The Context
It all started with an Instagram post. My work team and I received a forwarded email from the Supervisor. At the bottom of the email thread, I read that an employee had posted a screenshot of one of our courses’ slides in Instagram. The screenshot depicted what she characterized as a “Caucasian, older, male doctor next to an African American, young, female nurse”. The content of the post stated something along the lines of “Hey [my place of work], how about you stop perpetuating racial stereotypes in health care!”
Our Department of Internal Communication became aware of the post and had it removed. As a result of that event, my team received two directives. From that point on, before publishing any courses in our LMS: (1) we should “make sure that the courses that we develop comply with diversity”, and (2) every course should get passed along to our Director of Workplace Culture and Inclusion, so she can ensure that all our images and language receive a “diversity filter” before they are published.
“Comply with diversity? Diversity filter? What does that even mean?”, I thought. In all honesty, knowing that people in my team were perceived as instructional designers whose designs require verification for “compliance with diversity” didn’t feel very comforting. That is, not even considering the fact that I myself am a proud member of quite a few minority communities (most commonly known as “intersectionality”).
That was not the first time when I work with clients or coworkers who refer to or treat diversity as if it is some kind of add-on, something that we can just apply to things. Through my career I have witnessed innumerable occasions when professionals have used expressions such as “…and then we make sure that minorities are included”, “Let’s bring some diversity to the mix”, “…and then we add some diversity people to make it compliant”, and now most recently, “we should apply a diversity filter to make sure that [the design] complies with diversity”, to address diversity and inclusion in learning.
Instead of starting a tug of war between my team and the Department of Internal Communication, defending our instructional design process and trying to show them how grossly misrepresenting that Instagram post was (the images did not represent what the poster stated), I decided to be educational about it. After all, we are the learning team. I approached this situation from an instructional design perspective.
The Problem Statement
The first thing that I did was reflect on the spirit and intent of the directive that was communicated to us. The interest of our senior leadership is to maintain an environment of inclusion in all our facilities, services and internal activities, an environment that aligns with the organization’s P.R.I.D.E. values (performance, respect, integrity, diversity and excellence). However, applying a “diversity filter” to our courses - whatever that means - not only is a reflection of poor instructional design, it also reinforces one of the most pervasive misconceptions about the subject of diversity and inclusion, that is, thinking of diversity as something that one can just apply to something, treating diversity and inclusion as some kind of afterthought. Below is the formal problem statement.
Our institution has a need to ensure that we deliver online learning that reflects our institutional P.R.I.D.E. values (performance, respect, integrity, diversity and excellence). How might we demonstrate to the institutional leadership that our design and development of online courses incorporates and reflects the diversity of our workforce?
The Stakeholders
Who was I to reach about this? First, there is my own team to consider. Were we on the same page when it comes to subject of diversity and inclusion? Being a diverse team is no guarantee that our diversity will be reflected in our designs. My instinct was telling me that before reaching out to any person outside of my team, I needed to ensure that all members of my team are on the same page when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion in instructional design. Then there are my direct higher-ups. Was my department leadership aware of how our approach to instructional design considers and acknowledges diversity, and designs for diverse engagement, representation, and action and expression? Only if and when my own team, including its leadership, is aware and confident about our approaches to instructional design, is when we can clearly articulate our processes to other departments and leaderships of the institution. That makes the list of stakeholders rather large, and also very mixed in terms of the directness of involvement. The table below shows a breakdown of the stakeholders.
| Direct Stakeholders | Mixed Stakeholders | Indirect Stakeholders |
|---|---|---|
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Demographics: The recipients of organization-wide courses consist of the entire employee population, as well as outside consultants and vendors. Clinical staff, which makes about 80% of the workforce, requires ongoing training and regulatory education. Non-clinical staff receive department-related training. All staff receive mandatory annual compliance, emergency management and workplace harassment training. Some of the online learning in our LMS is designed by specific departments or come from outside sources, but over 50% of the exisisting online courses are designed by my department. As a whole, the organization has several initiatives and deparments to ensure, acknowledges and promotes diversity and inclusion in their hiring practices, in research in opportunities that they provide to researchers, medical students, faculty and clinical staff, and of course in provision of care.
Motivations: Most of the provided organization wide learning is required for compliance and regulatory purposes. There are a number of required regulatory education, compliance and certification trainings that are mandatory for staff. "Mandatory", for the most part, implies less or no intrinsic motivation. Achieving engagement in many of those courses is both challenging and necessary in order for staff to experience learning instead of just "check the box". For the leadership and senior leadership, motivation lies in seeing the value of the time spent receiving information about the process which will reinforce the message of diversity and inclusion as one of the institutional values. It has to be "worth their time".
Challenges: A portion of employee population requires accommodations for lower levels of literacy, which sometimes can make the learning strategies used for an organization-wide course rather predictable, in a tone that sometimes migh feels prescriptive and condescending to high-level professionals. Additionally, the content owners of these courses normally express that their priority is that the courses must use language that matches the regulatory entities that audit compliance. Consequently, engagement, motivation, representation, and action and expression are less of a priority than ensuring compliant language and content. Many of the decision-makers and content owners do not possess instructional design experience and prefer literal presentation of the content. Because of the broad range of employees expected to take the courses, the definition of engagement is as diverse as the employee population.
