The University of Konstanz has identified Unconscious Bias as one of its fields of action to create an inclusive university and has already been offering lectures and courses on this topic since 2021. In addition, a self-learning tool is now available that provides the most important information on Unconscious Bias for self-study.
The self-study tool summarizes the scientific literature of unconscious cognitive biases and also provides assistance on how to minimize them.
The course is divided into four comprehensive chapters, quizzes and various exercise scenarios to illustrate the material learned and make it transferable to practice.
Learning objectives include:
- You will learn basic knowledge about Unconscious Bias.
- You will learn which biases exist and where they occur.
- You will learn how to avoid them using practical examples.
In total, we estimate the processing time to be about two hours, although you can of course pause at any time.
Preview
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Figure 1: the tool's title page -
Figure 2: table of contents -
Figure 3: example page -
Figure 4: a list of the most common biases
Anti-Bias Trainings
The University of Konstanz has set itself the goal of minimizing unconscious bias. This is to create a non-discriminatory environment for research and teaching by sensitizing employees to the influence of biases and by adapting or creating procedures that minimize this influence on decision-making.
For this purpose, the University of Konstanz makes use of the findings of current research. These findings show that most trainings do not usually trigger changes in employees' views or behavior but are rather suitable for creating awareness and conveying information. Accordingly, a procedural approach is cultivated, which, in contrast to the therapeutic approach, does not focus on the employees themselves, but on the university's procedures, e.g., in staffing and appointment procedures and in the evaluation of applications and examination performance. Nevertheless, the employees are the driving force of enacting these changes within their work environment.
To this end, three steps were designed that are oriented toward providing persons with initially low levels of knowledge with both the necessary knowledge and action skills to minimize bias in science.
Step 1 comprises offers that mainly inform, create problem awareness, and thus familiarize participants with the topics of bias, diversity, and discrimination. Here, initial action steps are already demonstrated, but not systematically practiced.
Step 2 comprises a series of workshops in which the participants work together with our speakers to revise or develop new procedures and measures that limit bias in teaching, research and administrative activities (e.g., appointment procedures). Here, the focus is less on addressing personal behavior and attitudes, but on changing formal processes that are prone to bias.
Step 3 then includes an accompanying program in which the speakers address specific topics with the participants individually or in small groups. This can be the close monitoring of an appointment process, the structure of which was already addressed in step 2, or the individual development in the direction of inclusive leadership in a mentoring and regular exchange, as well as empirical monitoring if necessary.
For this purpose, lectures and trainings are offered publicly at regular intervals; these can be found in our calendar of events. In addition, we offer organizational units such as departments, clusters, and research groups workshops for their members in order to enable the most appropriate tailoring to needs and procedures.