Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Inclusive e-Learning
58 Plays2 years ago
Leaving no one behind in e-learning goes beyond captions and looks at curating content that is not only accessible but relatable and human connected.
Featuring Mehdi Tounsi, Senior Regional Director of Europe, Middle East and Africa for Open Sesame.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Presentation
00:00:00
Speaker
Firsthand human connection is an impactful way to create genuine behavior change. When someone you spend time with acts in a way you admire, you may adopt that learned behavior because you want to. But what happens when you feel disconnected from other humans, either physically or culturally, and yet you're still expected to learn new skills?
00:00:26
Speaker
are we as humans still able to learn, and more specifically, eLearn, without that human connection?
00:00:33
Speaker
I am Lauren Anders Brown, your host for this episode, and I'm going to be learning the answer to this question and more with our guest, Mehdi Tunzi. This is a podcast for trainers, educators, learning and development professionals, coaches, and mentors, the education technology community, and anyone who wants to leverage new ways to reach lifelong learners, and a look at what others in the e-learning industry are doing to make that happen.
00:01:02
Speaker
Today, we're speaking with Mehdi Tunzi. And I might be a bit of a learning geek to my own admission. Mehdi is the senior regional director of Open Sesame for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. More than a regional director, Mehdi approaches his work a little differently. My name is Mehdi. As you mentioned, I manage the email operations at Open Sesame, but I guess for the sake of this podcast, I've been in the learning space, learning world for
00:01:33
Speaker
Over 20 years now, I've been very fortunate to be able to work on different continents. I've also been very fortunate to live in very diverse backgrounds. My background is North African, but I was born and raised in France and lived in the US, lived in Australia, lived in Africa, lived in the UK where I'm currently based.
Challenges in E-Learning Inclusivity
00:01:58
Speaker
So what's your approach when it comes to e-learning and inclusivity?
00:02:02
Speaker
It is very interesting because learning, e-learning, full start, I feel already there's almost an obstacle to that. I feel for many years, people are almost taught to unlearn and instead are being force fed learning. So when you get to the corporate world and then you move to like e-learning, I think that the first very obstacle to
00:02:27
Speaker
inclusion in terms of learning is making learning fun, making learning and engaging. That's probably the very first step because borrowing learning or electronic page turning is certainly not going to encourage any form of learning. And then to your point, you need to make sure that whatever learning you're providing people
00:02:50
Speaker
fits their own context, their own environment, their own appreciation, their own biases in regards to the topic they'll be learning about. So it's quite a wide topic. So to narrow it down a little bit, just from your own personal experience, how has your journey impacted your approach to inclusion with e-learning?
Cultural Biases in Learning Content
00:03:15
Speaker
It's funny, but almost anecdotal, but I attended an event recently and there was a speaker, someone who works for Netflix and has produced shows for other networks and fascinating thing. He was sharing that and 90% of the content produced worldwide is US centric.
00:03:40
Speaker
So there's a very strong biases. Yeah. I do know that as a filmmaker, that is very true. Okay. And so I was in all fairness, I did not know. And I was shocked because I realized that to a certain extent, that means there's quite a lens on the content is being pushed out there because it's content that start with is being designed or created with, you know, a certain set of beliefs or approaches in mind that
00:04:09
Speaker
does not naturally fit 90% of the world because there isn't a one size fits all. And just then often do the parallel with food because I don't know that I'm a foodie, but I certainly love food. So in the same way that I can't assume, I love my cheeses. And I remember a few years ago, I was chatting with one of my colleagues from China and we were having that conversation around food. And for him, he was actually fascinated that
00:04:36
Speaker
I loved blue cheese. And I remember he used an expression I had never thought about. He said, Mitty, how do you enjoy rotten milk? And I said, well, that's a very interesting perspective, because I never thought of my blue cheese as being rotten milk. But I suppose you could certainly see it that way. And then
00:04:59
Speaker
I think at that point, I started thinking, hold on. It is true that often when looking at learning and especially e-learning, the majority of the big producers of e-learning tend to be US or UK centered.
