What goes into making an online course inclusive?
As a LinkedIn Learning Senior Staff Instructor for Business, I create courses for LinkedIn Learning's increasingly large library of online training.
There's a lot of background process that goes into each course we make. Who is the target audience? How long should it be? How can we make it shorter, while still including new features? What do the members need to know to be able to do their jobs, and get their dream job? How can we make sure everyone watching this course feels like we're teaching to them?
That's a biggie. DIBs, or Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging are at the heart of LinkedIn, and it's just one of the many reasons I'm so proud to work there. Not only does LinkedIn want to make sure its global group of employees feel like they belong, but we at LinkedIn Learning want to make sure that everyone who watches our courses feels included. Not only that, but we want to make sure we aren't including any biases that makes any particular group or person advantaged or disadvantaged over another.
To accomplish this, we have a wonderful DIBs council of employees that puts together and maintains an ever-changing set of guidelines for us to use, and on that team is our asset department, who works tirelessly to make sure we have content and media that is inclusive.
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Course creation and recording involves photos and other imagery. Are the stock photos diverse? Do they show different socioeconomic, ability, cultural and lifestyle backgrounds? Are the people depicted different ages? Is the app we're teaching itself created for readability? Does it have a color palette that is inclusive for all? When using names and locations, are they of varying ethnicities and countries?
And finally, the most important question of all, can we be working to do better? The only answer is yes, always yes. My weak spot I need to improve on is learning how to pronounce names, particularly surnames. I'm thrilled that LinkedIn has a feature where you can record how your name is pronounced, and I should take some time to listen to those that are using the feature. My second weak spot is relying too heavily on US-based addresses and currency for teaching Excel, and fortunately that's one that can be very easily remedied.
Have you noticed how hard we've been working on inclusivity in our course design? Do you feel noticed, represented and included when you watch our courses? How do you think we can do better? What would you like to see? Comment here and share your thoughts. Nothing is more useful to us for course creation than the voice and representation of the people that watch them.