 Hello everyone and welcome. I am delighted to introduce Monica and Tiro Manny for this session on We Are Committed to Diversity and Equality of Opportunity, an intersectional text analysis of job postings in learning technology. Tiro Manny and Monica are part of the newly formed anti-racism and learning technology special interest group which they'll be talking about I think referring to in their presentation. So without further ado, I would like to hand over to Tiro Manny and Monica for their presentation. Thank you very much. Thank you Emma. Hi everyone. Tiro Manny, would you like to go first and introduce the subgroup of the anti-racism? Yeah, indeed Monica. So Emma has very briefly mentioned that we now an approved by G-Hurray as part of the subgroup. So we are the Recruitment and Development subgroup and this presentation today is from the team. You can see the team members here. We've got some of them who are in the audience. Some can't quite join us but they will, they're all very much part of the team. You can also contact us via their email address that I've added on the slide and there's a website link and there's also a Twitter hashtag that we use currently. On the next slide please. Thank you. So we are part of the SIG which is new but we've been a group existing since November 2020 and we have today, this is one of the first group presenting today but we've got another presentation just back to after this one from guidance for content developers. Next slide please. And a quick info about what this session is not about is while racism is quite a belief related issue and is quite complex so we are not going today to address everything around racism and nor are we going to solve all the racism related issues that you've got within your team or within your department or within the institution. However it's important to note the parameters within which we are going to tackle racism is we don't actually just fraction with the limitation of BAME definition but we also celebrate the uniqueness of all the POC persons of color and hand in hand with the lines. So that's the main focus of this group and the group obviously we follow the all NETICAD as well but we also have our own sects of let the NETICAD in the community of practice and we aim to empower and connect all members especially the allies as well and we don't just look at the cities right now this session is about staff and development and recruitment but we also look into technologies racism in technologies racism in our practices so it's an overall agenda really around racism but I would like to say that some of the issues that if you would like to have any if we don't give you all the solutions today all the tips around record met you're more than welcome to email us however I would like to say that the main point of contact for anybody having seen issues of racism at work your first point of contact would be your line manager, HR, the team but I do recognize that this is not always possible and this is why the society is in existence you can always email on that email address and we can go into further details around racism-related record met processes in your department and also even offer consultation if that needs you and the second bit which this session is not about is not a tick box tick box exercise it's not like having a badge that oh I've attended this session and I'm now an anti-racist it's not it's not at all this about this sorry next slide Monica so what this session is about is about telling things as they are but those of you who can't quite see the picture and I'll put from George Orwell he said if liberty means anything at all he means the right to tell people what they didn't want to hear and around this whenever I do stop these sessions around anti-racism I always mention that there might be emotions coming up during some of the topics that we discussed feel free to take a break or you don't need to come out if you don't feel comfortable you can always reach us later on but we do have some public questions I've made sure that it's actually not going to be I'm not going to share the actual public script so you can actually post there without any fear that somebody else in your team or some or you know if you have an issue that will be that so by the end of the session next slide please by the end of the session we would have identified some of the languages in phrases mostly that we use when we deal with presentation in job interviews application and all the stages of recruitment basically and we'll give you tips and pointers and you'll find out you'll learn from it hopefully you'll learn a lot from it and we will be having other sessions also posted because this is just an introduction to to recording in a way which is anti-racist next slide please sorry slide seven yeah slide seven yeah so we've touched very briefly in the September conference about some of the challenges very sectoral challenges to us which is lack of jobs job security inclusivity and the demographics in the UK I'm not going to cover much on that slide now but there is a recording of our September conference presentation the link on the slide but if anybody has questions at the end I'm going to touch on on that sorry I'm moving my I'm moving my voice and now leave the floor to Monica who's going to actually talk about some text analysis right thank you there are many okay so I guess I'll start with my motivation to do this I recently was on the search of jobs and I was obviously reading very much in detail the job descriptions and it occurs to me there are a lot of language that personally it puts me off as a person of color as a woman of color as well and I like to approach straight things with frameworks and I'm sure you're familiar with intersectionality so this framework was created by Kimberly Crenshaw and it was back in the 80s 90s she developed these to address the inequalities and the systems of oppression in America that women of color black women faced in the legal system so this is a lens that I think we could apply when creating job posting so to me it's about applying this and understanding that is not one homogeneous job posting or language that you should be