 Okay, good morning and welcome back. What you see, when you see what is up there on the screen, some of you or many of you will wonder as to why this is important in communication and some of you will think of mentally wandering off into other worlds, checking your Facebook accounts, emails and other things. So I want to get back to what Professor Seti said yesterday in the beginning about our role as coaches. Now some coaches are very successful, some are not but it also depends on the team. So only if the coach and the team work together then you can win. But a fundamental requirement of team members is that at least in the beginning you trust your coach blindly. If after some days, weeks, months the coach doesn't deliver, you can get rid of the coach. But at least in the beginning you will have to believe in the coach. So I want to start by saying you will have to trust us as to why we think this is important in terms of enhancing communication skills. This is brought under the overall theme of ethics and Professor Sundar yesterday was mentioning about how ethics is to do with what to say, how to say it, what not to say, how not to say those kinds of things. But ethics applies to us, Professor Seti kept saying several times yesterday to human beings primarily. And since we are human beings, we are concerned with how to be ethical in communication so that that enhances the efficiency of our communication. And don't turn off when you communicate scientific messages. But beyond that, we are not only human beings, we are also professionals. We are academics, we have professionals in different fields. And there is a certain expectation about professionals, about how they behave and how they communicate, what they can say, what they cannot say. Politics for example is not a profession. So there are less restrictions on what they can say and how they can say it. We are not. We are teachers and again to go back to yesterday, teachers have certain duties. Teachers may not get paid as much as actors and models, but teachers have a certain status in society. And that status comes because of the which we behave and communicate and the expectations that society has and how we fulfill our duties. Therefore, it is imperative that we pay attention to issues of culture and language and communication. So Professor Sundar in the beginning mentioned something very important. And it was followed up by the lectures on scientific method. He mentioned that scientific communication is culture and language independent and nobody can argue with that. But claim to be human beings, society does not treat everybody as human beings. There are differences between men and women, older and younger people based on disabilities, language, religion, all kinds of inequalities exist. So in our communication, we have to ensure that those biases, prejudices, inequalities do not consciously or unconsciously come into our communication. And though we may think that generally we are not consciously biased, prejudiced or bring those existing inequalities into our communication. Unconsciously, because of the way in which society is structured and communication about science has evolved, those things do creep in. And therefore, it becomes very important for us to pay attention to these issues. Most professional associations, academic bodies, journals, they all have guidelines now about how to incorporate these things. IEEE for example, has guidelines on these kinds of issues. And of course, in the workplace as well, as the world is becoming more globalized, as we strive for equality, more and more women are in the workplace, people from different backgrounds are in the workplace. So it's very important that we communicate in a way which is sensitive to differences that exist in society and not reproduce inequalities and discriminations. So with that brief introduction, let me get into this. How many of you have heard of this term STEM? S-T-E-M STEM, not the biological STEM that we talked about, STEM. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. These are the core science and engineering technology, disciplines that are very important in modern worlds. Why is it relevant that we put these together in this particular way and address communication needs? It's important because in modern societies we know that science, technology, engineering, mathematics play a very important role in designing solutions to various problems in very many different ways in different spheres of life. It's almost impossible to imagine life without these. But especially in countries like India, we want that the benefits of the knowledge from these disciplines percolate down to everybody, not just a select few. Therefore, the way in which we teach science, technology, engineering, mathematics are very important because we are always very proudly claiming that India has the third largest scientific human resources in the world. What is the benefit of that to the country in terms of how we solve our problems? Whether it's sanitation or food or health or anything else, we can send a mission to the Mars but we cannot prevent diseases which have been prevented in many countries in the world. So there are many basic problems which still persist. And that is being connected to the issues of gender and diversity. That is differences that exist in society which are converted by society into inequalities. So STEM is a concept that evolved primarily first in western countries and then spread around the world about an integrated approach to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. What kind of teaching, learning, communication should occur with respect to these disciplines and how that can help us to solve our various problems better. So what is being said here is that for long, science, technology, engineering and mathematics preserve of a select few. That is no longer true as it is reflected in and in the fact that you are all teaching in hundreds and thousands of colleges around the country. So we want to open up science, technology and engineering and mathematics beyond the preserve of a select few to everybody. While we are doing this there is also considerable