Opportunities: The fact that the courses are required provides an opportunity to have all learners' attention in one course. We can have analytics using the data generated by documenting usage, time spent, scores, and evaluation data. Some of the courses have a test-out option, which provides designers an opportunity to make data-driven decisions based on the percentage of the employee population (and/or a breakdown by different parameters, such as demographics) who choose and pass the test-out. For the organization leadership, this is an opportunity for leaders to market and articulate how as an academic institution they promote an inclusive culture of medicine, positioned to lead the fight for health equity, which contributes to help engage stakeholders across the institution to collaborate on sustainable change towards optimizing organizational culture.
The Goals and Objectives
The goals for this particular project are rather simple, though the necessary tasks to accomplish them are not. Accomplishing the goals requires buyout from my own team and higher-ups, as well as the buyout from the departments of Workplace Culture and Inclusion, as well as our Institute for Excellence in Health Equity. This information will be judged and criticized by seasoned professionals in the matter of diversity, equity and inclusion. It should align with their mission of achieving excellence in health equity research, clinical care, and medical education. Below are the goals and the corresponding objectives for each goal.
| Goals | Objectives |
|---|---|
| Stakeholders will develop an awareness of the concepts of diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging in learning and instructional design. |
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| Stakeholders will address diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging as part of the design process instead of retrofitting. |
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| Stakeholders will align Universal Design for Learning (UDL) with the organization mission, vision and values of equity and inclusion. |
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The Research
What can I accomplish and how do I know I did? In order to demonstrate our learner-centered instructional design processes and their incorporation of diversity as part of such processes, first, I have to ensure that there is a consistent language around all the relevant terms, concepts, approaches and frameworks used in our designs. Do we all define and/or characterize the concepts of diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging the same way? Where did the “diversity filter” term come from, and why is it used? What does “compliance with diversity” mean or imply to the stakeholders?
Another thing to address is consistency in our message, which our designs should also reflect. Do we all know and use the Universal Design for Learning approach in our instructional design processes? If so, how, and what do we need to emphasize when using such approach? Do we accommodate for accessibility? Do we create culturally sensible learning? Then there’s the overall perception that diversity and inclusion are incorporated in learning by just having visuals with a diverse group of people.
Finally, does our approach align with the mission, vision and values of the institution? Does our instructional design process align with the goals and objectives of the work performed by the Department of Workplace Culture and Inclusion, and the Institute for Excellence in Health Equity?
The sources of our research are our own team, interviews and inquiries regarding the instructional design process of the different team members. There were inquiries about their knowledge and attitudes towards diversity, and the way they incorporate diversity and equity in health care in their online course development. Additionally, my team leadership contributed with their knowledge and information that pertains to the competency model used in employee reviews, competencies that directly relate to the P.R.I.D.E. institutional values.
From my research, I found several key points to include and address in order to meet the desired goals and objectives. I started with the origin of the expression “diversity filter” in our department. My department falls under the umbrella of human resources (or talent acquisition). As such, our department obtains and uses employee and candidate demographic data for analytics purposes. One of their tasks is to filter data based on specific demographics for talent search purposes, sometimes using talent search software. The term “diversity filter” evolved from the use of HR data based on specific demographics, data that is extracted (by applying data filters) from the main data pool. I am not an HR professional; commenting on whether or not such term is appropriate in the HR arena is completely out of my scope. In instructional design, however, we must not think of diversity as something that we apply or filter for.
My second stop was the Department of Workplace Culture and Inclusion. The department Director and I had an interesting conversation on how her department focuses on internal employee and labor relations, with the purpose of educating and training governance, leadership, and workforce in culturally and linguistically appropriate policies and practices on an ongoing basis. She agreed that such education and training to employees should reflect the same diversity and inclusion that the department intends to promote organization-wide. She stressed that workforce training, education and performance support is key to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services.
I was also fortunate to have a team meeting where the guest speaker happened to be the Director of the Institute for Excellence in Health Equity, who is a renowned physician-scientist and expert in health equity research with a focus on implementing evidence-based interventions targeted at cardiovascular risk reduction in minority populations. The Institute has several departments, one of them focusing on community outreach, which trains and manage Community Health Workers (CHWs). I had the opportunity of inquiring about their CHW curriculum. That curriculum is extremely relevant, as it is used for professionals whose job is to reach out and be in direct contact with the community. Culturally appropriate learning is the foundation of any initiative that involves community outreach.
The rest of my research includes all the typical necessary material on learning and cognitive sciences, UX/UI design, UDL Guidelines, and design processes for learning. For my team, I added a component on online course authoring tools, to demonstrate how to use them for compliance with accessibility standards.