using but you should consider people from an intersectional point of view and that means not only confined to the realms of race but also of sex disability and other protected characteristics which the Roman is going to list in a minute okay so this is the framework that from which we're approaching a very brief text analysis so this is the beginning of a project I'm doing and analyzing the language because I have a background in applied linguistics so I'm fascinated by language and the context in which it operates so I have given you a definition here in the slide so it is about exploring the social inequalities people's lives and the power the hidden power structures and how a particular group of people benefit in the hierarchy of power and interaction intersectionality is the lens you should be applying to bring a different perspective more variety into into the experiences of people you can't just define a person by one identity we have multiple identities and I include an example from bash if I mispronounce it please correct me I did my best to find the correct pronunciation of this name I believe is Bosnian if I'm not wrong and so for example a Muslim Bosnian female on the age of 30 is has multiple identities she's Muslim she's Bosnian she's a female is under the age of 30 so they do not exist in a vacuum but they bring a whole rich experience and you have the onion the intersection onion which I found really helpful in the slides you can see you can have a look at the paper if you have access if you don't have access to research articles please email me and I'm happy to share a copy with you and before I forget intersectionality is not something that was invented in America or in Europe this has been around for a long time and has been you can find this kind of ideas in Indian texts as well that I just wanted to mention that to decolonize my research approach as well okay so I'm I'm offering two examples of an initial text analysis of what the kind of language that are used in in in the job advertisements so for example one one particular piece of a sentence that strikes me is the development opportunities for underrepresented groups and so this sentence tells a lot I think it sends the message that there is something deficient or lacking in underrepresented groups when in reality I think it is the majority who make he who should be taking the development opportunities and when you use this kind of language you're sending the message that you are deficient and you have to make up for that deficiency when entering this job and so I offer a different perspective we support line managers for example or senior leadership in developing the management skills necessary for managing people of color or whatever you protect the characteristic if you want to list all of them that's absolutely fine and you can explore the concept of powers concept of space invader and this is very much about bodies out of place in a white environment the second example awareness of the national context in which higher education operates we know it is a predominantly white environment and especially in positions of power these makes reference to networks in between the lines and networks that are of course predominantly white males straight and able so alternatively you could acknowledge that perhaps there is not much diversity and that you are very welcoming of alternative networks to diversify and of course the power is in the things that you don't say I think I would like to see as a person of color and as a woman I would like to see the numbers like how many people of color are you employing what's the progression rates how many people have left your your institution and and the reasons and you know if just an another acknowledgement that perhaps you're not where you are but you would like to be that gives me a sign of authenticity and of course you have to operate within the parameters of HR but if you are in a position to make these kind of decisions or influence I urge you to consider this tweaking of language okay so that's all for me dear mani thank you manika so some of the we actually have a series of exercises now if you could join padlock as I said earlier I'm not I'm not putting it in YouTube because this is a recorded session and people might feel uncomfortable with that and we're going to cover a series of of questions and if you could just write your answers there's no right or wrong answer and just put what you think is it is at the moment so the first one I don't know if anybody can't join yet manika I am asking for you to join in in the session yes I have put the padlet in the private chat so it should be shared in the comments in a minute okay so the first question is if you can post in the chat if if you haven't got access to it at what stage does recruitment start so can you put your answer in the chat what what do you guys think when does it start oh there is the padlet yeah I'm yeah I'm going to give you like two minutes to just think about it there's no right or wrong answer otherwise we wouldn't be an SIG existing here uh I'm talking today so um sign your answers and whatever they are we are going to do for it now okay somebody has perched when you're thinking the of the resource you need another one has put out the point where you realize you need someone to join the organization I'll wait for the full 10 minutes before we we might get some more we've got one who's somebody who said schooling when inspiration is nurtured future careers somebody has good when you are the team realize there's too much work to do when discussing the vacancy requirements uh when you have a staff vacancy rolled to follow a project and timing a few more seconds so which is it is a permanent stay at home organization is is perceived when work increases one of course has been authorized to fill okay so so I can see that there's a little coming um rolling always open to expression of interest when working increases so we're just going to cover that uh very very quickly so um recommend um generally line managers although they are very well trained hiring managers they think that uh requirement starts at application stage and often I've even heard at