discussion not only in India but even in countries like US that there is some kind of crisis that people being more and more attracted to professions where they pay very high salaries whether it is media or finance or marketing, management, the entertainment industry and so on. So on the one hand there are people who do not have access to education even though they may have the skills and the talent and so on in science, technology, engineering, mathematics. On the other hand we have a shortage of skill professionals in these fields. So the need to bring in gender and diversity issues comes from this kind of a contradiction where we want more people to get involved in education and research relating to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Now this time is not just an acronym for these disciplines. There is a different kind of perspective in looking at these four set of subjects. So we are not just saying these are four different types of disciplines. We are saying that these four must be taught in an integrated and coordinated way to get the benefit. So some of you may be familiar with the number of international schools that are coming up in India now and they offer something called coordinated science where in fact biology, physics, chemistry, mathematics are taught in an integrated way not separately, not in silos as Professor Sathak keeps saying all the time. So the benefits of science, technology, engineering, mathematics we can get only if we look at them in a more integrated way, not separate them into narrow fields. Also we look at them in a transdisciplinary manner. That is there are certain methods we use in mathematics, there are certain techniques we use in science subjects, physics, chemistry and so on and engineering which are for narrow applications in those areas. Transdisciplinary means that in looking at all of these in a holistic manner we develop new methods, new approaches, new perspectives in solving problems. So we know for example that if you want to address the problem of disease it is related to climate change now, it is related to hygiene and sanitation it is related to the physiology of the body. There are so many different, it is related to sociology and economics and so many things have to be looked at together to address the problem. That is what we are trying to say. Now how do you define each of these science, technology, engineering and management and I think that is something very fundamental because most of us do not even talk about it. So in India technology and engineering are used as substitutes. So some colleges offer BTEG, some offer BE as though they are both the same, they are not the same. So science to put it very simply is the study of nature, study of natural processes of what happens in nature to gain a better understanding of what is happening in nature. Technology is the modifications that we perform upon nature to fulfill human beings. How do we modify nature using various kinds of tools and techniques to get benefits for human beings? Engineering is a subset of technology because when we talk of engineering we are talking of designing under constraints. So the constraint could be cost, we want to develop something cheaper. The constraint could be that we do not want to pollute something when we produce a product, good. The constraint could be that it has to be useful for different kinds of people. So something simple like this caller mic for it. Many Indian women are not able to use it because they wear saris. How can you design a microphone which women wearing different kinds of clothes can also wear? So nobody ever thought about it because mostly it was men who were designing these products. So it is designing under constraints to fulfill specific objectives. It could be if you are trying to improve productivity of a crop, rice or wheat, we have to take into consideration the soil physics, the agronomy, the weather, the temperature, evapotranspiration, all kinds of things. So engineering is to design something under certain kind of constraints. It is much more specific. And mathematics is the science of numbers where we look at trends and patterns of numbers and the logical relationship between numbers. So what STEM tries to do is to bring science and mathematics and see how those two interact and relate to technology and engineering in designing solutions for human beings. So we need to relate this idea of STEM to what we do in the classrooms, how we research, how we teach, how we communicate, what kind of methods we use. And here is where the importance of gender and gender comes in. So basically we are saying that every human being has equal worth. It does not matter who you are, what your background is, whether your age, ethnicity, religion, language, every human being has equal worth. Also that every human being is capable of learning. How do we as teachers then ensure that learning happens in the classroom and some people do not drop out? So one of the key issues with STEM is that we find in many parts of the world there is a large number of dropout of certain sections of the population. Across India you will see when the 10th class results come out, girls outperform boys. But where are the girls in the classroom in higher education? They are less in number. Where are they in IITs? They are less than 10%. Where are they in engineering professions? In science, they are less. The same thing applies to people from different backgrounds. So how come children who perform very well in schools tend to drop out at high schools? What are the constraints? So there are constraints in society. There are constraints from parents. Parents do not want to send girls for higher education. Those are not things which we can do much about. But what we have under control is what happens in the classroom. So can we make a difference as teachers in our communication so that we address crisis in so that there is more equality? The assumption is that the more diversity there is in science and engineering professions, that is people from different backgrounds, if they are involved in research and teaching and communication, the more ideas will come out and the more