The Design Ideation
Most of the goals and objectives involve creating awareness and establish how our instructional design processes align with the organization mission, vision and values. To that end, I determined that no formal educational event should occur for delivery. Instead, I designed a presentation providing the necessary information to increase awareness and knowledge of our processes, as well as the importance of using the correct terminology. I started with reassuring the statements of the institution's mission, vision and values:
Mission: To serve, teach, and discover
Vision: To become and remain a world-class, patient-centered, integrated academic medical center.
Values: P.R.I.D.E (Performance, Respect, Integrity, Diversity, Excellence)
There are two versions of the presentation: one for the institution leadership and another for learning professionals. The version for learning professionals contains additional information on course authoring tools’ accessibility features. It also contains more detailed information on UDL. The leadership version is more condensed and to-the-point, but highlights the importance of using the correct terms as well as how our instructional design process aligns with the institutional values.
The Development
Below is the outline for the two versions of the presentation. The activity consists of a facilitated discussion on the topic of diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging in instructional design.
Once I had my PowerPoint presentation ready, I asked my supervisor for some time to discuss the “diversity filter thing” at one of our meetings, so I could have some time to present to the team about it. Presenting to my team first also served as beta testing for the larger plan of presenting to the leadership of my department and later to the senior leadership. Below is an edited version of the slides for the Learning Professional version of the presentation. Some content is proprietary, so it could not be included, and I also removed the branding.
The Delivery
I facilitated a discussion on the topic at one of our team meetings. I started with the origin of the expression “diversity filter” in our department, then prompting my coworkers about how do they think that they integrate the PRIDE values into our instructional design. The answers covered every aspect of our process, though I did perceive a variety of ideas of the "role that diversity plays" in instructional design. Some of the eLearning developers mentioned that they make sure that all the stock images that they select during the development phase of the projects reflect diversity. I prompted them to elaborate in the idea of images reflecting diversity, and soon they realized that not all were on the same page in terms of how to reflect diversity and inclusion in the courses. The slide that explains what diversity and inclusion are not generated several aha moments and additional questions. To demonstrate how misleading it is to think of diversity as an “add-on”, we can attempt to apply such add-ons to the definition statements. I asked rhetorical questions: "How would it look if in our design we “filter” or “apply” facts, choices, actions and outcomes? Does it make sense to think of facts as something that we apply after we design something? How could we be learner-centered if we don’t acknowledge the fact that we are all members of a diverse universe? How could we be learner-centered if we don’t include all learners in our instructional design?"
As I ran the discussion, some took notes, some asked more questions, and some expressed the need for additional information on UDL and its several components. At the end of the presentation, there were many additional questions and requests for information. My supervisor recommended me to present to the entire department, so I was scheduled to present this at the following department meeting. Later, our Director and VP were quite pleased with the information, so much so, that they invited me to present to the VP of Internal Communication, which I already had in mind to reach out to.
The Universal Design for Learning approach is now mentioned every time that professionals throughout the institution speak about anything related to learning and instructional design. The institution now has a common language and can provide educated answers when questions regarding our learning development arise at any point. I have seen articles in our employee portal that mention UDL as a standard in our alignment with being a world-class academic institution.
In our work as Instructional Designers, instead of retrofitting (and consequently, undermining) our instructional design by “applying a diversity filter” to courses as a last step before they get published, we can implement (and make our clients aware of) the UDL framework. That implies that instead of having our Director of Workplace Culture and Inclusion intervening after we have completed our work, she can be a valuable stakeholder, SME and/or consultant who can play an instrumental part of the instructional design from the outset. Instead of just checking if our images represent the diversity of our workforce, she can provide valuable insights about things to consider when designing learning experiences for better learner representation, expression and engagement.
I most certainly agree with the assertion that our images must step away from stereotypes that can impact how we represent people who are members of certain communities. However, only worrying about the stock images that we choose to place in our slides does not address the more important aspect of the process, which is to ensure that the instructional design meets the goals and objectives of the designed learning experience for all learners, and in an equal and equitable manner. It is more important to ensure that all phases of the instructional design, from beginning to end, are inclusive of the communities that we want represented in the images, and that all learners have the means for them to engage in and enjoy their learning experiences.
It seems like, after all, that Instagram post did make a positive difference.
References
- Meyer, A., Rose, D.H., & Gordon, D. (2014). Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice. Wakefield, MA: CAST Professional Publishing.
- CAST (2020). UDL Tips for Designing Learning Experiences. Wakefield, MA: Author. Retrieved from https://www.cast.org/products-services/resources/2020/udl-tips-designing-learning-experiences
- Rose, D. H., Meyer, A., & Hitchcock, C. (2005). The Universally Designed Classroom: Accessible Curriculum and Digital Technologies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
- Centre for Excellence in Universal Design (CEUD). What is Universal Design. http://universaldesign.ie/What-is-Universal-Design/
- NYU Accessibility Newsletter. Digital Accessibility is Everyone's Responsibility. - February 2019
- CAST. The UDL Guidelines. https://udlguidelines.cast.org/
- World Wide Web Consortium. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/quickref/