often people think that way they know it's not right but they just think that they give you the impression that that's how it should be which is not and somebody has put that it's in schooling which is um very interesting because indeed uh how does recommend how does recommend happen and how do you tackle things is very much um at at the very very early stage itself and somebody has also uh written it's a permanent stage as how the organization is perceived very much like that because you cannot wait for wait for work to increase to actually even think of recruitment because if you do recommend right then it is very much like sorry I have some background noise background noise here so if you're doing recommend right then it is very much that um as you don't have to wait for your yearly appraisal meeting with your team to know that there are issues or even to evaluate uh task uh the amount of you know uh work allocation and and whether you need an extra person and this is where some of us we are failing in that because we wait for somebody to officially complain or even put in a call uh procedure with a charge to say look I'm doing the job of two people uh no it's not it shouldn't be that way there are there are many times also where for example if somebody let's say has to go on on um mat and italy or if there's a plan uh surgery you know somebody's going to have a surgery in in two months you need to cover all that you need to recruit somebody uh to fill that force you cannot just simply say oh I'm just going to reallocate because what will happen to the work that they usually do so um yes recommend actually is a permanent state you have to always think about it HR uh HR BPs or whoever you call them in your institution these people should always be working with your line manager and should always be reachable to you to your team members and to your line manager to answer queries around look this is happening right now there's too much job I don't understand how to do that I was recruited to do something but now you're telling me to do something else this is a record my process that should happen there um I'm going to now go on to the next uh public question I see that there's a lot of people who already don't at end uh so I'm just looking at my slides there and you've got to write there are nine nine of them uh many people though do do remember the nine but then forget the the list of them and it's very important what Monica has just uh explained about uh text analysis and intersectionality is it's important for us to always have this in the background I don't know whether it's about pointing them on and put on your wall the reason being is whenever we are communicating with our team members whenever we are recruiting all our work that we are doing whether it is us working from home or us working um in the office we need to be aware of those protected categories because these will then lead to a better communication it will very much dictate our behavior and interaction with others and if we are used to interacting or we have our own perception from you know of let's say race then uh we will mess up in our interaction and communication can someone please post uh the link to the word press as well in the cutlet maybe and in the comments thank you Monica sorry yeah we haven't got um yeah uh somebody has written slightly different in Australia because we are First Nations people yeah yeah which you agree with that so protected category is not exactly uh fix uh uh is not exactly defined by you know one thing for all the whole world no it changes obviously in countries where you will have uh let's say uh i'm i'm currently in moses and in south africa if you look at african countries we have a different definition for our protective categories and even when you look at racism we look at it differently like uh if you go into asia let's say india pakistan it's very religiously entangled with racism it's very religious entangled so you'll have to look at it and define it very differently and even your protected categories so that's why whoever wrote that comment about australia in the padlock we uh we're not going to go on to the next padlet exercise which is example of biases during application somebody has already commented but i'm just going to give uh two minutes uh for some for all of you to to have the opportunity to write what are your thoughts and as you can see it's anonymous so uh you don't have to worry about what if somebody is going to see your comments and then say oh you didn't know about these things how can you say a little bit so example biases uh during application so somebody has written she's got their qualification but not in her experience despite being in a similar pose so ignore women mainly seen as uh okay another comment is when the word preset is used with regards to required experience that's a very funny one actually because it says reuse reset experience can exclude those out of maternity and care imperatives worry you've hit on that who ever put that note uh working in an ed tech role in other country but does not understand the context of the uk so not employing yet that's also these biases are very true uh and are happening as we speak so they are not things that are non-existent and that have just come out from somebody's mind so um all the women yeah all the women in technical roles yeah assumptions of character based on correct uh assumption of character based on character yeah and we remove all of these because as i said these are happening um in the uk and uh somebody uh i'm not going to mention the name i just had a chat it was this month who said that their line manager didn't even know what puc meant and uh i knew line managers who don't even know what bane uh whether bane is is an acceptable word or not and these are line managers who had all the training uh that they are provided by hr and the institution and some of are highly paid external training uh but they don't know that um we often assume that line managers have all the answers and we often assume that hr also know it all or even our legal team knows it all which is um an assumption that we should stop having because they don't have