Diversity Perspectives Across Regions
00:05:13
Speaker
And therefore, a lot of the content they create, even though we've talked about, oh, yeah, that content has been created for global audience or that content is available in this and that language, that doesn't actually mean or imply that that content will fit
00:05:28
Speaker
a specific audience. First of all, you should not start from higher grounds, that idea. And especially, you know, I've talked about imperialism, but you can talk about colonialism. And I think it's fascinating that till this day, you still find a lot of content around the themes of diversity, for example, inclusion. There are US or UK-centric, but very much with an approach, let us tell you how you should perceive
00:05:58
Speaker
as perceiving you in the context of diversity, completely ignoring and being oblivious of the fact that actually we're not all starting from the same standpoint. And your view, especially in the US, for example, there's a very specific view and lens on diversity, which is very different from what it would be in Europe or what it would be in Asia. And often you find with learning or e-learning,
00:06:25
Speaker
vendors completely being oblivious of that, thinking that, hold on, our course is really good in explaining what diversity is from a US standpoint, and thinking that, oh, we can do the same in other territories, and just completely missing that
VR in E-Learning
00:06:40
Speaker
mark. As a curator of e-learning, what are some of the resources you find to be examples of inclusive e-learning, and how did they work? That's a good question.
00:06:51
Speaker
whether we stick with the analogy around food. And if we were to do that, it starts with flavors and that could be languages. The fact that, again, the nature of the beast is that the majority of the content produced out there, and I'm talking about learning content here, tends to be in English.
00:07:10
Speaker
However, now there's more and more data and it's really interesting. In fact, if I may mention, there's a great study that goes out every year by Donald Taylor called the Global Sentiment Survey that looks at trends and what are the important things for learning professionals within their ecosystem.
00:07:31
Speaker
And very recently, one of the things that made into the top three was that personalization of learning. And then when you dive into the data, you realize that where before maybe there was more of a homogeneous approach to learning and it was more around the technology. In the past few years, what we've seen is clear differences across countries where there's a need to better understand
00:07:54
Speaker
or respond to an expectations from the individual learners. So if there was a magic button you could press that would instantly create a new resource that doesn't yet exist, what would it include? So it's funny, but recently I've tried out some learning content that was VR based and therefore gives you a very immersive experience.
00:08:23
Speaker
And I'm not saying that's necessarily the magic bullet because I don't think there's a one, I don't believe in a one size fits all. And I don't think there's a format that is, you
Enhancing E-Learning with Human Interaction
00:08:34
Speaker
know, more powerful than others. I think it's having a blended approach is it remains the most efficient way of getting people engaged in people learning and impacting the behavior through that learning, which is the bottom line, you know,
00:08:48
Speaker
Learning for the sake of learning is great, but especially in the workplace, it is to be able to impact behaviors so that people can be better at what they do and be a better version of themselves. So I've been very, very impressed with what you can do with VR and that immersive aspect. If you think about it, what can I do in my shoes and how would it feel for, especially if you're used to working in a male-dominated environment,
00:09:15
Speaker
and just finding yourself in the position of female and everything from microaggressions to funny jokes that are being made based on your gender and comments, remarks, or even worse. I think that certainly helps
00:09:35
Speaker
drive the message more clearly. Again, I don't think it's the magic bullet. I don't think there's a magic bullet. I also think that there's definitely a shift in the behaviors and the expectations of the learners, which is driving things in the right direction. But I think it's a journey. I don't think there's a solution that would come and just solve all of the challenges.
00:10:05
Speaker
So you just brought up a really good point that I wanted to touch on, which is the roles that humans play when it comes to inclusive e-learning. Oftentimes when we think of e-learning, we think of technology and a single human, but what roles can multiple humans play and interacting with e-learning and the impact that that can have on their ability to learn? Well, I think there's so many different points. The first one is,
00:10:33
Speaker
making e-learning truly accessible. And that might mean close captioning. That might mean having audio. It's not just the languages. It's not just having the look and feel of the characters that look maybe less European-centric and more global. And so from the technology set itself, there's many things that just can make it far more inclusive to the learner. But then I think that the second question is,
00:11:03
Speaker
I think an important thing is even though it's e-learning, I think any learning, whether it's e-learning or should be almost triggering a reaction from the learner to really get them on that journey to impact their behavior. And I find that it's far more powerful when aspected by almost that notion of core learning, where
00:11:26
Speaker
Yes, I'm doing that course on my own, but then I'm bouncing the outcome of that course or the idea of that course with a colleague. Or am I seeing actually a change in the behavior we have as a group, as a result of watching
Applying Learning in Workplaces
00:11:40
Speaker
that? If I mentioned an example, and I've had that was very interesting, a little while back, we worked with a large automotive company.
