Video Interventions for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

My work on the Harvard's How People Learn course is based on the understanding that some members of the How People Learn community will experience challenges to do with belonging that hinder their academic success. One area that I'm primarily interested in addressing is stereotype threat. Stereotype threat occurs in a situation where there is an expectation that one may be judged on the basis of social group membership and there is a negative stereotype about one’s social identity group (Steele, Spencer, & Aronson, 2002).

My work builds on a 2017 Stanford and MIT study which showed that brief interventions, or “nudges,” had a dramatically effect in closing the achievement gap caused by social identity threat, especially when timed to accompany key moments in a class. The intervention aims to build a greater sense of belonging in the course by having past learners discuss challenges and strategies alumni used to overcome them. By adapting this intervention for the How People Learn course, I hope to replicate the effect for our learners.

One of persistent messages of this design team has been the importance of making 'intentional design decisions' in order to avoid unintentional damage to the learners. This week's dive into the history of educational media and comparison of different media, identifying their affordances and weaknesses, was great opportunity for me to consider the way in which I would capture alumni voices for maximum impact. I also had the privilege of speaking with the Teaching and Learning Lab's media producer, Elias Polcheira, who was a great sounding board for this stage in the process.

My hope is to capture a diverse range of voices to represent the spectrum of learners participating in the course. At the beginning of the design process, I created some fictional learner profiles to attempt to understand the different types of learner I would design for. These profiles also serve the purpose of guiding my choices around alumni to select for the intervention. I've sent out a survey and hope to get enough responses so that I could find learners that fit roughly into these groups.

Learner Profiles

The Busy Mom

Glenda is a 45-year-old mother of two who has moved from New Hampshire for her master’s program. She has worked as a coordinator for student and employee accessibility services in a higher-ed setting and is hoping to make a career change. She is excited for the opportunity to participate in HPL and thinks the course will help to fill some knowledge gaps before she enters graduate school. She’s not sure about the expectations and if she will be able to keep up with the workload due to her other commitments (she’s still working and has two young children). She has explored some online courses before but never submitted assignments or engaged in community chat.

The Fledgling Educator

Antonio is a 32 year old from New York. He has been working in finance for the past seven years and is interested in learning more about workplace education and retraining for adults. He is a lifelong learner and has previously taken several courses on edX and earned credentials. Most of these courses have been technical e.g. machine learning, data visualization, python. He's excited about the course but feels some trepidation as he is new to the field of education and isn't sure he'll be able to do well in the assignments or make worthwhile contributions to discussions as he knows most other people in his cohort will have a lot more experience to draw on.

The Recent Undergraduate

Sarah is a 21 year old who is fresh from her four year undergraduate program at Yale where she came away with a Bachelor of Science. She would like become a science educator and is looking forward to getting some foundational knowledge about how people learn before she begins the year. She knows that most other learners at HGSE will be older and more experienced than her so she feels building relationships will be a big challenge. She's confident about her ability to achieve in the course but hasn't done any online learning before so doesn't know what the expectations will be around communicating with the teaching support and her cohort.

The International Student

Sarita is a 28 year old educator living in Bangalore, India. She has been working for a non-profit bringing coding and robotics programs to underserved communities. Her graduate studies at Harvard will be the first time traveling outside of Asia and she will be leaving her partner behind. She knows she doesn't really have the time for the course as she is extremely extremely busy finishing up at her job, packing, sorting arrangements for Boston etc. She feels, however, that she can't miss out on this great opportunity so will do her best to juggle. She's completed several online courses before, mostly computer science to help with her current role, but sees that this course will be quite different in terms of teaching support and expectations. One concern is getting support in time as she will be busy and the time zone is difficult for the video calls with her TF.

Why Video?

It will be important for learners to be able to connect with alumni by seeing them, especially if they feel that their social group might be underrepresented. This narrowed the media choice to image/text, image/sound, or video. The main reason I've made the choice to go with video is to develop a greater sense of empathy and connection for the learner by capturing alumni's full range of emotion, including gesture and facial expression.

Going forward with video, there will be some important considerations. Firstly, as the course is already rich with media and learning content, I'll need to consider cognitive overload and ensure that the videos clearly and concisely convey the message. The preproduction work will be key for this and will require suitable questions for the subjects. I'll also need to think stylistically about effective ways to convey personal reflections, such as close-up shots to capture expression and set up of the space.

Coaching the subjects to try and be as expressive and personal as possible will also be key. Research into videos for MOOCs show that shorter videos produced with a more personal feel could be more engaging than high-fidelity studio recordings. The same study shows that instructors who spoke fairly fast and with high enthusiasm were more engaging. With the prototype content I've shot so far, I've been intentional about capturing a range of different options to get feedback on and have also shot on a green screen to enable different background choices in postproduction.