Blog Post 3 – Inclusive Personal Learning Networks

bashar

Equity and Inclusion

Inclusion is the act of allowing different groups of people in an environment. Inclusion as it relates to PLNs comes in the form of giving equal access to people, regardless of immutable characteristics such as sex and gender, race and ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, knowledge and expertise, and interests, among other things. PLNs can support inclusion by creating an equal access digital space. The space is available to all sorts of people, effectively regardless of personal identity.

One of the positive things about creating an inclusive PLN is that members (visitors and residents) of the online space will provide value to the space. Visitors can write suggestions (making comments) and bring attention to topics in the PLN. On the other hand, residents contribute knowledge and expertise to the PLN by answering questions, as well as creating diverse content (ex: blog posts) on the PLN.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Figure 1. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Steps towards inclusion

Some steps I can take to ensure a PLN reflects diversity in a learning environment is to provide a plethora of content about different topics. These topics can range from healthcare, history, programming, economical and other social issues, and cooking and other hobbies and interests. Additionally, for some topics like social issues, I can recruit guest speakers or an equivalent from different walks of life. For example, I can share content on the PLN that encompasses people with different intersectional identities (race, sex, economic status, etc.) to make the PLN more diverse.

Although inclusion in learning can have a positive impact on PLNs and other learning spaces. However, it can be difficult to implement effectively because PLNs are usually  specific in the scope of content within them. Take for example Reddit. Although reddit is a good example of a very diverse and large digital environment, a subreddit (which is a PLN) is specialised in one area, and that causes a large amount of content to be deemed irrelevant and unwelcome. Although Reddit solves this by having multiple subreddits, other PLNs used in classrooms and learning environments are more restricted. To help fix this, I think introducing an element of personalised learning in assignments can increase diversity of information.