00:11:50
Speaker
and they had a they wanted they absolutely wanted to tackle unconscious bias and we were yeah but in what do you mean it's uh oh no we need just to close on unconscious bias they were adamant and it was like it'd be great to understand and they pushed the course on unconscious bias and then sure enough a few weeks go by they have a management meeting and their management team is 80 percent male and 20 percent female and during that management meeting there's one of the um the
00:12:18
Speaker
some of the males made very derogatory jokes to their female colleagues, why don't you go and make us coffee and you know things like that and clearly not funny. But two things happened as a result of that and when we just debriefed with the the hey child director. First of all the jokes happened and no one said anything. The hey child person who was there did not say anything either which is probably even worse because you're essentially just allowing for that kind of behavior to happen
00:12:47
Speaker
And then after that, they decided to do a debrief and do a workaround like behavior. And they started using that different case example, saying, OK, and it was very basic things like the woman walks in the street and she gets, you know, get called. What would you think of that? Oh, you know, that's there's no harm. It's just, you know, a joke, but it's harmless. OK, fine.
00:13:09
Speaker
Your mother, your sister, your wife, walks in catcalls. And all of a sudden, some of the guys are like, no, that's not right. Oh, OK. How is that? No, right. They're both women. They're both women. And this is I mean, I think this is such an important point that you're making that we don't want to change until it affects us.
00:13:28
Speaker
which is fundamentally the issue because they had to dive into that discussion where, you know, why does it impact you and why does we have to wait for it to be personal for you to be able to not be a bystander and just speak up and say, okay, actually that behavior is not the kind of behavior we want within our workplace and it's wrong and why you need to voice it and how you need to voice it. So my point being,
00:13:57
Speaker
e-learning is great, but really it's being able to see the impact on behavior and have those conversations, those discussions that will drive that agent that people stick with that, that will make a difference. So making it inclusive and educating people around this and understanding your unconscious biases and how you create psychological safety, it's all great.
00:14:22
Speaker
But it's even better when you can see it through the behaviors of people. What behaviors do we need to have that really reflects that and where we all align so that we can be a more inclusive environment? And that doesn't necessarily mean people agreeing with everyone's political views, for example, because that's always an interesting one. I don't have to agree with or share the same political views as my colleagues for us to be able to get on and work great together.
00:14:50
Speaker
having that aspect of inclusion is me learning that actually it is okay for people not to share my opinion and it still means that we can work together and we can be productive together regardless of that and it's that journey and not being able to apply that kind of behavior that is important. So when you're describing what the term you use before, a blended approach, it sounds like
00:15:13
Speaker
It's important to get people in the room together. It's important to get people to at least identify with some empathy. And then you can take the learning journey on from there. Then people can take it into their own hands and go down the path of different curated options when it comes to how they can work to unpack those issues. Yeah.
00:15:37
Speaker
with the risk of sounding really basic, it's almost, if you teach me how to fish or how to catch, I don't know, my wife is vegan, so I'm not going to say a hint because that's not, I'm going to be in trouble. But let's stick with the fishing example. Or if you teach me a lot how to grow, but a certain kind of veg, but if I don't get to apply it, if I don't get to do it,
00:16:03
Speaker
at what point is their value? And more importantly, if I don't get to apply it, the reality is that I will, you know, the whole Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, I will very quickly forget about it, and it's not going to be embedded in my behavior. So for me, that's why I'm talking about having that blended approach. It's not just learning for the sake of learning, it's really being able to apply that learning in a very contextual and, you know,
00:16:31
Speaker
situation so that it has the maximum impact it can have on my behavior and then gets a repeated behavior that reflects that versus we talked about unconscious bias, we know about what unconscious bias is and then next week someone is going to again make a joke about that person's hat or color or dress or sexual preference and
00:17:00
Speaker
then we're completely missing the point. It really is. I think that the value comes from, give me the time. And that's why learning is powerful is give me the time to really reflect on it and then put my head around it and understand it. And then allow me to just discuss it with colleagues within my work environment and see, okay, what does that mean? Because I thought about my own behavior, but what does that mean?
