 and welcome to this session, which is all about learning technologists tackling sectorial racism by recruitment and staff development. I'm Marindy Bullock, and I'm the session chair for this session. And I'd like to introduce everybody who's listening now to our two speakers, who are representing a whole group of effort, I believe. So a very warm welcome, first of all, to our colleague, Tiramani Nadan. Welcome and great to have you with us. And also a very warm welcome to Tracy Madden. So Tracy, Tiramani, I will have a look at the comments in the chat now and hand over to you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Marin. Welcome, everyone. I guess you can hear me loud and clear. One of the co-presenters couldn't make it today, but we are representing a whole team behind us. So who we are, we are actually part of the subgroup of a community of practice, which is the anti-racism and learning technology community of practice. Our subgroup is actually recruitment and staff development. And Tracy, if you could move to the next slide please. So as you can see, I've included on this slide our group email ID and also our sway page for the moment, which we are using to provide some key information about the community of practice. And I've also included some of the hashtag that we will be using as part of the community of practice. So as part of the theme, there's, as Marin said, there's myself, Monica, who couldn't be here today, Marin, sorry, Tracy, and we've got two new members, Tanya and Marin herself. Next slide please, Tracy. Sorry, could I have the next slide please? Yeah, so as I said, as part of the community of practice, we are actually different groups. We've got the guidance for content developers, connected activities, which by the way, the next presentation in this very parallel session will be from the sub team of the research connected activities. And we follow the recruitment and staff development. We've also got a reading group which analyzes some reading materials and about racism, different kind of racism that could come from materials. I'll put that in square brackets because we don't have outputs from that group yet. So moving on to today's presentation, I'm just going to start off by saying, for example, this week we have already, for those of you who don't know, probably have not read about it, we've seen about the, what the Labour's member, Harriet Harman, Harman actually mentioned to be the luxury of life within the recitalment plan of the 5,000 Afghans, as we all know there have been issues in Afghanistan recently. I'll open up on this because I wanted to highlight how policies can make us sometimes act and behave more inhumanly in some scenarios without us even realizing what we are doing or even the aftermath effect. However, Nomi is relating this particular situation in Afghanistan to racism. This is just an eye-opening example. However, there is a very recent example about racism that I can tell you just last week. For example, if we look at the recruitment of NHS, where the NHS advertised several posts around inclusion and diversity officers and managers, if any of you have seen on Twitter, for example, and even on other social media, there has been lots of racist comments around that. And surprisingly enough, NHS is made up of a lot of proportion of staff for BAME and foreign news. And yet this is what we've seen last week. And something perhaps more relatable to your day-to-day life is how positive discrimination is misused and without much support. We have all probably seen the onboarding of a woman or a BAME person, not so white person, I would say, to show diversity on paper. That is mostly a tick box exercise, even in the previous, during the ethical framework today, several speakers have talked about that. And also we use this to look good on external reports. So if there are already, let's say, nine male members on a board and we can just have one black female, that would resolve the paperwork, isn't it? And then we would most of the time report this as, our board is made up of 10 members, which is quite diverse. We have both female representation and we also have black representation. And of course, we play around with the words and we embellished these in our reports, simply to appeal to external bodies. The reason why I've opened up on a controversial matter, which is about the 5,000 cap with regards to the Afghan Result from the plan is because racism is as big as an issue as this. It's still a much debated issue and yet a very pointed, finite issue, which we are yet to even tackle properly and effectively in the UK. You will notice that I have also used we, we as NWE because I'm also part of the issue as much as I hate to say it. And why so? It's because simply I don't feel 100% safe to raise issues in certain circumstances. And the fact that am I scared of any formal shape of retaliation or victimization? Am I safe from these things? What I have heard leave gone from myself in my work life or in my personal life does not allow me to always ring the alarm bell. And I'm not the only being person to feel like this. I'll be coming back to this in the other slide later on. So I'm just going to dive in now into the record better and staff development subgroup work. And, but before I proceed, I would like to say that the topic of racism is a very emotional issue. And it can bring certain anxieties right now among some of the people who are listening to us right now. You might be obeying stuff or not be obeying stuff, but it might bring out some anxieties. So if we don't have questions or if people don't feel that