In our first episode of 2024, Dr. Rita Fennelly-Atkinson tells us about her work with digital credentialing, the importance of considering accessibility from the start of a project, and keeping the historically and systematically excluded users at the center of your work.
In our first episode of 2024, Dr. Rita Fennelly-Atkinson tells us about her work with digital credentialing, the importance of considering accessibility from the start of a project, and keeping the historically and systematically excluded users at the center of your work.
She also tells us about the importance of building a culture of feedback within our teams, and finding respectful ways to critique your peers.
A transcript of this episode is available on the episode page on Simplecast, or as a Google Document.
The music you hear in this episode is "Something about Something" by Sarah, The Instrumentalist.
The Something Forum Podcast - Episode Transcript
Who are we Centering in our Products? - Part 1: Rita Fennelly-Atkinson, Senior Director of Credentials at Digital Promise
[00:03 - Voiceover] Welcome to season two of The Something Forum by Echo&Co, a podcast where we talk about digital and organizational transformation, innovation, and nonprofits, and hope you learn something along the way.
For this series we welcome Dr. Rita Fennelly-Atkinson, Senior Director of Credentials at Digital Promise. During this series, we’ll talk about digital credentials, the ethics of data, equitable research, and serving historically and systematically excluded learners.
In today’s episode, we’ll talk about accessibility and building a culture of continuous feedback within your teams.
And now your host, Andy VanderLinde.
[00:48 - Andy] Hi everyone and welcome back to The Something Forum for 2024. I'm here with Rita as our first guest. Welcome, Rita.
[00:55 - Rita] Thank you for having me! I'm so excited to be here and to start off the new year with you.
[01:00 - Andy] [Laughs] I'm stoked. Echo&Co has worked with the organization you work with, Digital Promise, in the past and my colleagues were like, “Oh my gosh, you’ve got to talk to Rita, She knows all the things.” So here we are. We're talking with you.
Would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners? Give a little bit of background on what you do, what you're– I don't know, what you bring to your role at Digital Promise? That kind of stuff.
[01:30 - Rita] Sure! So, my name is Rita Fennelly-Atkinson and I'm the Senior Director of Credentials at Digital Promise, which is a global nonprofit that really tries to address digital equity issues. And one of our biggest impact goals is to try and support historically and systematically excluded learners.
And I'm really passionate about the work because in my work in credentials we issue digital badges which we call micro credentials. And we're really trying to create no- or low-cost micro-credential options for learners that are accessible, and that can help them improve their lives and hopefully, you know, get better jobs. You know, reach their educational goals. And, you know, do all the things that people want to to do in their personal life or careers, even.
[02:31 - Andy] Awesome! Can you define a little bit what you mean by “credentials” or when you say “micro-credentials.”
[02:37 - Rita] Yes, so a credential can be almost anything that just validates that you have a specific skill or experience. So, one of the most common credentials that everyone has is a driver's license, for example, right?
You know we, ah, it's a rite of passage where you know you learn how to drive. You might take a driver's course or maybe someone in your family teaches you how to drive. But at some point all of us usually have to take an exam and possibly even a driving test, and when you pass those the state that you live in gives you a little driver's license, right? So that's a credential.
Other really common credentials are things like, you know, your high school diploma, college degrees, if you've ever earned a certificate of any kind for something that you've done. And historically, though, these credentials have been issued in a paper format or a little card, right? Like your social security or your driver's license.
So, a digital badge is a newish technology. It's been around for about ten or so years. And it's a way for that information to be, you know, transmitted and verified electronically. And so when I talk about micro-credentials, it's a credential that is issued via a digital badge and that represents a specific skill.
[04:13 - Andy] Mmhmm.
[04:14 - Rita] So it's very discreet. I know how to, you know, use a spreadsheet and perform, you know, these five different functions on it. So that's what I mean when we say micro-credentials and digital badging.
[04:27 - Andy] Perfect! That was so well said. Very easy to understand. You support historically and systematically excluded learners. What kind of barriers to access do these learners have that you are, you know, trying to overcome or help them overcome?
[04:43 - Rita] That's a great question. So I want to mention here that, you know, I identify as a latina. I was born in a small border town in Texas. You know, we only had one high school. [Laugh]
[04:59 - Andy] [Laughs]
[05:00 - Rita] At the time, no community colleges. And, um, and so I also was, you know, a woman who was in the military at the time when women were not very common. At least in the branch that I was in. And so when I speak about these, I want to be mindful of the fact that a lot of this is from my own personal experience and from witnessing the experience of others.
