How does a professor create an inclusive classroom? One Cornell faculty member has done it in a seemingly divisive way: by dividing students into two groups.

Melanie Dreyer-Lude, assistant professor of theatre, film and dance, invented an ice-breaker game that she uses on the first day of her classes.

She divides students into a series of two groups, starting with gender. Women move to one side of the classroom, men to the other. "Then I say, 'Look across the room. Those are the people who will have information you'll need if you're going to play a role in that category,'" Dreyer-Lude said. The students get to know each other as she continues to mix them by common and not-so-common labels: Caucasian and non-Caucasian, Christian and non-Christian, those who prefer chocolate ice cream and those who prefer vanilla, those whose navels stick out and those whose recede.

With the exercise, Dreyer-Lude aims to demonstrate putting a high value on diversity and inclusion -- and academic excellence, she said. "It's been a highly successful way to kick off my classes and to say, very candidly, understanding different perspectives is just imperative if you're going to be interpreting roles," she said.

The game was one of many techniques and theories shared at the Faculty Institute for Diversity June 13-16 at the ILR Conference Center. Now in its third year, the institute brought together 19 faculty members to talk about diversity, to create a network of teachers and scholars who can help each other on matters of diversity and education, and to incorporate elements of diversity into new or revised courses.

The 11 sessions covered material including inclusive teaching, social identity, women in science, creating identity-affirming learning environments, race in the classroom, disability in higher education and diversity at Cornell. During one session, former institute participants talked about how they have woven diversity into many aspects of their work, from what they teach to how they teach it.

Cindy van Es, senior lecturer in applied economics and management and director of the BOLD Program (Business Opportunities in Leadership and Diversity), uses data sets in homework and tests that deal with diverse populations. She also recruits a diverse group of teaching assistants and invites guest speakers who are women, minorities and openly gay.

Chris Schaffer, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, described a teaching method -- concept-driven, peer-based instruction -- that eliminates the "gender gap" in introductory physics classes, in which women traditionally score about 10 percent lower than men, he said.

Students read material about a few key concepts prior to the class. During the lecture, students come up with individual answers to a certain problem, and then vote for what they think is the right answer. Then they split up into small groups and try to convince their neighbors which answer is correct. The group then votes.

The method accomplishes several things, Schaffer said. It allows a professor to see how well the students understand core concepts. Students must commit to an answer, and to do that, they must think carefully about the idea. Students who understand the concept learn it more deeply when they explain it to their peers. Perhaps most importantly, studies show that this method helps all students learn better -- and it eliminates the gender gap over time, Schaffer said.

"The big message that we've been trying to relay is that you can have inclusive education and excellent education, and those two don't have to be separate," said Sofia Villenas, professor of education, who guided the sessions with Richard Kiely, associate director for the Center for Teaching Excellence. "Attention to social identity, race, class, socio-economic status, gender identities, religion -- all of those things matter to students."