they are able in this open space right now to ask questions, we are at a label on Discord, on Twitter, by email. I've also provided an email ID that you can have a one-to-one conversation with any of one of us in this team. And obviously why we are here, as I've put on this slide, is for change and for action. We want action, we need action. It's not just that we want it, we need it. And also for all of us to have a fair working space, we shouldn't be worried about saying something or be worried about witnessing something. This should not even be happening. Can I have the next slide, please, Tracy? So at the moment, how we've looked at it in this group is, in this team is we're looking at record met and also we're looking at staff development. We've already released two blog posts. I've included these on the slide, which I will share. And there's also takeaway material, which I will put on Discord for the whole community to have access to. Can I have the next slide, please, Tracy? Today's actually talk is more focused on the action learning steps on the staff development. But I will very quickly touch upon record met, because I think it's very important to just kind of briefly mention some of the challenges in the sector that we have. So if you look at, for example, jobs.ac.uk or a brief search online, and if you look at the jobs in our sector, you will see that many of them are still around fixed-term, contract, short-term, contract, and which also lead to many other things, which are like, for example, people who are recruited in these are actually recruited from agencies and not HR department of an institution. And certain policies and processes are not followed through. And there's also, do I have a sense of belonging and all these things that might actually lead to certain EDI issues, not just racism here, but a lot of issues around EDI. And there's also on the next slide, which around demographics in the UK and also geographical locations of applicants. And for example, if you compare the pool of human resources of a label, I mean, the staff of a label in London or even to East Midlands, obviously, there's more diversity in London, I would say. Another challenge, which remains not just about EDI, but this is, and not just to our sector, but everywhere is the unequal pay between the white staff and staff of other ethnicities. And obviously the last point, which brings around gender empowerment. So how are female staff treated? Are they promoted on a fair basis? And do we understand our diverse pool of students and staff? This is obviously quite a big issue to tackle. And I'm not going to go to the second thing that we've been looking, which is the staff development. Can I have the next slide, please Tracy? So the staff development, two things that we've been looking is mentoring. And we're also looking at coaching. However, actually the Committee of Practice has been in existence since last year, November. And thanks to Matt actually, Madeleine God, who's one of our chair to the conference and Monica. And through various, we've been having monthly meeting. And for all these meetings, we've actually been kind of, it's kind of been tinting to, there was a need for action learning set. There was a need for small groups and for open and honest conversation. And that's why we are focusing on coaching at the moment, rather than mentoring, which are both two things actually that we're considering in a staff development. And the main aim of the action learning set is basically we want to create a safe space to have conversation and to problem solve challenges, like to creating a culture of belonging within the digital education, of course. And of course, in the action learning set, we are not just looking at empowering being staff, having just being staff coming with challenges there. But we're also looking at supporting white colleagues who want to bring change and to do something and to act on this issue. And also to bring support within the community. We're hoping that we will be a special interest group with an all very soon. So this is one of our aim also within the activity of the action learning set. Can I have a, Tracy, can you please change the slide to the next one? Okay, for some reason I can't see your comment, but hopefully Tracy or Marin will tell me the comments. So on this slide, I haven't done any anonymous poll for a very good reason that I'll tell you very soon, but I would like to know people who are here with us today attending the session. If you could just respond by yes or no to the first question on the slide, which is, have you ever witnessed an unethical treatment to a colleague or yourself being unfairly treated? Just respond by yes or no, you don't need to give details. If you don't feel comfortable in this open forum, please don't put yourself into any difficult situation. And maybe Marin or somebody, if you could tell me, what are the responses to that? Okay, I will monitor the chat. So please do post any yes or no answers to the question, have you ever witnessed an unfair or unethical treatment to yourself or a colleague in the chat? So I'm going to respond verbally. I'm going to say yes. Okay. It's no pressure, by the way, I was said before in this session is if you don't feel comfortable about saying this in an open forum, no problem. So the reason why I've actually not made it anonymous is I wanted to actually pinpoint the fact that sometimes it can be difficult to say such things in an open forum. Because if you go to the next question, which is now, have you reported it to someone and was appropriate measure taken, this