all the answers and many times they don't know everything uh somebody has mentioned about these free years we sent um experience there's also some of the languages that we you see in um in application are things like 10 years experience uh so yes uh younger uh the younger uh uh staff what happened the younger applicants who've just left university and who fulfill these responsibilities but you are but we tend to have this bias perception that somebody with 10 years experience will exactly know how to do it and now more than ever we we are in a pandemic we've been moving to online education and uh we we think that all people we still record with people people seeking 10 years 20 years experience whereas the younger generation know how to use technologies better not all technologies are angry but why don't we give them the chance anyway we don't recruit somebody who's perfect and who fill uh who tick all the boxes we'll recruit somebody and then we continue to train them so we don't just say oh i'm done with you now you're supposed to do all the job and i gave you 10 years 20 years to 50k why i don't know how much k and you've got to do the job this is not how it it is it should be this is not how it should be but get we see this is what it's happening there's also uh things like it's not specifically in learning technology role but you'll see if you just go on your university website probably even internal and external job advert you might come across things which go like physically fit what do you mean by physically fit this is just a perception the same way that race is okay that's why uh a lot of of uh the protected captain was actually misunderstood so if you're seeking a job which is for somebody to run a marathon yes you're looking to somebody who is physically fed but if you're looking for a learning technology so somebody to work in a team on a project what do you mean by physically fit well so coming back to these um protected categories so if somebody is uh less able do you mean they are not physically fit to do the job is the job just needs like a computer and the person i don't know maybe has got a problem with the leg or something like that just i mean that the person cannot do the job what do you mean by physically fit and that's where our own judgment our own unconscious bias and all the cultural assumption and everything kicks in and we record we tend to record people who we just like physically who are like us and who answer the questions the way that we want them to answer during an interview and i've just two days back or three days back i've actually seen in an application which is also wording is very key which is please let us know if you have any accessibility requirements uh i don't know if i said please let us know as somebody who's not a native english speaker i guess i'll let you know so did you mean uh do you have any accessibility requirements or do you want me to tell you later on that i have it yes or no so the way that we phrased our questions and uh those quick a bit some of them are actually just in the platform that are your job adverts are opposed to being in your institution and it's got a lot to do also with with how much our formulate and think about internationalization about racism and about all these topics and how this phrase uh the phrase that questions around application and this also leads to an issue which is how do you phrase your questions during an interview okay Romani we have five minutes so i think we should we should close now and probably tell people that if they want to sign up to the newly formed sig that i have posted the link in the private chat and the lovely emma is going to put it in the in the comments for you to sign up and i'll also be sharing the the the links to the blogs the the community has um the members of the community have written and more information about the anti-racism and learning technology community if you are interested and this is something that you like to get involved yeah thank you Monique actually yeah i was gonna wrap up as well because i do realize that the session uh it's a very complex uh matter and uh we do we will um be organizing other webinars and other longer workshops and also within the sig we will be covering the same some of the topic that some of the questions that we will really raise like what stage does recommend start and for the categories because people do feel safer talking um within the group as well so if you are interested um please do sign up and uh i think it's February that we intend to run a session on recruitment and but do feel free to add your comments the reason of the two exercises on the pamphlet which is this is basically an example of current and recent examples from a particular university hiring somebody to work on diversity and the next one is about can we talk about race during an interview your thoughts please do post your comments there it will be good to know how we can then do the other uh future workshops how whether we discuss more on uh interview or more on application uh so i'm just switching back to my slides uh but yes um racism is quite a complex a complex issue it's it's so many stages uh in recruitment so how do you work your job at work how do you who do you target do you use word as physical if it or not and uh how do you shortlist uh there's a big problem in higher education the way that we're shortlist the right situation who kind of will remove apparently links and names in application but then they've thought that they've thought about the way that the application works actually the links are there still so if you click let's say if i put my link in because you want evidence for a particular project that i've worked and i will put it in the text and if they don't remove that they'll know what it means to apply and um this is a very complex situation because it costs money for these applications to be to be developed and to be modified and universities are not exactly actually i mean even organizations uh industries organizations are ready to pay that money because uh anti-racism is still is still something that senior management paid with service too because if it is not if it was not