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Shame is Outdated - Fail Out Loud

By: Heather Wallis & Jessica Combrink
On the 13th of October 2022, we hosted an event that may seem counter-intuitive. Instead of discussing best practices or revolutionary techniques, dozens of EdTech professionals gathered to share the mistakes they’ve made in their careers. The resounding message is this: embrace your failures and ditch the corporate shame! Before we go into a review of the Failing Out Loud event, let us introduce ourselves. 
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What is the EdTech Collective?

EdTech Collective is a network of EdTech professionals with the goal of connecting the online learning community in Cape Town. What started as a Slack channel in 2021 has now evolved into an expanding space where EdTech professionals can network, collaborate and celebrate local talent.

We have hosted a number of events that challenge us to continually grow and develop, with the common goal of providing high-quality and inclusive online learning. One of these was the recent Failing Out Loud event that pulled us out of our comfort zone and into the direct line of candid growth.

So, where did the concept of Failing Out Loud come from?

The origins of Failing Out Loud
In mid-2022, Groundflr and Construct Education started talking. That was when a really exciting (and potentially controversial) event idea was tabled – why don’t we talk about our “professional f*** ups”? Did you also feel a reaction to that last sentence? Well, you’re not alone! The initial reservation was… Will people want to talk about their failures? Aren’t we encouraged to hide those missteps and not voice our mistakes? Yet, as we soon found out, there is a large body of evidence that highlights the creative, liberating and educational value that comes from sharing our mistakes with others!

With EdTech Collective’s values of collaboration, networking and growth in mind, we thought, yes! Let’s ditch the outdated notion of the professional facade and forge our community in the fire of radical honesty. With the knowledge that a misstep for one is a learning for all and a failure shared is a bridge built, we started planning!

“Navigating the trials and failures of professional life can be complex, especially when many of us use achievement and ‘perfection’ as a metric for career success. This event was an epic reminder that to fail is fine – as long as it's a failure forward.” — Ashleigh Wrensch
The night
Attendees were warmly welcomed at Longkloof Studios with drinks and buttery popcorn. After some socialising, the hosts, Ashleigh Wrensch (Groundflr) and Karen Hilliard (Construct), called everyone together for an official welcome. They shared their own experiences of making a mistake, how it impacted the outcomes and the value of the lessons learned.

We were then introduced to our break-out group facilitators and made our way to the group sessions, where we were greeted by a large sheet of white paper, several sticky notes and pens. Our facilitators ensured it was a safe, non-judgmental space where we could share our professional failures.

After introductions, it was time to immortalise our mistakes on the sticky notes, writing down the details of our mistake: how it happened, the outcome and how we learnt from it. The beauty of this exercise is that, in reflecting on and sharing our failures, we allow for creativity to emerge. This article by Leigh Thomson outlines the research linked to this. Stories came pouring out and we listened to each other with graciousness and understanding. Many heads nodded, jokes were made and laughter bubbled up around the studio. The large sheet of paper was quickly filled with our failures – what a success!

“As someone was sharing, I could see other people nodding their heads. It might not have been an exact replica of what you experienced, but we certainly had compassion with one another.” — Liebe Tredoux

After the designated time was up, we all gathered back into the main area to listen to each facilitator reflect on the session. There were so many common experiences that popped up for each group, leading us to appreciate that we are not alone in our missteps.One facilitator, Zaaid Orrie, remarked, “No matter how great you are at your job, it is important to have another set of eyes to look over your work or to double-check something.” And with a glint in his eyes, “If no one died, it's okay. Don’t let that keep you down.”

The golden thread connecting our experience that night was the connections we forged as an EdTech community – our honesty allowed us to be real with each other.

At the end of the recap, our hosts concluded the evening with an open mic for anyone who wanted to share anything specific. One salient message from a participant reminded us of the value of being mindful and kind to our team members, as we don’t know the internal mental health needs and struggles they might be going through. We need to ensure that our companies and offices are inclusive of these different needs and open for conversation, accountability and collective growth when mistakes are made. This message was met with much applause and agreement.

As the evening drew to a close, we all left with a sense of appreciation for each other and our EdTech community, as well as the relief that we are not alone in making mistakes – no matter how big or small.
Diversity & Inclusion in EdTech
Of course, Failing Out Loud is only one of the events that we have hosted. Our last event, Diversity & Inclusion in EdTech, has left us with several important lessons too.

We gathered on 28 April 2022 to listen to our amazing panellists discuss how the EdTech community can be mindful of creating EdTech solutions that are diverse and inclusive. It was a well-attended event and several important messages emerged from the panel discussion.

The most important takeaway is that we must always place the learners at the centre of everything we do. As the end-users of the learning experiences we craft, their needs must take centre stage if we wish to make a true impact in our communities.
References
Fast Company. Go ahead and tell your most embarrassing story. It will boost your creativity (accessed on 1 November 2022)

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How To Create Inclusive Learning For Everyone

By: Prenelle Pillay
A surefire way of promoting powerful learning experiences is to make sure that inclusivity is at the forefront of every experience. In this article, we will focus on why placing emphasis on inclusivity plays such an important role in creating favourable learning experiences.   

What is inclusive learning?

Rooted in the values of diversity and empowerment, inclusive learning seeks to recognise learners’ right to learning experiences that respect diversity, enable participation, remove barriers and anticipate a variety of learning needs and preferences. Inclusive learning can be achieved by EdTech firms shifting focus to honouring different cultures and communities in their products and services, and reducing exclusion from education.