00:17:23
Speaker
about, you know, in regards to our collective behavior as a group, as a team, as a
Promoting Personal Reflection in Learning
00:17:28
Speaker
company. It is the best foot you can put forward is the attitude that you have in the workplace to then show to your clients or your customers, right? You know, at the end of the day, it just makes it a whole lot easier and enjoyable than for people to work together. I mean, you mentioned it, Adirana, that that's true.
00:17:48
Speaker
We spend a massive chunk of our life learning. But if you're not applying that learning, it just goes out of the window, which is a real shame if you think about it. So being able to put it to use and work around it and allow it to evolve because we all evolve. And I think it's important that things evolve as well with it is also important. And again, it's not about everyone agreeing on everything.
00:18:13
Speaker
It's just on having a set of rules and behaviors that just reflect a better version of the collective and the working together. Core concepts that you were describing about how we need to get everyone to a room and then we need to send everyone off on their paths and we have to have
00:18:38
Speaker
accommodate for the different languages and the different cultures and the different settings. And that sounds like a lot of work, Matty. So is it ever acceptable to just ignore all that and just tick the box and move on? Sadly, it has been for too long. I'd like to think, but I don't think it's
00:19:02
Speaker
We're not talking about added work. We're not talking about, oh, you've already have plenty on your plate and we're adding plenty on your plate. We're talking about how can we make it more enjoyable? How can we make it easier? How can we make it so that people don't get frustrated because that comment has been made about them? We shared a lot of time, and thank you very much because you shared with me the work you've done around menstruation and menopause, for example, where there's still
00:19:30
Speaker
so little that is known and understood and which explains why again you hear about you know people commenting on oh that colleague oh she's crazy you know that's that time of the month which is that's i mean it's insane when you think about it if if we reverse the rules for example you know if and i i've i've confessed i'll use myself as a guinea pig the minute i start having the sniffles that's it i'm i'm like a i have proper man through
00:20:00
Speaker
gather the family, bring a priest that it's the end. I need everyone to my side. Please make me a sewer parker for a tiny thing. And yet when, and we know that, you know, it's not an easy thing to go through. Yet there's very little empathy or understanding to, okay, how does that impact their work? How can, how can I be, you know, more supportive of my female colleagues? And if they're struggling with that and you know,
00:20:28
Speaker
be more understanding of that. Because if I had just broken my arm, for example, or broken my foot, I'll get lots of empathy. People would be, oh, you poor thing. Yeah, that must be tough. Well, we'll take it easy on you because, and yet, you know, this very little education on, you know, half of the workplace, which is, you know, females and what they have to do, you know, how they're being challenged. So there's often this,
00:20:54
Speaker
It's not adding on people's plate. It's actually making it a much better and nicer life. I was going to say work and ramen. It's not work and ramen. It's life at the end of the day.
00:21:08
Speaker
It's life. It is life. And it's understanding other people's lives are all different. Just because you may have one lived experience to approach things with does not mean that your lived experience should automatically be mirrored on someone else. It's not like a copy paste situation.
00:21:25
Speaker
Everyone comes from different backgrounds, like you said. Everyone has a different starting point because that's what they were exposed to for a majority of their life. And a lot of the work of being more inclusive when it comes to the professional setting stems back to where we came from to begin with and what was acceptable to talk about and what was acceptable behavior and looking at what is now not acceptable. Totally.
00:21:51
Speaker
I think you made a really good point. A lot of it stems from ignorance and the best way to fight ignorance is through education. It's that simple and it's allowing people the time to digest as well their education. So it's, and I might have a slight bias, but what I like about e-learning is that it gives me the time for me to reflect from my standpoint, from my perspective, from, and then after that, having the opportunity to be able to exchange
00:22:19
Speaker
and bounce back ideas with the ones I spend my time with, work with, or even in my private life, also helps put things into context. But it should start with the self, and then I can move to the team environment and the workplace environment. And to your point, there's so many things
00:22:39
Speaker
people are oblivious of. I mean, it's funny, but literally, as early as this morning, I was chatting with a colleague of mine, and she told me until she moved to London, she did not realize how privileged she was because she's white. And a lot of the other challenges she had, she just had not come across them because it's just the state of things.
