Spencer Benson from the University of Maryland, College Park spoke at the 2021 Lilly Conference online in May about checking our implicit and unconscious biases. The talk is entitled “Fostering Inclusive Learning Spaces: Managing Inclusive Teaching and Implicit Bias” and presented using Adobe Spark! I thought that was really neat and haven’t seen anyone do that since a talk I attended as part of the NC State Writing Program several years ago. Benson explained that he is retired and runs a consulting company focused on educational innovation. After defining bias and how we all have some, Benson explained how it seems counter to fairness. What I found really interesting is that Benson discussed how implicit bias has evolutionary roots because we tend to classify people as “in-groups” and “out-groups.” Benson said: “Implicit bias has cultural components including life experience, media effects, and the lessons we learned”. I had not considered the cultural components! Benson played a fantastic video from YouTube and the University of Texas Austin that shares data and clips from student interviews.
Using “chat waterfalls” and requesting thoughts from the audience, the group shared biases and in-group/out-group classifications we routinely ‘do’ unconsciously. Using breakout rooms and a GoogleDoc, groups shared options to make courses more inclusive. Some of the suggestions that were shared were: using Universal Design for Learning, sharing pronouns, creating options and etiquette for discussion boards. The examples shared by Benson and contributions by participants were the most useful part of this session. I also enjoyed how Benson used several chat waterfalls, breakout rooms, and videos to make the session interactive. Benson also used clear instructions and language to acknowledge each contribution and request more input from others. Intonation, wording, and timing of requests for audience participation and acknowledging contributions are so important! Awareness of how our biases reveal themselves and how we can manage them requires validation, being ok with discomfort, and continuously trying our best to be intentionally more respectful and fair.