existing we will not be talking about it today as i said earlier it's very much present we do still have a lot of microaggression on an everyday basis uh there are people who tell stories that are really really hard to to listen uh and um it's hard to even imagine and this is happening but hopefully this is just an introduction as i said earlier an introduction to a bigger um bigger project be more workshops and we can talk more about it and change the way that we recruit and in my last way that i was there waiting them can be stopped on recommended stage because if we are careful and if we really show empathy and we really do our job as it should be involved within the remit of HR within the remit of the legalities the laws that exist uh in the UK we should not be actually having these racism in the recommended stages of any state whether be it having to view at any point in time uh i haven't seen am i don't know if it's question time already there she is yes hello um thank you so much to Romani and Monica for a really fascinating talk and um that padlock board is still available so if anybody wants to share their comments there i've got one question that's come in um from Laurie about um is there a way of signing up without having to sign up to academia edu yeah so what i'll do is i'll actually post um um post it somewhere else and then i'll share the link thank you Laurie for that comment um and another quick comment here uh from Laurie again uh asking if the textual analysis of the job efforts has it been published somewhere no it is working progress i'm working on it but thank you for for putting me putting some pressure on me i'll speed up that um work yes so i'll be happy to have a chat Laurie if you're interested but no it hasn't been published yet it's an initial analysis yeah i'll do that as well up to that Emma we've been very careful today about not discussing current job efforts in learning technology because we do realize that there are uh people maybe in the audience who've applied for these roles over in these roles so uh we have chosen in the public forum not specifically discuss a particular role uh current roles current job adverts but yes this is a working progress there are a couple of problems uh this is my mistake with uh pasting the links i think a few people reported that they weren't working so um what i'll do and i'll check with you after the talk is just check that i've got the links correct and put those into the resources channel on discord if that's if that's okay yeah thank you thank you um another comment from Santanu uh Stonewall has resources on language to use on policies and job descriptions yeah thanks thanks Santanu if there are no more questions um is there anything that you want to like to summarize from the padlock door anything that you didn't get a chance to say before before we go yes i would like to say something thank you Emma um i would like to say that it's not only about diversifying you diversify but if you don't if you don't have a culture that is conductive for this diversity which is the inclusion part then the people that you recruit are going to leave so it's not only the work of recruiting it's also of sustaining and maintaining a culture of inclusion where people feel comfortable and belonging is the outcome of diversifying or of inclusion and belonging is the the outcome of that so we have to be probably that'll be another presentation how to create that culture that sustains the diversity yeah thank you Monica would you like comment from Vesant as well um from Santanu about um looking at um the hidden disabilities out well and this is why it's so important to have our interaction proper and to think of these nine categories all the time and by the way there's not just nine the the law is equality act which is itself the name is not so right and um and it has just nine categories but there are so many we all varied otherwise we'll be clueless on each other and this is where we keep getting wrong because um we just think of rules we don't think of the person behind it so is that a sex there's text orientation there's and there's so many disabilities that people don't talk about there's so many challenges also that people don't talk about and i'm going to cover these in uh training sessions and workshops or around unconscious bias so if you look at me what do you think so you just have these assumptions right so uh i'm going to use myself by the way as an example because people um and all people to get upset with with some example that i'll just take uh recurring and occurring in in the in the current news but um do join do sign up for for the for this hygiene we'll be able to talk about these and and there's also other subgroups which uh there's one more session actually just after hours the research connected one sorry not the research connected one the other one yeah i sorry i'm just looking at the pad lead i think you've you've given some all of the example are actually correct uh it's uh some of them you might not have been aware for example like uh what stages of recommended start but it's all about changing our thoughts about recruitment and this is what this subgroup is about is changing how we think about uh recommended development and do you feel pretty fill in the other bits in and pieces on the pad let uh it will be interesting to see your thoughts especially on the presentation title and if i may say it actually that's a presentation title for an et al role et al looking for it somebody to work on that you can tell me what you think of it it's very interesting to to read what you think about it well let me say thank you on behalf of everyone that's attended this session thank you so much to Romani and Monica it's been really fascinating and a lot of food for thought there in that presentation and just for people who are interested in the the anti-racism and learning technology special interest group we've got another presentation coming up in five minutes from some members of the same group on developing an anti-racism toolkit so that you might be interested in joining that session as well um so thank you again and uh all the very best and see you soon thank you