Blog 4

How diverse is my PLN?

As much as I think my PLN is diversified, I lean more toward the unfortunate side, lacking diversity. Although the people in my PLN are diverse in their own ways, most in my community falls into a similar socio-economic situation. West side kids who live rather protected lives, many of whom have faced little to no diversity or adversity in their lives. Although there is nothing bad about this, sometimes when engaging with my PLN, perspectives, mindsets, and ideology can be much more biased than you might think, so it is important to be conscious of this and always keep an open mind.

To add to this, I went to a public high school filled with unique individuals all with very different lives, backgrounds, and diverse upbringings. However, regardless of how diverse it may seem, most of the kids at my school grew up in a prominently higher-end neighbourhood in Vancouver, so any opinion is to be made with a grain of salt.

What is a learning outcome of your PLN and how are you ensuring your exposure to diversity and inclusion?

My learning outcome of my PLN is to widen my connections at UVic and meet many new people of all different backgrounds. It has been a great pleasure of mine getting to meet many international students so far, as well as getting to meet students from across Canada, such as local island residents, Albertans, kids from Saskatchewan and even New Brunswick. Expanding my diversity and inclusion in my PLN has all happened relatively naturally through my BCom program and word of mouth from friends. I am enjoying the amount of knowledge and stories people share with me from their unique lives. That has been one of my greatest takeaways from UVic, is how widespread our student population is. I love meeting new people, and am excited for all the new friends to come in my remaining years!

As mentioned before in my previous blog posts, your social media identity is just an expansion of your normal identity. When using these public networks, it is important to always keep an open mind and put yourself out there to meet new people. One of the greatest things about social media is how easily we are able to connect with people all across the world with different backgrounds and lives. One of the great ways I have found to meet new people of different backgrounds is through Facebook groups. These groups highlight different cultures and people, many from different communities and are dedicated to bringing individuals together. Joining these groups is an excellent way I like to gain insight into how people of different communities interact with one another. This then allows for myself and new group members to interact politely and safely with each other.

Professional networks such as LinkedIn provide many great resources to help educate their users on how to be inclusive online. They offer free educational resources such as videos and tips to help expand users’ diversity and inclusion within their communities. Social media platforms should continue to promote diversity and inclusion training and resources to help keep their users educated, as sometimes users forget there are all different kinds of people in this world and that it does not just revolve around themselves and their opinions.