 Good afternoon everybody and welcome to the next session in the old conference. I hope everybody's enjoying the conference to date. Our next paper is asking the essential question of how do I become an anti-racist researcher? And we have a number of presenters here and I'm going to hand over to Dom who's going to kick off just to let you know that you can post your questions into the comments box. So Dom, the floor is yours. Dom. Dom, are you mute? You're on mute. What about now? Am I mute? Yeah. Typical, isn't it? I think that happened last time. My tech failed at last year's old conference as well. Didn't look like it on the screen. It's about to happen. Brilliant. Okay, I'll start that one again. Rewind. I should set expectations for more domestic disruptions as well. In case my plumber pit turns up. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for attending. How do I become an anti-racist researcher? Welcome to the session. This is one of about three sessions related to this particular topic from a group that I'll explain a little bit more about in just a moment. So let me introduce a little bit more of the rest of the team here. You should see, hopefully you can see upon the, let me see, is that moving next? There you go. There are six of us in this particular group of this particular area of work is looking at. As you can see from the slides, we are spread across a broad variety of different places. There's a couple of us from London, but we're representing quite a range of institutions from largely across the UK on this particular topic. You can see a couple of hashtags at the bottom of the slide. So if you want to join in, please do so. Okay. So this particular group is part of one of the anti-racism and learning technology community of practice subgroups. That's a bit of a mouthful that emerged late last year in response to wider conditions that happened that were happening during the pandemic. As you can see from the slides, there are a few things that this particular group has come together to look at addressing. And these are things like making changes in our workplace, our work, and of course in the wider learning technology community. We have concerns or questions about potential lack of ethnic diversity in the tell sector. We also want to be able to empower colleagues to be better allies so that all voices can be more effectively heard. As you may have seen from, if you've attended any of the other sessions, there are three main areas of activity within this particular grouping. And hopefully we'll see some links appearing in chat at some point during the session today. One of the areas looks at guidance for content developers. So we're looking at ways to set a recommendations for incorporating anti-racism and anti-racist actions into digital learning content. The session before us was talking about mentoring and coaching. And these are ways to particularly also has a focus on a recruitment into the learning technology field as well. And the group that the six of us are part of today is largely focusing on research-connected activities. So we're exploring research, we're looking at ways that research into anti-racism within learning technology and sort of aggregating them. I will copy a link in the... Oh, sorry. Sorry, I thought that was the wind. I will copy a link into the chat there for a blog post that we've published earlier on. And the obvious question before we go into the activities stage of this presentation today. Why anti-racist research and learning technology practice? Well, one of the things it's about the people that we work with and the services that we provide. We're collectively aiming to make sure that we encourage, foster and develop more inclusive environments. And of course, doing research is a way to test theories and to gather data to support that. And as anybody would know, we're able to make changes as a result of the research, particularly if it is persuasive. Okay. So I'm going to hand over to my colleague, Sukhtinder, next, who's going to run a poll in Mentimeter around the idea of the sphere of influence that you may feel you have or not within your respective institutions. So Sukhtinder, if you'd like to take the mic and give me a shout when you need a slide. I will do. I will do. Thanks a lot. Hello, everyone. I'm my name is Sukhtinder. And in this part we would like to open the discussion with our colleagues. So with you, as we collectively aim to understand our sphere of influence and power within our institutions and how we might use action research methods to then help drive efforts locally and at institutional levels. So as a starting point, and as Thomas just introduced, there's how much influence do we have. So what we've done, we've just designed this Mentimeter poll and we would like you to participate and consider what you may think your degree of influence within your role and institution. So if you would just like to open up a new tab, hopefully either on your smartphone or on your device that you're using, and if you can go to mentimeter.com and enter the code 15069731. And there's just one anonymous poll in there. And if you can just answer what you think your degree of influence is in those categories that we've defined. So if don't if you want to share the live poll and then we can see if we're getting some feedback. Obviously, we clearly do recognise that even in these categories there are a lot of layers within that. But I think these are really good starting points to think about your sphere of influence. And I've read a really interesting quote, which I thought was really, really useful, which said, an important ingredient to creating impact is being clear about your sphere of influence. And often it's that area which we fail to take into account when we're planning for action. We seem to be getting some numbers in there. It's very small on my screen. So I'm just going to look at a bigger screen so I can see. So if it's appearing quite small for you, we'll just give you a couple of more minutes just to get some more feedback and just in case anybody's got any issues. So go to menti.com and use a code at the top by showing on the slide. Just getting back