awareness, openness, understanding, and change. In particular, faculty members need to develop inclusive curricula, pedagogical practices, and ways of communicating that give every student equal access to knowledge. The purpose of this article is to examine the benefits of diversity, review the concept of inclusion and inclusive teaching, consider a particular application of inclusive teaching, and propose an alternative to time extensions and similar interventions. The review first considers studies on assignment time extensions for cognitive and mental disabilities. It then turns to the limited number of studies on time extensions outside of this context, briefly reviews the impact of time management skills on academic performance, and finally, presents the theory of self-regulated learning as an approach to lifelong learning and sustainability that is supportive of an inclusive educational system.