So when I say “historically and systematically excluded learners,” I'm really talking about anyone who has not been able to, basically, take advantage of opportunities that might be available, for any number of reasons. A lot of times people use the word “marginalized” or “minorities,” but we really like to use the term “historically and systematically excluded” because it's very context based. So any aspect of your identity, whether it be your race, your gender, your religion, you know, and many many others, can really impact what you might have access to at any given time. So barriers is really expansive in this in this way of looking at things.
So it could be anything. Like for example, there might be places where you have been excluded because of your gender. You may have been excluded because of financial issues. You could have language barriers. It could be a socioeconomic issue. It could be anything, like you just didn't know that you had these resources available. It could be lack of access to internet or lack of access to devices and things like that. It could be lack of access because of barriers due to a disability.
So, something you just can't make use of it because someone didn't think to make it available to you in a way that you could use. So it's very, very expansive and very context-specific. But really, it's just trying to make sure that we provide opportunities for everyone, regardless of what barriers they might face.
[07:34 - Andy] How do you go about thinking about bringing that into your product–this credentialing, micro-credentials–in a way that speaks to so many different experiences, right? Like, it's really hard to take in all of these very specific experiences that could exclude people from access.
[07:56 - Rita] Yes, it is very, very hard. [Laughs]
[08:00 - Andy] [Laughs]
[08:01 - Rita] I think, you know, anyone who's designing product strategy and thinking about all of these things realizes how difficult it is. And I can give you actually a perfect example.
So for example, if you're trying to design something that is accessible to, you know, maybe younger learners or, you know, learners with certain preferences or needs, you might want to have things that have a lot of media. So you might have a lot of video or images or things like that in something to kind of make it easier to digest, right?
[08:48 - Andy] Yeah.
[08:49 - Rita] So that's very important and very much needed and is a lot of things people are doing already.
However, when you start thinking about learners who may have–who may not have access, for example, to Broadband Internet or who have to rely on, you know, cell service to be able to access internet, then all of a sudden that high media, rich media content becomes a barrier. Because it can take a really long time to load, it can use a lot of your data plan and things like that.
So I think the biggest thing is just to really understand the diverse needs, and being really mindful of how the decisions you're making could impact any segment of learners. And then trying to come up with ways to mitigate any of those things that might be coming up for learners.
And there's a lot of different ways to do it, but I think the first question is just asking yourself, “Who am I not thinking about? Are there people in this room that we should have? Are there users that we haven't included, you know, in our research? Are there people We should be asking to consult or advise or review what we've come up with to see if they see anything that's a red flag?”
And that, honestly, is just the most important thing. It's just making sure that you have a team of people who is willing to ask the hard questions and willing to hear the hard responses, and take on those challenges.
Because when you're working really hard on something, it's sometimes really hard to hear criticism. [Laughs]
[10:55 - Andy] [Laughs] Yeah!
[10:56 - Rita] But you need to be able to have a team who is willing and able to give and receive critical feedback, and to continually center the learner, right? Because it's not–we're not designing for ourselves. We're designing for our user, and centering the learner is the most important thing that I think you can do. You just gotta keep saying that. “Who are we centering? Ourselves or the learner?” And if–
[11:25 - Andy] I love that! [Laughs]
[11:26 - Rita] [Laughs]
[11:26 - Andy] I’ll put a little sticky note on my computer! “Who are we centering?”
[11:30 - Rita] Right? And if it’s not the learner, then you're doing something wrong!
[11:30 - Music Break]
[11:43 - Andy] At what point in the process of coming up with new ideas for your credentialing product, or even Digital Promise more broadly, do you bring in these hard questions, or start thinking about these different user experiences based on what they may or may not have access to?
[12:02 - Rita] Oh, from the very beginning. [Laughs]
[12:04 - Andy] Great! Great, I suspected but– [Laughs]
[12:07 - Rita] Yes, so I used to work in K-12 education, and I worked in special education for many years, and in one of my roles my job was to evaluate ed tech from an accessibility perspective to make sure it was, you know, useful for our students with disabilities. And it was always mind boggling to me that there are just certain things, you know, design elements, that are very standard things that you can do to make a product more accessible, and they were often lacking. [Laugh]
[12:52 - Andy] Oh, cringey!
