Poster 15

Workshop Activity for Gender Equity Simulation in the Classroom

Diana Tieluszecki, Caroline Gallo, Nairi Diratsouian, Serene Rahman, and Reeve Harden

Educating about current social issues such as gender bias can be challenging, but it is imperative. When people feel like their self-views are threatened, they may become defensive. This self-justifying reaction does not foster constructive learning. (Legault et al., 2011; Cundiff et al.,2014). To overcome these learning challenges, we propose a classroom activity, the Workshop Activity for Gender Equity Simulation-Classroom (WAGES-Classroom), that utilizes experiential rather than passive learning methods to demonstrate to students what subtle, unconscious gender bias looks and feels like in the workplace. WAGES-Classroom is an interactive board game that allows players to experience all dimensions of gender inequality in the workplace. WAGES-Classroom draws from our prior work on WAGES-Academic, a learning activity designed for faculty and administrators. WAGES-Academic proved to be more effective than passive learning methods at conveying information about gender bias (Cundiff et al., 2014, 2018). A modified version of the game for classroom use is necessary because WAGES-Academic was designed for faculty and administrators and therefore features different learning objectives than a student-focused version would have. This presentation will introduce the game and explain the rationale behind its construction as we are currently conducting a study to test its efficacy.

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