The Politecnico wins the Airbus GEDC Diversity Award 2020 with the online training course "Embracing Diversity" aimed at the entire polytechnic community.
"Diversity is a key factor for innovation in both the social and business spheres. Universities play a crucial role in educating young people to consider diversity as a value and today they can count on MOOCs as optimal channels to spread their educational content and values all over the world". Susanna Sancassani, head of METID, the Learning Innovation Service of Politecnico di Milano..
Just one MOOC was the winner of the 2020 edition of the Airbus GEDC Diversity Award, an award launched in 2012 and now in its seventh year. The Award was developed by Airbus in collaboration with GEDC, the international organization of Managers of Schools and Universities of Engineering, to shed light on successful projects that inspire students from all backgrounds to study and succeed in engineering subjects. The goal is to increase diversity within the global engineering community, recognizing diversity as a driver for innovation and growth. For this edition of the award, 48 projects from 18 countries have been admitted, 14 of which have been selected and during 2020 there will be the award ceremony and the announcement of the winning project.
"Embracing Diversity" is the title of the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) created in 2017 by METID and distributed on the Polimi Open Knowledge (POK) platform. It explores the role of gender diversity as a driver of innovation, analyzes the most widespread stereotypes and prejudices, proposing models and examples of inclusion of women or LGBT people in the academic, business and social context, with the testimony of Valore D and Parks associations. More than 2,000 people have attended the course to date, and 900 of them have obtained the certificate of participation.
"Embracing Diversity" is one of the many online courses that the Politecnico di Milano has made available free of charge to support students in the various stages of their careers, encourage educational innovation for teachers and promote citizenship awareness.
This MOOC, in particular, helps students understand why it is important to commit to LGBT inclusion in the workplace and be aware of our prejudices, providing key elements and best practices.
The Politecnico di Milano wanted to create this training course as a concrete action to promote good practices of inclusion related to gender and LGBT issues aimed at building a working and university environment for equal opportunities.