[12:53 - Rita] Yeah, so in all the research that I have done–and actually that was one of the focus areas of my dissertation, was on how do you design accessible learning experiences and what are some of the barriers–you know, the research time and time again says that, you know, it's way harder to retrofit accessibility than it is to just design it from the beginning.
So yeah, we have a very long process of thinking about all the different users, all the potential different needs, but not stopping there. You know, really looking to see what data supports, what our assumptions are. Do we have users who have submitted requests on our help desk saying that this has been an issue in the past? You know, can we reach out to some of our users who we know use our product regularly and maybe ask them if they can give us feedback? Or, you know, any number of ways that you can kind of validate that those are actual needs.
And then the hard part then becomes prioritizing, right? And thinking about what's gonna– what is most important and essential, and prioritizing that and building the onramp for future things to come down the line. Because everything is important, but not everything could be done at once. [Laughs]
[14:37 - Andy] [Laughs] Unfortunately! It's everyone's pro– like, challenge. You just want to do it! Make the world better!
How do you make decisions around what's to prioritize? Like what kind of inputs are you considering?
[14:50 - Rita] Ooh. Well, the first one is honestly security. You know, privacy, safety, and security. That's essential to me. You know anything like that is, you know, very elevated.
[15:09 - Andy] Yeah.
[15:10 - Rita] Um, the second thing is who does it impact? And at this stage we're mainly looking at our learners. So what is the impact on the learner? And if it's great, then that becomes a priority.
And the reason why I say that is because for example, on our platform, we have a lot of users. We have learners. We have issuers, who are the people who, you know, are developing and putting the micro-credential content on our platform. And then we have assessors who are looking at each submission and determining whether a learner is going to be awarded a micro-credential or not, and giving very deep feedback.
And then, of course, we have administrators like me and our product team who have access to the backend. Well, if there's a bug that only affects my team– [Laughs]
[16:14 - Andy] [Laughs]
[16:14 - Rita] You know?
[16:15 - Andy] Yep!
[16:15 - Rita] Obviously, if it's breaking functionality to where we can't do our work, then that's a priority. But if it's just a minor nuisance, essentially we can work around it. We're not going to prioritize that over something that would impact our learners. So, we have a pretty good system, and we have an amazing product team who just really believes in centering learners and in human-centered design.
So, you know, and that's the other good thing, is when everyone's sort of on the same page about what our goal is.
[16:53 - Andy] Yeah! I mean that's hard to get so that's a big accomplishment.
I'm going to go back to this idea about, you know, everyone being on the same page but also the team is willing to ask the hard questions and to hear the sort of hard answers to those questions. Ones that, you know, they might not want to hear. How do you build a culture–and reinforce a culture–that is open to those kinds of conversations and, in fact, seeking them out?
[17:16 - Rita] Okay, that's really hard to do. [Laughs]
[17:18 - Andy] [Laughs]
[17:18 - Rita] Not just on a personal level, but you know also, you know, as someone who guides a team.
So first I think it's, you know, who you hire. We often have elements of our interview process that incorporate elements of feedback and, you know, we try and ask questions or create scenarios to kind of elicit some information about how people not only handle providing feedback to others, but also how they respond to it. And I think that the first thing is, feedback is good but you should be kind, right? And then I know we've all heard about this but, you know, you're hard on content, not people. [Laughs]
[8:19 Andy] - [Laughs]
[18:20 - Rita] I've been hearing– I don't even know where it comes from but ah–
[18:25 - Andy] It’s another sticky I'm putting on my computer.
[18:28 - Rita] Right? You can't just be critical all the time. You also have to build-in giving positive praise, and I think a lot of times people forget the positive part and go straight to what needs to be fixed. Which, obviously that's what we need to focus on, but you also need to acknowledge the hard work that people have already done and the great elements and design that are already present. Because usually the parts that need to be fixed are very small parts of whatever that design is that you're looking at, right?
[19:11 - Andy] Yeah, it's a good point.
[19:11 - Rita] So that's the first thing, is being mindful of how you deliver feedback and building kind of that expectation on a team of how to do it respectfully. The second thing is really building a culture that it's expected. So on our team, we essentially require and expect everyone to get feedback on, you know, almost anything that we do.
