DEI @ DLAC: Can you help?
If you’ve attended DLAC even just once, you may have noticed that conference attendees do not reflect the diversity of people in education as a whole, let alone students—who increasingly represent an ever wider range of races, cultures, and ethnicities.
To some extent, that DLAC reality represents the digital learning field and education technology more broadly. It’s similar at ISTE, FETC, and other conferences, going back to the iNACOL symposiums of old.
That’s an observation, not an excuse. We need to do better.
The problem is, we don’t know exactly what to do. Which is why I’m using this post to crowd-source some ideas from our DLC community.
What we have done
In the first years of DLAC, we have actively sought keynote speakers who represent the diversity of education, and we have highlighted those speakers and others in our videos. We look at backgrounds of people who submit presentation proposals, and gauge the diversity that a person or proposal brings (which may be based on culture, race, disability, ethnicity, or plenty of other characteristics). We attempt to contact urban and inner-ring suburban school districts that are more likely than rural areas to employ a diverse group of teachers and school leaders.
But we know that we need to do more, and we can do more. We need to do more because we’re not satisfied with the demographic mix at DLAC because it is not a true reflection of the field of K-12 digital learning. We can do more because after five years of DLAC and having weathered a pandemic, we have stronger systems and brand awareness that allow us to increase our focus on DEI.
What we are trying
We’re starting with the same approach, but more—more reaching out to our contacts, requesting presentation proposals, inviting new organizations, and offering support.
We are also actively seeking new organizations to go through, because a main problem is that our contacts, past DLAC attendees, etc. are not representative of who we want to reach.
How you can help
We continue to run into the problem that we are trying to reach people and organizations who don’t know us, and that seems to be getting harder than ever. Everyone is inundated by far too many emails, social media is becoming more fragmented and somehow even less respected, and calling is expensive and can feel disruptive to the person being called.
We can use your ideas and help in two specific areas:
1. Do you know anyone, including yourself, who would increase our diversity in any way? Please let us know, or forward this to other people/organizations.
2. What else should we be doing, that might increase diversity at DLAC?
Allison Powell (DLAC Program Chair), others on the DLAC team, and I would love to hear any ideas. Please email us at DLAC@evergreenedgroup.com to ensure that the team gets your thoughts. You will receive a response—and our appreciation.
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