solutions will come out. So this has actually been shown through a lot of research by Nobel Prize winners like Gary Baker who has shown that the more diversity there is in a community, the more profitable it is, the more innovative it is because people from different backgrounds bring together different ideas. Now I have been using this term gender and diversity and before even to communication issues, let us try and understand what it means. So as I was saying earlier, it starts out with this idea that all human beings are of equal worth. But society does not necessarily behave according to that, accept that. So there are problems in terms of how we treat each other according to our backgrounds. So we say that there are inequalities in society but we do not want to bring them into our communication and education. So as institutions, as colleges, as educational institutions, as professional bodies, academic associations, how do we ensure that we give equal attention to the interests of men and women and to people of different groups? So a very simple way of doing it is to understand the difference between gender neutrality and gender awareness. So gender neutrality means that when I am referring to a group of people who consist of men and women, I do not refer to them, all of them in terms of the masculine noun or pronoun. So I am referring to an average person sitting here. I do not say he or his. I do not say all the men in this room because I know there are women also. But gender awareness means that I know that there are differences between men and women and that has to be incorporated into my communication, into research, into the way in which you problematize, where you formulate a problem and design solutions and so on. I will give you some examples later. So we know that society itself is not equal. That society can be sexist. There is discrimination towards particular kinds of people or society is not welcoming of diversity. They are intolerant of people who are different from us. Does that affect how knowledge is generated and used? So there are lot of studies which show yes, that happens. But what can we do as teachers to ensure that the effects of society's biases is minimized? So we can incorporate greater sensitivity into our own communication, which is what we are going to do. So in general, that communication is effective if the audience is more responsive. If the audience rejects what you have to say or is bored or is not interested, then communication is not very effective. So gender and dialogue issues are important because a lot of people just show that if we do not include everybody in our communication, whether it is written or oral, some people get put off. Even though your article or book may be excellent, they take it because of the language in which it is written, which is not sensitive enough. And of course as I was saying in the beginning, most professional association journals and workplaces, whether it is Infosys or Accenture, all of them have these policies regarding gender and diversity, how to communicate in the workplace. So it's you and your students and your colleagues will have better opportunities if we incorporate them. So our own placement office as well as studies at ASCOM, which is the National Board of Education, these have shown that some of these issues, problems in communication are reasons some people don't get selected jobs, even though their CVs may be excellent. They are very good in their subjects, but communication wise, they suffer. One of the ways in which you can understand these things because talking about gender and diversity in this general way is something that may not resonate with all of us, those of us who have not faced troubled situations, either in the classroom or in groups, those who have not faced discrimination. So this is the kind of exercise that you can do. So you can say that if you are conducting this workshop with your college teachers or with students, do this exercise. It's called I want you to know where you divide yourselves or groups into groups of 3 or 4 based on language or region you come from within India, gender and so on. You will be surprised the issues actually emerge. So we have done the exercise in IIT and a lot of interesting responses come. For example, we get a lot of parents who are fairly senior. One of their common complaint is that they are not respected enough by teachers. But also the age experience is not considered while designing exams for example. So when you are asking a 22 year old to give an exam and you are asking a 45 year old to give an exam, you have to test different kinds of skills, not just simply memorizing. Also most of the people tell us it's very difficult for us to sit for 3 hours and write an exam. Why can't you test us in a different way? So that's a very simple issue where older and younger students have different needs but we simply treat all of them put off some people and maybe even prevent them from learning or enjoying the learning experience which they have come here for. Or women's experience for example. What kind of bio experience in the classroom? Usually what happens is when there are fewer in the classroom, if they respond to a question boys tend to clap, boys tend to visit. In a period of time what happens is girls or women they stop asking questions, they stop answering because they don't want to be jeered at. That reduces their ability to learn in the classroom if you can learn. So like that you will observe a lot of issues which affect learning in the classroom emerge when you do this kind of an exercise. You can do this kind of an exercise and ask yourself these kinds of questions. What is it that you learned? You did not know before because many people are surprised people boys themselves say no we never behaved in this way but you could observe that they actually behaved in this way which prevented learning from happening from students, girls students from asking certain kinds of questions to clarify doubts. These are some resources in academics which tell us more which give us guidelines about how to deal with these kinds of issues and you don't have to write them down