can be a bit trickier to talk about in an open forum. I don't know, Marin, if we've had any response to the first one. No, we haven't had any responses. Okay. And maybe to the second one, which is have you reported it to someone and was appropriate measure taken? So far also no responses. Okay, not a problem. And I was going to ask another question, which was to do with if you've answered yes in the chat, but I'm just going to skip this one. So I don't know actually, I can't see how many people are on this session, but I can tell you that from the ELS session that we've run and even within the community, it's very difficult for people to talk about it. And it's very difficult more, it's worse actually to even talk about it in a bigger group. And also we all know that today's session is being recorded, is live and there's a lots of people, there's probably our colleagues also watching and there's our names that's going to appear. So I can understand the anxieties that might come up around this. And this is why actually, can I have the next slide please Tracy? This is why actually we are doing the actual learning set. So because we've obviously had people saying, they are uncomfortable, a lot of people saying they're uncomfortable about raising issues, even within a community, which is dealing with anti-racism. And then we have now created smaller groups of people talking openly and honestly about challenges they are facing. So when we were preparing the actual learning sets, we've actually all the facilitators, including Tracy here with me and Monica who's absent, we've actually received a kind of a specialized sort of training. It's not to do with the how you facilitate an action learning training, but this one was very much geared towards also the topic of racism and also how to deal with the challenges that might come with it and also the problems that some people might talk about. Because some of the problem or as I've said, are very emotional and some people might have been bullied, harassed, victimized, or there are other sort of things that are going around it. And obviously we've had some training around how do we deal with when we have a lot of people coming with these issues, how do we help them cope with this because it's so emotional. And I've included on this slide here a short PDF which is useful to those people who would think of joining the Action Learning Set. It's just a kickoff material for people who think that they would want to participate in an Action Learning Set. Obviously if you are interested, if you do sign up, I've included the sign up links and everything later on in all those slides. But if you do sign up to join for the Action Learning Set, there are other measures that we include as well. And I've also added on this slide which is about peer-to-peer support. Obviously when we ask facilitators when we come across issues about bullying, racism, and all the issues that come with EDI challenges, we can also, we are also humans and we can also be affected by these issues. And we have peer-to-peer support. For example, if I do feel that I would like to talk crazy about something or to Monica or even to Matt, so people are available for us to discuss certain things about how to proceed on certain matters, especially because we know that our sector is quite small. Although there has been a pandemic and there has been a boom on online education, we're still a very small set of people. And we pretty much know each other, even though we've never met in person, but we know each other online, whether we are Twitter buddies or something like that, or even old conference buddies. So in the actual learning set, what we've designed the actual learning set to be is it's a two hour and a half actual learning set and there is one facilitator and there is also another facilitator who's at hand to provide support. And one of the things that I need to highlight is there's a lot of anticipation. This is as far as I'm aware and as far as we are aware is the first actual learning set in our sector and there's a lot of anticipation about this. There's, will it be successful? What will be the issues? We are such a small community. Do I have fears about future harassment if I move to another organization or something like that? So many of the members in the community have actually alluded to these concerns. Can I have the next slide please Tracy? Thank you. I've already actually already mentioned about the 2.5 hours online session and there's obviously follow up sessions and it's, it will be the same group all the time and it's very small. We've decided to have small groups because of the concerns obviously raised by members. Can I have the next slide please Tracy? So part spent to the actual learning sets obviously they will sign up to the commentary of practice and the commentary of practice which I've added a sway link earlier. We have values which members we decided I think last year itself or earlier this year we decided on a set of values which are as you can see on the slide here and we expect members of the action learning set to also abide by these values but there's also one other thing which is very important is we request these parts spent to sign up a confident, to sign a confidentiality agreement because we put ourselves at risk when we talk about things around bullying and harassment and this is not just in our sector but in all sectors whether it is academia or industry and what we don't want is somebody coming up and facing a challenge and opening up about it and then having to face retaliation afterwards. So there is a confidentiality