Collaboration, communication and supporting teachers to achieve their digital pedagogy goals underpins our work in Digital Education. These were core skills Digital Education Developer Nathan utilised in his work with the Equality Pledge project.
When Helen Watson approached Digital Education for help with the Equality Pledge Project, she wanted to know what data capture routes would be suitable, and so Nathan outlined the options available and what additional steps could be taken to automate much of the process.
Nathan explains, “The initial request was to identify what data capture routes they can go down (MS Forms / Form2 etc.).”
The core aim of the project is to ‘embed Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and promote a positive culture change in a UK University’.
The project’s objectives are described in their recent journal publication:
“We have created the Equality Pledge (EP) scheme which empowers HE staff to contribute to positive culture change by making a personal pledge to improve some aspect of EDI in their working lives.”
Watson, H. R., Wisdom, H., Michael, C., Marshall, N., & Neve, H. (2023). Equality pledges: A novel approach to embedding EDI and promoting positive culture change in a UK university. Equity in Education & Society, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/27526461221149033
Nathan describes his involvement in the design stage of the project:
“During the design stage of the project, we recognised that a large volume of data could be generated as a result of staff pledges which could quickly become difficult to manage. Additionally, staff taking part would have time constraints, and so making their involvement as simple and efficient as possible would be a key driver towards the success of the project. To meet these requirements, an integrated Office 365 (O365) solution was implemented, combining functionality of Forms (Microsoft, 2022b), Power Automate (Microsoft, 2022d), Teams (Microsoft, 2022) and Excel (Microsoft, 2022a).”
Nathan was able to design the Equality Pledge workflow in a seamless integrated way resulting in minimal data administration and chasing of staff for updates on their pledges. The process begins when a member of staff submits their pledge via an MS Form, this is then automatically inserted into an Excel spreadsheet which collates responses and allows for data analysis.
“The process was automated to ensure that every six months following their initial pledge, staff would be emailed with a request to update their form with any progress or changes to their pledge, including any evidence of impact.”
Watson, H. R., Wisdom, H., Michael, C., Marshall, N., & Neve, H. (2023). Equality pledges: A novel approach to embedding EDI and promoting positive culture change in a UK university. Equity in Education & Society, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/27526461221149033
Nathan describes his aims: “I built the overall data capture process using relevant automation to ensure the process was as simple as possible and we could remove as much human interaction with the data as possible. Essentially leaving them in a place where they could use the data to review the outcomes but not have to interact with it on a day-to-day basis.”
Nathan really enjoyed the collaborative nature of this project, regularly meeting with the team to run ideas past them, answer questions, align expectations, tweak designs, provide updates, and review proposed solutions.
An important consideration was data security:
“Data security was a massive concern with this project, so I had to consider how we could safely and securely store the data to prevent unauthorised access”
Nathan is really proud of his work with the project:
“I’m really pleased with the simplicity from a user and admin perspective. There is lots of stuff going on behind the scenes, but this is all hidden from the users due to the setup”
The equality Pledge project is now growing in momentum with other teams across the University of Plymouth adopting the Pledge system, encouraging staff to think more deeply about what they can do to be more inclusive in their practice.
Nathan still works closely with the team and is excited to see what comes next with the project and how he can support the evolution of this fantastic Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) mechanism for change.
Read More about the project:
New models improve diversity of medical teaching materials – University of Plymouth
Schools receive prestigious national mark for commitment to gender equality – University of Plymouth
Blog post written by Hannah Miles and Nathan Marshall