to that question regarding what we mean by organisational departments. I guess we were thinking just about the spread of your influence outside of your own department. Thanks, Jim. So it's really interesting to see the responses that we're getting back. And it's interesting to see how looking at team colleagues, so where we might be more closer and locally is where we could have more of an influence and looking at the least organisational departments, where obviously looking at the distance and the proximity and the way that the organisation works, where we're not always closely connected with, that seems to be where we might have least impact. Very interesting. It's very, very close with senior management, very absolutely low scores, the student body 2.2. But obviously where we have the least impact is where we probably would like to have the most impact. So it's a good reflection into thinking about how we within our roles and can see the impact that we can have. Okay, so Dom, if you just want to move on to the next. Bye, Dom. Okay, so I think it's my turn to talk a little bit about action research. So when we started talking about how we could make changes in our institutions and with the people that we work with and remember we're all working in learning technology settings and so trying to figure out what the connection between anti-racist research and being a learning technologist is. So when we met as a group to think about how our research has impact or influence in our organisations, there is something about being able to say that you have done rigorous research because it's so many of us who work in universities that if a suggestion or knowledge is based on research, it seems to hold higher weight within universities. And so I'm quite keen that people who work in learning technology should engage with doing research without needing to embark on whole PhD programs or even move to an academic track. I think it's important that we understand about action research which is part of our own work in our own settings. And action research and insider research are both legitimate research methods and there's a fair bit written about them, how to do them well and how to do them with rigor. And so if there's anything we can, the one takeaway from this session is to, we're going to point you to a guide that I think is pretty good from advanced AG about how to do action research. But one of the things that we want to sell to you is the idea that any one of you could do action research in your own workplace. And that process of discovery and thinking about how you do that is rigor in terms of the thinking. So yes, so Fiona's a fan. Yes. And action research is the basis of many staff development programs, PG certs in learning and teaching. So it's something that our academic colleagues are often encouraged to do as part of their professional development. And I think that what I'm keen to do is to encourage people to learning technologists to also engage with action research. So this is not a session about action research as such, I'm teaching you how to do it, but hoping that you will perhaps be enthused. And so Katie and I have both when we were having meetings within this group, Katie and I were both talking about how action research actually understanding about it really helped us to think about what we might do. And that's because action research is absolutely used to evaluate and measure things in your workplace in the work that you do now, your actions, you research them and they can that the outcome of that research can lead to reflection and suggestions based on research. And so in this context of becoming an anti racist researcher when we're doing the research within our institutions, even about our learning technology topics, or about our workplaces, or about the context in which we work our teaching practice or our stimulus, one of the things that we can add to a lens on action research is to think about how you include in your research the data that tells you a bit about the ethnicity of the people you're researching or the anti racist angle on the topic that you're researching. So that obviously is your down to your own research question and what you want to discover. But what we would like to do in this group is to offer a place for people who are considering doing an action research, which might have an anti racist angle, because it might serve the outcomes of the research serves to improve the places and contexts in which we work. So yeah, so here's the link to the to the guide, which I think is a really useful starting point. And I found it very helpful. And I think when I showed it to Katie, she, you know, a lot of it chimed with her as well. And some of the things that well, yes, and Fiona's talking about UX is action research action research. Actually, I think it's really useful framework for research, because it is about researching the work that you do. And any of us could be action researchers, if you take that approach. And I would like to see more action research from learning technologists in our community. And I hope that I can persuade you all to engage with some of this. So we only have a very short session. And it really was just about trying to induce you to think about the impact that you could have, and that you can all become researchers. And Katie and I were going to say a little bit about our research Katie's actually off camera at the moment. And we will distribute links. But certainly to say that I've, you know, so I'm quite keen on this because I have just completed quite a large piece of action research done as an insider researcher. And that thinking that I've had to do with my research methodology about the difference between being an insider and an outsider and the different positions of researchers that even often when we listen to our academic colleagues about researching things, they are researching phenomena that they are standing distant from and taking that approach as a researcher to examine it. And I think that one of the very important things that action research is that you are in it. And you are part of it. And you influence so much about how the research is designed and also