we will give them to you but right now what I wish to do is to do some exercises here in the classroom about sensitizing ourselves to gender and diversity before we go more in depth into communication issues. Identify statements which are true or false let us do these exercises and then we will get down to games that we will do here. STEM stands for Science, Technocracy, Education Most Number two, true, yeah Number three, will enhance the benefits of STEM to society True should not influence the way which we teach it is more complicated It's true, no? It's true, it should not, that's what we are saying STEM approaches integrative and transdisciplinary Yes, true So we are starting out with this idea that all written and spoken communication should be culturally sensitive, unbiased, simple concise, concrete and vivid This is a general kind of advice that we have All communication should be like this That makes it more effective and when we are specifically talking about sensitivity to gender and diversity issues we are saying we ought to consciously considerate of other people's beliefs, norms and so on So usually those of us who are good people we don't hurt and insult others If somebody wants to deliberately hurt you not much you can do about it Here we are focusing on what we do unconsciously That is because of the way in which language has evolved certain kinds of usage has crept have crept into language and especially it's a problem with English You take something like Sanskrit or for example they have gender for everything There is a gender male, masculine gender feminine gender, neutral gender for everything Hindi of course everything, you know bus has a gender, this has a gender everything will have it and we all get mixed up about We don't know which is what But English is not like that and because most of the communication in professional academia plays in English we have to know how to use language sensitively and because for a very long time in the history of human beings it is men who have been dominant who have written text books who have done research, who have reported languages evolved as per their wishes, whims and fancies we need to modify that and that is because scientific communication should not reflect biases as I have repeated several times So what is bias or insensitive language? It is the use of words or terms that relies on unfounded assumptions. So going back to what we covered yesterday about scientific method even before we go to bias or insensitivity this is not scientific if I use a sentence like all men in this room please stop writing it is not only biased it is unscientific it is wrong So we are talking about the fact that we cannot make any statement that does not have evidence that does not have proof that does not have a basis in science So existing biases in society whether it is gender bias or bias in terms of caste and race and so on is based on unfounded assumptions they are unscientific we cannot bring that into our communication So simple example is here exclusive use of masculine pronouns like he or him when talking about both men and women that is biased, insensitive it is also unfounded regardless language that is sexist. So we say that gender and diversity issues are important in scientific communication not because they are politically correct not because they are unbiased and prejudiced and so on but because it is the right way to communicate science All technical writing has to be crystal clear they cannot be vague they cannot be ambiguous So if you use one kind of noun or pronoun masculine noun and he to refer to all human beings both men and women it is vague and we will see using examples from the past about scientific work where this kind of vagueness can have very serious consequences for the use of our knowledge So also as professor Sundar mentioned yesterday this is supposed to be culture and language independent If you needlessly call attention to gender, ethnicity, religion in your communication then it will take the focus of the scientific aspect of your communication If you are talking about doing a research on doctors doctors methods of diagnosis and you refer to lady doctors without talking about male doctors it needlessly calls attention to the gender of a woman which is not the focus of your study I will give you one example So this is from a class 5 science textbook when my daughter was in class 5 she is now grown up in this it says it is about environmental studies what we call EVS man tries many things does many things stop soil from eroding he tries to conserve or protect the soil man cannot do much about stopping an earthquake and so on so after reading this she asked me do only men do all of this or women also do all of this so this lesson is about environment but her attention was diverted to the gender issue what we that is what we are trying to say here it is vague it is ambiguous it is not clear about what the message is that the author is trying to give you we do not want that when I am writing I want people to understand and not go off into some bilanes and think about other things on the other hand so this is Azim Premji who as you know is one of the biggest philanthropists in India the CEO of PIPRO he gives millions and billions of dollars for rural education in India he is especially interested in supporting women's education for girls and you can see in this article which he has written in the first part he is referring to the child which can be both male and female as her because he wants to draw attention to the fact that many of us actually make these kinds of mistakes and those mistakes come because of the kind of biases that exist in society wherein most parents in India give preference to boys for education when it comes to girls because of this inequality exists he wants to draw our attention to that because if Azim Premji had used his most of us would not have noticed if he had because he has used her we immediately spot it why is he saying this in the next sentence he is using what is called as a pronoun plural himself herself which is the correct way of referring to children because there are both boys and girls or in this