00:23:03
Speaker
There's so many different layers. It's a highly complex thing, but that's why we need more education. That's why we need more
Ensuring Equitable Access to Learning
00:23:10
Speaker
inclusion. That's why we need to have a better understanding of diversity, understanding that not everyone's perspective is the same, not everyone's life has been the same. So we're all starting from.
00:23:22
Speaker
different standpoints in some countries or some region or very advanced when it comes to, I don't know, LGBTQ rights, for example. I think one last question I'd love to touch on is as people and companies and decision makers embark on their efforts to not leave anyone digitally behind, what are some best practices you would suggest to companies? So it's very interesting because that's a really, really challenging one.
00:23:48
Speaker
We hear a lot about equity in the corporate world, but when you look at it, especially from a learning and development standpoint,
00:23:56
Speaker
It's not been a real equity of learning because more often than not, two things happen. A lot of the investment around training and learning is focused on the management of senior management population. The reality is that even when it comes to that equity to access to education, everyone should be given the opportunity to better themselves. And therefore, if as an organization we're providing learning, that learning should be accessible to all, at least you'd expect in an ideal world.
00:24:25
Speaker
But the reality starts with the technology where often you'll find that, yes, anyone whose office space will have access to the learning management system or the learning experience platform that is in place, but not necessarily the employees that are maybe on the factory floor or other things. So it starts there. And when the learning programs are being put in place, often those employees seem to be forgotten, or it will be limited to our compliance driven
00:24:53
Speaker
training because it's compliance and it has to be done. It's not necessary because we want to give them the opportunity to better themselves. My five cents worth is look at how you can make sure that you have a real liquidity of access to learning. And just as a side note, for me, it's a beautiful story. We worked with a fairly, not very large, I think they have five or seven thousand employees
00:25:22
Speaker
but a fairly global refrigeration company. And what they did for the first time last year, they offered access to learning, e-learning in that case, to all their employees. And they have a 60% blue colors versus 40% white colors.
00:25:41
Speaker
And as a result of that, they've had now many cases of those blue colors being very hungry for content, hungry to develop themselves and better themselves. And they've had many cases and case studies around people that had been on the factory floor for 10 or 15 years that now have moved into a management role because they knew the organization inside out. What they were lacking is the opportunity to be able to
00:26:06
Speaker
develop themselves, work on those skills, develop their competencies to be able to move into a lot those higher up roles and they ended up with that and we have in some cases written on that but I love that because it's I think it's you know everyone should be given the opportunity and as an organization if you want to especially the people who are already
00:26:28
Speaker
dedicated to your organization and working on your organization. And I'm not sure that when it comes to access to learning, it should be limited to those are already privileged within the organization. And I'm not saying that, you know, if you're doing a dedicated, high level leadership program, okay, granted that that can't go to every single employee. But, you know, things like
00:26:54
Speaker
I don't know, giving and receiving feedback and not the basics of leadership or time management. I can't see why that should be limited to just those in management position and why not being given to anyone within the organization.
Conclusion and Further Discussion
00:27:12
Speaker
So to sum it up, it sounds like we need to put the participant at the forefront of what is going to be introduced as far as e-learning is involved. We need to allow for differences in language and gender, race, location, and environments, learned experiences when it comes to that and having a blended approach.
00:27:37
Speaker
So having some of it be human connected in person or virtual, if it has to be Zoom, but having it be both in-person conversations and individual learning journeys in order to really make an impact and include everyone. Yeah, spot on. You can't have anything siloed. I think you cannot get the right impact if there's silos within
00:28:01
Speaker
that learning. And we're talking about diversity and inclusion, and equity is a big aspect of that. And equity means everyone should be able to be given the opportunity to develop themselves. If you'd like to get in touch with us today regarding the episode or previous episodes or anything else, please send me an email at laurenatgamoteca.com. That's all for this episode on how humans e-learn together, supported by Gamoteca. Until next time.