For example I just did a blog post that I wrote and, you know, I put it on my team Slack and I was like, “Can I have two people give me–review this before I sent it along to its way?” And that's the expectation for everyone, especially, you know, big items. So it's a routine that we do.
[20:16 - Andy] Great. Yeah, I love that. Make it routine.
[20:18 - Rita] Yeah, it's not something that we only do for some things and not others. It's not something where, you know, I am exempt because, you know, I'm the Senior Director so I don't have to get feedback on what I do. No. Everyone has to get feedback. [Laughs]
[20:37 - Andy] [Laughs]
[20:39 - Rita] And we put it on the person who's creating it to ask for the feedback. So that's, I think, another important thing is the lead person asking for the feedback. That makes it easy. It welcomes people to take that role and feel more comfortable giving feedback.
The other thing is to be transparent about why you're accepting or not accepting feedback.
[21:12 - Andy] Mmm. Right, yeah.
[21:13 - Rita] You know. So if you're not accepting feedback, you should tell someone why.
[21:18 - Andy] Oh, yeah.
[21:19 - Rita] You know? And sometimes there's very good reasons like, “Oh I did this because we have a style reason that we're doing this, but thank you for the feedback.” And then, you know, being clear when you do accept the feedback and then incorporating it.
But yeah, it just has to be something that's routine and it's one of those things that I think all of us find hard when someone finds something that you're like, “Oh, I can't believe I didn't see that.” [Laughs]
[21:48 - Andy] [Laughs] Yeah, for sure! [Laughs]
[21:55 - Rita] But the more times you do that, the easier it becomes. Because then you don't take it personally. It's about the work and not about you. And so to me that's like the culture.
[22:07 - Andy] Yeah, well it goes back to, “be hard on the content, not the people” part right? It's not a personal– “You're the worst blog writer ever!” [Laughs]
[22:16 - Rita] [Laughs] Exactly! [Laughs]
[22:18 - Andy] [Laughs] “Can't believe you exist!” Yeah!
What is–like if you have a newer employee or maybe someone who you supervise–how do you encourage those people? Because it would be really scary to give your supervisor, you know, feedback, depending on the kind and, you know, that type of thing.
How do you encourage those people to, like, engage and read your blog post?
[22:40 - Rita] That's a great question. So I think for that, the most important thing is again is creating that visible culture. You know, we're very big– we use Slack, so we're very big on just posting it on our channel transparently. Unless I need a specific feedback from someone because of a specific expertise that they have, I don't reach out to individuals and ask them to review something that I'm doing. Everyone has the opportunity to review it, and they think when you have a new team member starting and they see that–they see that everyone is asking for feedback, that everyone is jumping in if they have time and participating–then they realize that that's the norm, and they're more likely to participate.
And then of course, you know, it’s kind of nudging them. Or, you know, one of the great things about new hires is that they often have less on their work plate–
[23:52 - Andy] [Laughs] Yeah! [Laughs]
[23:54 - Rita] On their plate, so to speak. So, when everyone else is in crunch time it's like, “Hey I know you, you just started. If you have time, I would love your feedback!” [Laughs]
[24:04 - Andy] [Laughs] That's a really good point!
I also think, like, the part of it being visible and transparent is that new people can see how everyone's interacting with each other. It maybe feels less scary because you're not just going into the void of like, “Oh am I wording this wrong? Is this a kind of feedback?” You can see what kind of feedback people are providing. So, you know, that part is helpful there, too.
This seems like a very wise and well thought out approach that–
[24:30 - Rita] Yes!
[24:30 - Andy] I would do well to remember with my stickies on my computer.
I'm just going to have a sticky computer. I'm not gonna be able to do any work. I'm gonna have to put them on the wall behind me or something.
Well, Rita thank you for this first episode of the something form! Everyone, come back for the next one; our quote unquote pop quiz!
[24:55 - Voiceover] Thank you for listening to this episode of The Something Forum.
Tune in next week as we continue our series with Dr. Rita Fennelly-Atkinson, where we discuss data security and equitable research methods.
Our executive producer and host is Andy VanderLinde. I’m Alyssa Huntley, our technical producer and editor.
The music you hear in this episode is "Something about Something" by Sarah, The Instrumentalist.
This podcast is produced by Echo&Co, a digital agency sending creativity on a mission.