example where this of course do not assume after reading this sentence that everybody who plagiarizes is a woman is just to draw attention sometimes some authors deliberately use the feminine noun or pronoun to draw our attention to the fact that most people do otherwise or you can see even in the case of technical guides and manuals this kind of pronoun pairs his or her is used to make it gender neutral or gender fair instead of referring to only likewise in India we have the NCRT which has given these guidelines for making text books as well as CDs and other electronic material where they want you to ensure content is free of these kind of stereotypes for example in the use of names of in problems in mathematics or in science the names of through which you explain various kinds of concepts or you have a problem Ram does this Rahim does this usually it is boys and there are very few Gita's and Fatima's and all that mostly your boys names are over represented there or even in terms of how you explain so there was a Hindi text book I looked at sometime back where a lesson about the post office is explained through a boy who goes to the post office a lesson on flowers is explained through a girl who spends some time in the garden so girls they have to be in the garden there are useful things like going to the post office only boys can do that so it sends out certain kinds of messages which enhances feelings of stereotypes and biases in society that is what we want to avoid so that nobody is over represented or under represented likewise as I mentioned earlier IEEE all the society of mechanical engineers and I can give you hundreds of more examples all of them have these guidelines in place now for professional communication to have these kinds of biases and to ensure that sensitivity is taken care of in your communication as scientists we want to do these three use language to build credibility for our work and for what we have to say in the class could be as Professor Sundar mentioned about reproduction we pass on knowledge in the classroom for reproduction but also so that students can use that knowledge to build upon it and discover new things so that the usage should be used to the examples that I gave earlier about the science textbook it means that if a person is not language that person does not care whether I understand what is being said or not does not care about so it does same thing can happen in the class using sensitive language students stop listening to me so we demonstrate that we have to say by using sensitive language so these are the kinds of scientific things that Professor Sundar mentioned in the beginning yesterday as well so on whom you are speaking to whether it is a political leader a minister bureaucrat your own colleagues discipline a lay person writing a newspaper article so you will communicate differently to all of them so we are saying that there will be communication failure or resistance if you do not consider the audience's background in terms of the fact that they are very varied in terms of ethnicity and religion and caste and region language gender and all this we can do that is our communication can be made more effective if we appeal to what is common and ignore what is different about this we are all human beings first only then all the other differences come so how to address those commonalities in the workplace in dealing with clients or in funding agencies, government officials all kinds of communication this becomes very important we want to ensure that everybody understands everybody learns we do not want anybody to lose out so it is possible different kinds of schools different kinds of skills, talents, abilities not all of us have equal talents in everything but our job in the classroom is to ensure that everybody understands and learns and that you cannot do if you treat everybody as equals so what we are saying is try to understand how we can include everybody in our communication student in one of my classes who was very bad at writing half the answers he would not write he would leave it blank he would write very small answers one paragraph if I am asking him to write three pages but he was a mathematical skill so I spoke to one of my psychology colleagues he says it is one kind of other abilities so in the classroom even though he had not done mathematics after 10th standard he used to be excellent in addressing the students struggle whereas he came to writing he could not do it so how do I recognize the different abilities of students and ensure that each of them does well in terms of learning by designing different kinds of examinations assessments and so on that is what we are trying to do here that you can do only if you first recognize that everybody is capable of learning everybody has equal work nobody is bad nobody is less just because they are women or because they are something else so let us do some exercises here to understand what is meant by stereotypes so if you have stereotypes we will think everybody is equal it is their responsibility to learn there is nothing wrong with me or my style of teaching my style of communication it is a problem with them but we do not understand unconsciously our own stereotypes of others so there are two people here can you guess the occupation of these two persons person on the left and person on the right lady lady is sports and the other is a professor anyone else so appearances are based on certain assumptions that we have they may be biases they may not be they are based on certain assumptions that we have based on our past experience but as I said earlier in scientific communication there is no space for assumptions you can assume but you have to test out the hypothesis so most of us would assume this person on the left because of the kind of dress she is wearing and the way she is having her hair is sports person person on the right because like me has a beard wears glasses has white hair wearing a lab coat has to be a scientist it is possible this person is an actor who is playing the role of a professor or a doctor it is possible this person is actually a scientist and at this point of time is wearing a