agreement that we expect people to abide by even afterwards after ending the session, four or five sessions of action learning set. The arrow here just basically sums up what I've just been telling you about how the action learning set proceeds. Sorry, Tracy, could I have the next slide, please? Yeah, so yeah, the arrow as I said just sums up what I've just been saying in the previous slide and the next one as well Tracy, thank you. I put a bit of what we've learned so far I have been alluding to a lot of these things already is around, let's say we have a member who's concerned about opening up, honestly in a group because of fear of retaliation if ever there is a staff from their own institution in the community or if ever they have somebody in the action learning set and then they move university and then that stuff is there and then how will that person react? So a lot of these concerns have come up and obviously there is the issue around building trust. This is generic, this isn't every sector which is I need to trust somebody that before I open up about challenges which are very emotional to me. But personally I've found out that people the fact that for example all of our monthly meeting none of them are recorded and we specifically mentioned this at the beginning and we also now have started to specifically mention the values of the community before the meeting at the beginning of the meeting so that people can have trust that whatever they say in the meeting and also what they say to facilitators will not then come and bite them. One of the things that we've learned so far is obviously as I said earlier is we are hoping to become a special interest group very soon, we hope, within ALT. That's because it's a much needed activity, it's a much needed project for ALT as well. Personally it would have been great to have seen a top-down in shading on here but it is what it is at the moment and what we would hope to see is that we get recognized as an SIG and that we are able to continue our projects and all these are recognized officially under ALT so that we can actually have bigger impact in the sector. And one last, it's actually not the very last one but it's just one in a non-exhaustive list which is about lurk who's an active member. So since we've created the community since last year, November last year it was the official meeting. We've also noticed that there are some people who join meeting but don't participate in activities. And this is something we are trying to avoid and this is why we focus very much. I had on one of my slide about the research connected which I'm also part of the group and we'll be presenting just after this presentation because we want action and there's no point to just see racism and do nothing about it or say something about it to somebody else but without actually doing the proper action. We need the action to change things. And this is one of the things that we've been learning also so far as facility to sell ourselves. Can I have the next slide please Tracy? Thank you. So what's next for us is to continue on the action learning sessions, action learning set sessions and to continue to capture feedback and work on that so that because we want the action learning sets to be a safe space where not only that there's trust but also people can feel as much as possible confident to open up. Obviously there might be certain things that people might not open up about because that's really deep rooted issues. It's not about forcing people to open up also but it's about giving them the space and making them feel as much as possible confident and safe. And also to gather, so the next step would be obviously to gather information. As I've said earlier, one of the things that we're doing I know Maureen is very interested on that is about recruitment. It's about how do we have a fair recruitment process. Recrement process is basically not just an interview. It's a whole process from I need to, I have a task and I have no one to do it and I need one more person to do it. It's from this very thought that actually the process of recruitment starts. And recommend doesn't stop with how you're the person, the person has joined and has been paid their first month or second month salary, that's not just it. So we are hoping to be able to put some things together. We are always seeking more people to join us because it's quite a big topic. And as I've said, very emotional and very deep rooted and more hands, the better. Can I have the next slide please Tracy? Yeah, thank you Tracy. I'll put together a take away information which is a sign up to the community of practice and also some take away notes which is published in academia, don't eat you at the moment. And I think Maureen is just coming to tell me that I'm right out of time. We're just out of time and we had a few people joining in the chat in questions as well. And I wanted to just say thank you for everybody who's joined into the conversation and highlighted how hard it is to have this conversation. So Tiramani, Tracy, any final points and takeaways from you? Please come and join us. Well, thank you everybody and thank you to our presenters for a really important session and a really important conversation. We hope that you will join this group and sign up to the action group and find takeaway notes from today. So thank you for those of you who were brave enough to share comments in the chat. It's been fantastic. And please put your hands together and give two of our presenters a big round of applause. Thank you very much everybody for joining us here for this conversation today.