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Introduction
This project, financed by the Pedagogy Transformation Fund, will enable the creation of Animated Inclusive Personae (AIPs) – furthering the progress made in developing inclusive digital personae and animating these for use in teaching and training material.
In conjunction with their development, we will work with course teams and service providers to look for ways to further embed equality, diversity and inclusivity (EDI) in learning materials and student services through by identifying areas where these AIPs can be deployed to enhance the student experience or provide information.
The Project
This project is based on work done previously in the development of the Attributes and Aspirations (AA) programme. Inclusive personae were designed and delivered through the creation of this project which utilises a range of innovative learning design elements. Elements of this work have been published in the paper 'Using Personae to Promote Inclusive Education'. Other work from this project can be found on our Research and Publications page. As part of the work with Attributes and Aspirations the team also developed a workshop for the Education Development Unit to offer colleagues from across the college the chance to design their own personae.
When trying to develop these personae for use in other contexts we found a significant issue with off-the-shelf products whereby finding appropriate imagery, either animated or photorealistic, to represent our diverse cohort is near impossible. Solving this problem with live action recordings or professionally developed animations is prohibitively costly both financially and in terms of lead time for development.
The personae designed by for the AA project have proved that using inclusive personae in course content can help students empathise with others and that students value them as examples of how the course content can be related to real life. They have also been successfully used in the Careers Service as a tool for staff to reflect on how their service may be developed to benefit users from different backgrounds. The AIP project is fundamentally about representation of minoritized groups within Imperial and providing a platform for visibility, discussion, and development. This project aims to showcase the diversity of our students while utilising the digital assets that we create to promote and navigate a range of student services as well as further embedding them into teaching and learning.
This project is a collaboration between the Education Office, The Graduate School, and student artists.
The main staff contacts are
- Katie Stripe – Development of personae and EDI aspects k.stripe@imperial.ac.uk
- Christopher Meadows – Technical development and animation c.meadows@imperial.ac.uk
Three Imperial student have been employed by the AIP project to create the digital assets that are at the heart of this work. These students are working for the project and being paid as professional artists. You can find out more about them and other student partnership project on the Student Partners page.
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