the impact of that research within your organization that perhaps we need to encourage more action research and demystify the idea that research is always done at a distance because there's a whole bunch of voices and a whole bunch of questions that in fact, the learning technologists in the institution are the best placed people to do that research. And I think that that's some ground that we perhaps need to reclaim rather than waiting and hoping that other people will do it for us. So I don't know whether Katie's on and wants to talk a bit about hers, but mine is about leadership and diversity in leadership. So it's actually about leadership, but I took a specific angle on that to gather data, intersectional data about the different characteristics of the people I was interviewing. And that put me up against, you know, some of that traditional research practice where you would try to keep everything as neutral and as generic. And I particularly wanted to bring the voices from the different types of people who I was talking to, because their lived experience was the most important thing about how they behave and how they saw this topic. But so many of the research guides that I read said that I needed to keep everything really neutral. And you couldn't ask people questions about that because it was private information and personal data and stuff. So as well as with the action research guide, I would also recommend there's some very good guides about doing research in equality, diversity and inclusion, which also from Advanced AG, which helps you to think about the data you can gather and the questions you can ask about the people that you're researching. So I don't know, Katie, whether you want to come in or whether it's time for us to take questions. I think we're probably heading towards questions at this point. But there is one point that I'll add to Melissa's comments there as well. When I joined this particular subgroup to look at this area, I was, to some extent, I was driven by the question, how diverse is learning technology? And there was effectively very little in the way of data sets to actually answer that. So just backing up what Melissa says as well, one of the most effective ways to answer these sorts of questions is to do our own research within our own institutions, I think. Yes, I'm very happy to talk to anybody who would like to, I mean, obviously, one's own research becomes quite personal and how I did it isn't the way necessarily anyone else might want to do it. I think that understanding your approach to who you're studying and what their characteristics might be. And one of the things I absolutely learned, which is that the data that an institution holds about people's protected characteristics are not up to date. They're only gathered once, and that's at the moment of recruitment. So whatever you put in as your profile of characteristics when you join the organization, it doesn't get, well, in my organization, doesn't get updated. So all the things in your life that might have changed to do with disability or parenthood or menopause or any of those things that might have happened to you that might make you an interesting subject for inclusive research isn't necessarily in the HR data when we approach it called. Okay, so Katie's happy to be contacted. She's just off screen at the moment because she's being an action researcher. An active action researcher. Thanks everyone for a fantastic presentation and some great touch points there to consider and to look at. I'm just looking at the comments, a lot of positive comments in, I don't see any questions in there. So I might just pick up on a comment that Fiona McNeil made, which was about institutional support. And maybe one of you would speak to that as like, are we getting institutional support for action research around anti-racism or what do we need to do to get that? Well, I think, I mean obviously every institution, every workplace is different, but I think that if you're investigating it, research is just investigating a thing. So if you're in a role where you are asked to bring evidence and show a thing to be true, you're probably doing action research to a certain extent. And I suppose the anti-racist angle on this is that we need to remember the demographics of the people or the phenomena that we're researching. So Fiona, when you do your action research, when you do your UX research, perhaps you're asking students to try something out, perhaps you're asking staff to try something out. Do you know what the different journeys through university systems are for different kinds of different groups of learners, different kinds of students? Often when we say that we would like to research the experience of the ethnic minority students in our university, we're told by the HR or by the student systems people who can't have that data and everybody should just be treated equally in UX research. But of course, UX has all those angles about personas and trying to figure out how the journeys might be different for different kinds of people. I think that some of that is really linked to providing better services to students and staff. And so we can be anti-racist in our research actions if we ensure that in our research we take into account of the different voices and different experiences of the groups of users who interact with our services might be. Does that make sense? Yeah, I'd like to jump in as well to say about the some of the methodology requires a community of other similar researchers to help guide the study to make sure that you're not making kind of assumptions about things. So I guess this is just to reiterate the call for people to come and join us and learn together. Thanks for that. Folks, we're up on the hour and we are going to have to stop at this point. So I'd just like to thank all of the presenters here in this session. Thank you very much for the contribution, for stimulating the debate. Thanks to everybody who's joined in and participated and for your comments, say a lot of positive comments there in coming in on the chat box. So I look forward to hearing more from you in the future and thanks to everybody once again. Thank you all.