Imagine you’re about to meet someone new. You are told that this person is male and was born in 1948; he grew up in the UK and has been married twice; he is wealthy, and lives in a very large house. Can you imagine this person? Do you know what they would need from you, and how to interact with them?
What if this description actually fits two very different people? If you’ve spent any time on social media you might recognise these details from a meme comparing the ‘personas’ or profiles of Prince Charles and Ozzy Osbourne (may he rest in peace). Viewed through a simple demographic lens, they look identical; in reality, however, their lives could not have been more different.
We make similar assumptions in higher education all the time; faced with large student numbers and limited time, we categorise and classify. Are you undergrad or postgrad? Studying in person, or fully online? School leaver or mature student? Domestic or international? Low SES, living with disability, First Nations, or first in family? So many questions, but even after you have answered them all, do these clean-cut categories help us understand you any better, and in so doing, support your successful engagement in learning?
When data labels don’t tell the story
When we’re gathering and classifying student data, it’s often well-intentioned. We’re looking for big picture patterns and trends to understand what students need from our institutions, and whether we have the right courses and resources to support them. This data collection is necessary, not only for operational reasons, but also to monitor, track and adjust plans to ensure progress against access and equity goals, among other objectives.
As our understanding of students matures, however, it’s clear that such classifications can only take us so far. As soon as you apply one label, it opens up other, more nuanced questions: if you’re an undergrad, is this your first degree? If you’re studying in person, how far will you travel to campus, and how much needs to be online or asynchronous to help you participate fully? Are you a parent or carer? Working part-time or full-time? Do you have a support network at all?
All these factors and more can impact a student’s ability to access and get the most out of their learning, but they are not consistently collected or reflected in our data sets. And if we don’t know enough about the student experience, we can’t design for their changing needs.
Pigeonholes, stereotypes, and acknowledging multiple identities
Navigating multiple spaces is tough…
Jemaima Tiatia-Siau (Pro Vice-Chancellor, Pacific, University of Auckland)
Even as we start to understand the needs of different student cohorts, we can easily slip into stereotypes without realising. Picture a domestic student who has just finished high school and is starting a degree in Business; now switch that profile to ‘international student’ – do you see someone different? What if they went to high school overseas but have Australian citizenship? Technically they’re a domestic student, but their entire school experience has been outside the Australian system. Would their needs be the same as another domestic student? It’s surprising how quickly our neat little categories get muddled and mixed.
There are many versions of this, from hidden disabilities to gender pronouns, hard-to-pronounce names and other signifiers that tell us something, but not nearly enough, about someone’s identity. This doesn’t just apply to students; at a recent conference session on indigenous communities, for example, Professor Jemaima Tiatia-Siau shared her experience as the first Pacific woman Pro Vice-Chancellor at any New Zealand university. Being of Samoan descent and born in New Zealand, she described how Pacific strategy and initiatives had to “find our place”, balancing the use of shared indigenous language and symbolism within the traditional ‘colonial’/ European university space. Ultimately, she reflected, navigating these ‘in-between’ spaces is helped by having authentic, meaningful, and honest relationships across the university.
Design for diversity as the default
What is good for Māori and Pacific people is also good for New Zealand…
Jemaima Tiatia-Siau
Whilst educators and designers may not be able to build deep and meaningful relationships with every individual student, we can still plan learning, curriculum and support with specific needs in mind, and to the benefit of all. This concept of ‘designing to the edges’ has long been a key principle of Universal Design for Learning, and increasingly underpins learning design in the higher education space, through initiatives like SPECTRA and ongoing work to bring inclusive design from the margins to the centre of innovations.
When students don’t fit their labels, the problem isn’t them – it’s our need to squeeze complex humans into tidy boxes. But we can do better if we switch off the defaults. Ask “how are you going with this?” instead of “do you understand?”; make human connection a priority before engaging in the learning problems; then listen carefully for the blockers and barriers that the data tables miss. Who do we think you are, as a student and human being? I don’t know yet – but I’m here to find out.