Diversity

Diversity, as it concerns learning engineering and educational design, is the representation and active inclusion of multiple perspectives and backgrounds on a design project or within a learning experience. Diversity includes representation of multiple ideas and perspectives, representation of people from multiple racial, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds, representation of different socioeconomic backgrounds, and representation of different identities.

Definition

In the perspective of instructional design, diversity can be defined as both the representation and the active inclusion of multiple people with varied perspectives and backgrounds.

Diversity applies to design teams in that a design team should have a diverse membership to bring multiple perspectives to the project. Diversity also applies to educational products and experiences as the product should represent the various perspectives and people that the product serves. A commitment to diversity also helps to prevent the product from not working in the future due to incorrect assumptions made by the design team about the audience or its representation.

Additional Information

In terms of representation, both design teams and completed educational products should be well represented with relevant perspectives and people from multiple backgrounds. That is, people of varied opinions and backgrounds and the diverse ideas that they hold should appear in educational materials to reflect the diversity of the world in which we live.

When serving a specific audience, an educational product that embraces diversity should ideally represent that audience through the content by displaying members of that audience in course materials, media, scenarios, and projects.

Active inclusion is the act of proactively inviting and encouraging people from various backgrounds to participate in, provide feedback for, and help design the educational product, as well as actually using it. Diversity only benefits design, as the more eyeballs and brains see the project, the better the improvements that can be suggested. It is impossible for a design team to anticipate every challenge or area of friction that will occur with a design, and a more diverse design team will always do better at seeing more of the challenges in the initial planning stages of the design.

Common inclusivity and diversity design principles

Over time, common inclusivity and diversity design principles have emerged to ensure that designers provide excellent experiences for anybody who uses a product, regardless of their background:

• Think about the breadth of human perspectives when designing learning experiences:
  • Culture, race, history, language, location
  • (dis)ability, gender, sexuality, age, physical or mental health conditions
  • Education, prior knowledge, experience, history with formal education
  • Economic status, income, employment, access to technology
  • Religious beliefs, values, customs, philosophies, political beliefs
• Deliver informational content in multiple redundant ways to allow people flexibility in how they use media based on their comfort
• Consider accessibility in designs to promote anyone's successful use of the product regardless of background
• Actively solicit feedback and consultation from diverse stakeholders
• Represent members from various social groups and backgrounds to reflect inclusion for participants: Let them see themselves in the people portrayed in the educational materials
• Allow for flexibility and potential for errors - a designer cannot anticipate every challenge that will arise, especially when products are used in diverse communities

Tips and Tricks

• It is particularly important to consider the diversity of your project. Who is the audience for your project and how do they represent the range of diverse perspectives and backgrounds?
• Diversity is not just about race, culture, and identity - it also includes a very broad range of human differences that contribute to a person's identity and individual experiences (see a list of just some in the list above). However, it is also important to remember that if you adopt a commitment of equity, people from underserved and marginalized communities do need to be purposefully considered and included in designs to ensure that they receive adequate attention, support, and resources to succeed
• Consider how you will consult with people of varying perspectives and backgrounds to get feedback on your product and how you can improve its reflection of diversity in terms of representation and active inclusion for anyone to use it and be encouraged to learn from it?
• By having a commitment to diversity, you reduce your chances for making incorrect assumptions about your audience. How will you identify the assumptions that you are making about the audience, how might you reflect on these assumptions, and how might you get people of varying perspectives to give you feedback on your assumptions about the audience?

Related Concepts

• Accessibility
• Equity
• Audience considerations of design
• Project scope
• Prior knowledge and experience

Examples

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External Resources

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