In an environment that fosters inclusive learning, individual needs are met and every student is given the opportunity to succeed. This sort of learning environment embraces the benefits of diversity and rises to the challenge of creating learning experiences conducive to the growth and development of all learners involved.

What should be considered when advancing digital learning to promote inclusivity?
If there is no conscious, concerted effort to include learners, you can work on the assumption that you are actively excluding certain individuals from the learning environment. In the EdTech industry, or any sector in education for that matter, the learner should be the North Star. When working on product development, content ideation and the many other facets of EdTech, we should always be thinking about who the learners are and how we can best include them. This way, we’ll not only promote the values of diversity but we’ll also be certain that we’re providing value to learners with impactful products and content. This is ultimately what EdTech is all about.

A practical example of this is to focus on building diverse learner personas. To create efficient and diverse learner personas, you need to empathise with your target audience in order to best identify and understand the learning objectives, challenges, styles and aspirations of learners. A major stumbling block in the path to creating diverse learning personas is stereotyping. Avoid basing learner personas on stereotypes. Blanket attributes result in weak learner personas that fail to identify crucial trends, behaviours and characteristics in learners.

‍Limited access to technological resources is a significant obstacle in the path toward inclusivity. When we start to think about the efficacy of EdTech solutions, we need to take a number of practical factors into consideration. This might include access to data, internet connection, access to laptops or other technological resources. The access disparity is vast, particularly in Africa, and if we're not consciously considering these barriers to access, then our EdTech solutions will not reach those for whom they are intended.

What practical actions can we take to go a step further and actually eliminate these barriers? For starters, we can limit the number of videos we add to eLearning content for learners with limited access to data. Keeping the videos as short as possible to limit data consumption is also an effective way to navigate this particular challenge. Another practical way to create valuable and easily accessible eLearning content despite the barriers is to make sure that the content we create is always optimised for the different types of devices that could be used by learners. It’s important to acknowledge the fact that not every learner has access to a laptop and may need to use a phone or tablet to view the content. 

When we think about the democratisation of the education system, there is a practical element to be considered in terms of inclusivity. Lived experience, which is quite subjective in nature, is an essential part of accessibility. If a student can identify with, and feel represented by a learning experience, they are more likely to assimilate that knowledge in a long-term, effective manner. This is a true reflection of the pedagogical principles that emphasise the importance of thinking about inclusion as a first step to actioning inclusive policies and guidelines. The thinking stage serves as a reminder of our own assumptions and biases. These biases are likely to impact the content that we create, in a way that does not honour inclusivity.

It is incredibly important for the content creators themselves to be reflective of a diverse learner demographic A diverse demographic of learning creators and stakeholders will result in an assimilation of diverse skills, which are invaluable in capturing learners’ lived experiences.  

It has been great to see an uptake in companies publishing policies that speak to diversity and inclusion and how their content ought to reflect these values. However, inclusive learning is about more than just policies - it’s also about how these policies are implemented in the workplace itself. Without alignment in policy and practice, true diversity and inclusivity cannot be achieved. We now need the focus to be on creating harmony between concept and action.
What are some of the barriers faced by entrepreneurs designing EdTech solutions?
While technology is often thought to be the answer to all our problems, it is important to note that technology alone doesn’t solve challenges in education. Rather, it’s a tool that can be used to address problems such as access to quality education and inadequate accessibility to learning content.

EdTech solutions ought to be built with the goal of supporting existing educational institutions. Some of these institutions struggle to provide quality education that’s accessible to all students no matter their background, geographic location or socioeconomic status. The EdTech industry has great potential to provide solutions to this. By creating EdTech solutions that seek to replace existing systems, entrepreneurs run the risk of alienating those who rely on the education system.

Entrepreneurs in EdTech need to understand the different needs of learners and how to cater to those needs. In addition, they should focus on how their solution can be accessible to the most under-served, under-represented and under-resourced learners. The EdTech industry is held together by many common objectives, but the most important of those is to improve the quality of education currently available. 

By requiring a multi-stakeholder approach, entrepreneurs open themselves up to greater insight and invaluable collaboration that will undoubtedly help design impact-driven products for the benefit of all students. Why take an independent approach in an innovative journey when you can include governments and institutions as part of a collaborative effort to drive change? 
How can EdTech make education in Africa more Afrocentric?
EdTech brings forth endless opportunities to remove educational barriers, and essentially, recalibrate the playing field in Africa. Transforming a whole system sounds like a mammoth task, but what if we just focused on filtering EdTech solutions down to as many communities as possible? What if, by just making these solutions more accessible, we could breathe new life into learners who were only given the opportunity to learn from traditional teaching methods that have previously failed? Imagine the future we could create.

Keeping learners at the centre of everything we seek to accomplish in EdTech, and drawing on diverse ranges of scholarship, steers us away from the notion that western White educational philosophy is the way. It starts with us deconstructing how we have been conditioned to think about what education and learning look like, aligning policy with practice and, most importantly, looking ahead at how we can provide impactful learning experiences for all.
References
UNESCO. What is “inclusive education”? (accessed on 17 May 2022)
TTRO. Learner Personas: Adding Dimension To Your Instructional Design (accessed on 30 May 2022)
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