Transcript of MP3 Audio File Presentation by Lawrie Phipps, JISC


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Two issues I want to look at - I want to look at inclusion and I want to talk about inclusion and PLEs.

Can I just ask everybody just for 30 seconds to write down... I want you to focus on the word "inclusion", OK, and write a couple of words down about what that means to you in your practice. It doesn't have to be long sentences, just focus on and write a couple of things down. You know, think about accessibility, inclusion, what does it mean? A few words. OK, so who are we talking about when we think about inclusion? And when we think about inclusion and not necessarily a student, but beyond the student life, perhaps going into research. Generally, this group of people are people that are paid less than their contempories in their role. They dress differently (you probably picture somebody). They look different to the norm that we work with, possibly. Talking differently. They've actually got separate toilets, possibly. They've got special legislation, which prevents them being discriminated against. What sort of words have you got written down?

Delegate 1: I’ve written down "disadvantaged" and "not middle-class".

Lawrie: That's good.

Delegate 2: My way.

Lawrie: Your way.

Delegate 3: Gender.

Lawrie: How many of the words that you thought of, or wrote down, actually applied to women? Because that's what I was talking about, when I was talking about what I've written down here. OK, paid less than their male contempories usually. OK, looking around, are there any women in the room that feel that? Not paid as much as their male contempories, normally, in their normal workplace. Their bosses are here as well! OK, separate toilets. We look different - and I'm saying "look different", because actually when we look around this room, the people that are doing the developing on behalf of inclusion issues, we're all over 30, possibly. We tend to be male. When we look at developers, we all tend to be male. We're mostly white, probably middle class. Is that a fair assessment? I know it's not a complete stereotype, but generally that's who we are, and we’re trying to surface and talk about the inclusion issues.

So, there is actually a little bit of problem to start with in terms of how we understand users. That's the first thing I wanted to sort of... us to think about in the inclusion agenda. I didn't want to mention any of the work that I'd done previously in my previous role talking about that particular group of people, because I think that it's time that as a group... and certainly in the work that I’ve done with Sharon in the past... we haven't addressed very well: gender, ethnicity, religion, and other social groups. We haven't even scratched the surface as a technology group on widening participation in terms of social class and bringing people into institutions. We've sort of given a bit of lip service to it (and I'm guilty of that as well) and I don't know how we can do it or where we take it. And I don't know if there’s a specification we can write for it or a learning design that applies to certain social classes. I don't know. And I think that those are the issues and the challenges that (as we're at the CETIS Conference) that the CETIS SIG has probably got to face and take forward. Before we can do that, we've got to start thinking about the ethics of addressing those issues. You know, is it right that as a group... is it right for me to talk about widening participation?

Our perspective of designing the test to actually try and make something more inclusive is of the perspective of the environment in which I work in. Now I don't have a solution and, thankfully, I’m not involved in this part of the sector anymore! I'm just going to slip away quietly and leave it to other people, John! So there are other people who are waving the banner (and he's going to say "I'm retiring next year"!). But there are issues that we do need... and I think the area to actually address them in the technology terms... the only real place to start is with a community group and possibly with the SIG. Now I don't know if that’s going against what Oleg's got as a vision for CETIS or whether or not it's something... I mean I personally think it could be a political nightmare - but that's one thing. The other thing I'm going to just quickly talk about is... because the other thing I've been doing... I'm actually involved in social software side of things now and Web 2.0 and things like that. And the keynote this morning, and a few people this afternoon, talked about things like for example Second Life. Second Life is an avatar based immersive environment... for those people who are involved... synthetic world... it's a great idea. So I've been in there. And actually, what do I look like in Second Life? I'm taller than this! I'm taller than... I had a meeting with Paul Hollins in there the other day and I'm taller than Paul Hollins! And actually, for some reason, I've lost a few pounds! So my representation of me in Second Life is a little bit different to my representation of me in real life.

But I work with a lot of people. I have a lot of friends who are... I'm not going to use the "disabled" word, but I've got to now. A lot of my friends are disabled and when you see them, they look disabled. They're a wheelchair user, for example, and they... One of my friends, you know, has got no arms and we go out on the beer quite regularly - but we're friends. Now, he actually represents himself as that person and yet we're designing systems that... so he, for example, has signed up for the Second Life and he wanted to build an avatar that isn't that much different from who he is outside, because actually he feels that it's part of his identity - and you can't do it. You can't actually build yourself as a, you know, a physical representation. So with all of the social software things, they're sort of geared to make us appear as sort of a standard person as well. You can just about do skin tones, but if you’ve got a religious identity for example, in some of the social software tools it's very difficult to represent that. You can't do wheelchairs. Habbo Hotel does wheelchairs, but they don't do them in Second Life, so there's an issue there. And I wanted to... I just wanted to alert people to that in terms of social software.

But I think that one of the things social software does give us with inclusion is the idea that I don't like learning designs. I think learning designs for me, as a disabled person (and I am a disabled person technically - if I went to university I would be a disabled person)... and I don't like the designs that you give me. What my personal learning... no... what my personal environment gives me is the ability to take all of your syndicated content and dress it up in ways which really suit me. I don't like going through all that stuff. I'm not that keen on working with certain groups of people, but I quite like the idea that I can pull little bits into my environment and use them. And I'm finding that there are more and more tools that allow me to do that, as somebody who has got different needs to the standard learner. So that's possibly what the Web 2.0 tools give me in terms of inclusion. What they take away is some of my identity representation. That's all I'm going to say.