sports dress this person is a very famous GIS scientist and this person is actually a professor but this person is also a scientist with ESRI is one of the most you all know of ESRI ESRI makes this software called ArcView and ArcInfo GIS software so we need to avoid stereotypes in our communication so there have been hundreds of tests called this draw a scientist test it has been performed in schools and colleges around the world where it is shown that if you ask people to draw a scientist they will usually draw somebody like this rarely women mostly men having a beard mostly wearing glasses so we can see here itself except for me probably nobody else has a beard still you are all scientists it is very important to avoid such stereotypes let us do another test so you have black and white what are you black and white black and white are colors so black is actually dark blue here and white is pink which of these gives you a positive connotation this too much how many of you think black gives you a positive connotation one person two people I will come back to you how many of you think white what about the rest of you sleeping somewhere between grey so the two people who said black has a positive connotation can you tell us why it is very bright black is bright it is attractive black is bright and attractive I thought black denotes darkness if I remember that song the color is black so supposed to reflect darkness night background is white white color is moon if you remember that song black is looking like black about those of you who said white gives you positive connotations why do you think so most of you say peace purity what else color dominates the world in what way right now if you go outside it is all grey in monsoon for four months we do not see white gives a cool feeling let us do one more so this one is an earthworm this is a parrot parrot so which of these do you feel is more repugnant the moment you say you said you say yuck earthworm earthworm not a parrot which gives you positive feeling compared to the other parrot what if you are an agriculturalist or a farmer first one is not it because a parrot is a pest which is going to destroy all your crops so in stereotypes we also need perspective so in science avoid assumptions which do not have a basis but also have a perspective so you can see here both black and white can be positive both of them are smiling is it very pleasant to see both of them does not matter what the skin color is or parrot can actually be a pest depending on how you look at it whereas if you look at it purely from an aesthetic perspective it looks more pleasant but it that aesthetic is affected by the fact that we are not as most of us aesthetic comes from somewhere from what we have learned can you answer these scientific communication should be inclusive rather than exclusive somebody mentioned that that is good forms of communication should not be stereotyped or offensive use of gender neutral language is more than just more than critical correctness it is not for that reason that we are doing it because we want to be scientific in our communication that is what by using appropriate accurate language what do we demonstrate trustworthiness trust in our communication finally good academic or technical communication it communicates without ambiguity which one is false first one always stand and speak by considering other perspectives true insensitive speech is not limited to a specific group of words this I did not mention there but from what it is true all written spoken communication should be true d false so these are the kind of you can yourself device will give you plenty of material on these topics there has been huge ups just in this so you can but most of it origin so you can yourself design methods to teach this and then design for your students this is the kind of assignment that you can do and I am not asking you to do it now not too many assignments in one day so you can select an article from a news journal write a short essay to what extent is the audience's cultural background and gender issue addressed properly in this is there use of gender aware language the content whether it is free of stereotypes so especially you can look at reporting of crimes against women reporting against crimes of specific communities reporting political statements by politicians to what extent are these things incorporated or not so that is the kind of assignment you can give you can also take articles academic articles those which have actual usage in society not just theoretical ones but about technologies which have an application adoption of these technologies impact assessment of these technologies and see to what extent these issues are incorporated in that particular essay so that is the kind of assignment that you can do or you can ask your students to do another assignment you can think of is this one this is a manual one for you to self-reflect and also for your colleagues in the during the MOOCs course about how do you describe the need for communication that is sensitive to these issues so I have certain but everybody will have a particular context so in your own college for example in an institution where male and female students and teachers are roughly equal the issues will be different from a situation where the majority are men so how do you describe the need for communication that is sensitive to these kinds of issues it also depends on the background so you know I had a discussion with a teacher in Bombay because of its location and because it is a publicly funded institution most of the students who come there come from poor backgrounds so he was talking about what kind of communications required in those kinds of situations so depending on your context you can think of how to be sensitive and what you can also do is to form groups of 4 and 5 have pure evaluation of those so do they agree with what you have to say do they think of missed out on some points and you can prepare an inventory of communication which is sensitive or insensitive pass it around to your colleagues and see how you can improve your own communication in the classroom or in written communication