Week 2 – Digital Identity and Inclusive Networks

Professional Networking and Digital Identity Management

What Digital Platforms are Students Currently Using to Develop their Professional Network? 

Students in 2026 are utilizing online platforms, such as LinkedIn, that allow you to use the app as a visitor, meaning using them as tools without a digital footprint, and as a resident, meaning leaving behind a trace by making profiles, posts, and connecting with others. Students also use social media apps for personal use or professional use, or sometimes both. In recent years, as White and Le Cornu (2017) point out, students are better able to incorporate their own personality into their work or school presence online. Apps such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Indeed, and Instagram are commonly used by students because they allow them to express themselves while also building a professional online platform.

What Could the Student Consider in Expanding their Professional Learning Network?

When expanding a Professional Learning Network (PLN), students should consider creating an online presence for themselves that creates a sense of who they are inside and outside school or work. To achieve this, we as students must operate as residents online instead of visitors, who use online tools for a specific task without leaving a trace (White & Le Cornu, 2017). When approaching social media as a resident, you are actively building a digital footprint, creating a professional presence online, and therefore expanding your Personal Learning Network. Approaching online platforms as a lifelong learner requires building connections with a profile that reflects who you are, this is the basis for creating a personal network. To expand one, however, we must learn to be inclusive online and offline (Five Moore Minutes, 2025). When building a PLN, students should think about how to express themselves without masking their identity and how to utilize their strengths instead of their weaknesses. When you show your personality online, you can build communities with those of similar interests and careers, as well as building diverse communities, which are both learning opportunities from other perspectives and ways to expand your network. 

Consider in your blog submission how an employer would respond if you applied for a job with them, and they assessed your social media presence via your digital identity:

Considering I only have Instagram and Facebook (which I rarely ever use), I think employers would see I am severely lacking in an online professional presence and would have trouble of gaining a sense of who I am both personally and profesionally. The only social media app I use is Instagram, and I only ever upload personal posts, such as trips, friends, food, and my life. I also only use Facebook for Marketplace and do not have any posts up. I currently don’t have any professional media accounts, apart from my new EDCI 338 blog! I never considered creating a presence on outlets like LinkedIn because I am not the biggest fan of social media in general, so I didn’t really see it as part of my professional career. However, as I am starting to develop an actual career and as technology keeps advancing, I definitely see the advantages of building a professional Personal Learning Network and utilizing it for career and learning opportunities. 

How do Data Privacy and Security Limit and/or Promote a PLN? In your Network, How can you Create a Digital Identity Reputation? 

Data privacy and security promotes building a Personal Learning Network (PLN) by creating safe, trusted spaces where everyone can openly share ideas, collaborate, learn, and express themselves. However, educational technology is becoming more and more integrated into schools, meaning technology in the school curriculum is collecting students’ data based off of the school work they are doing online (Regan & Jesse, 2019). Not only is this education model unethical, but it is creating boundaries and harming students’ pathways of learning. When technological algorithms track students’ data, they are basing their online learning based on their past strengths and weaknesses, such as how long it takes them to read a page and what times they log on and off. This creates boundaries to learning and does not give everyone an equal chance to try more advanced work. When algorithms and data are deciding which learning pathways are best suited for students, students become divided based on their deficits. By grouping similar students together, they are being restricted from diverse learning communities and expanding their personal learning networks, by only exposing them to students that they are similar to. These data collections and boxes students are being put into are also now on digital record forever and part of their lifelong online professional profile, which is another restriction to building your network in the future. These security risks of educational technology in the school system put students at fear of labels and surveillance, restricting them to express themselves freely online and from expanding their personal learning networks. 

Inclusion and Community Engagement 

How Diverse is your PLN? 

Considering I do not have much of an online presence, and therefore not much of a PLN, my personal network is not very diverse. My entire digital footprint is strictly limited to Instagram, which is only for my personal use. While it does allow me to connect with friends and gain inspiration from a diverse amount of people, I am missing out on professional networks that I will eventually need to develop my career. My current network is lacking exposure to a diverse industry of professionals that can challenge me and teach me from their diverse experiences. I am missing out on a community of diversity due to my nonexistent PLN, meaning I am minimizing opportunities for myself to learn from others and hear about their strengths in a professional field. To build my PLN and start learning from diverse communities, I am going to create a professional identity on platforms that will help grow my career and collaborations with others. 

Are you Learning from a Variety of Diverse Voices and are you Expanding your Understanding of the Views of Others? 

As of right now, since I am currently only using Instagram for personal use and just getting started building a professional digital identity, I am not actively learning from a variety of diverse professional voices or expanding my understanding on career perspectives, rather than in school. In school, and especially in my psychology courses, I do have a lot of opportunity to learn from others’ experiences and ask questions to professionals, however by moving online I am widening how much I could be learning. By limiting my network to the same platform, I am missing out on what Moore (2016) defined as a community of diversity, where students are actively learning from each other’s identities and diversity. Moving forward, I am starting to seek out professional platforms that are completely separate from school and where I can be engaging with a diverse community of peers. 

What is a Learning Outcome of your PLN, and how are you Ensuring your Exposure to Diversity and Inclusion? 

A learning outcome I gained is recognizing how much professional community and career development I was missing out on due to my lack of online presence. To hold myself accountable and ensure future exposure to diversity and inclusion, I am going to create multiple profiles across different professional platforms, starting with LinkedIn, and build up my PLN. By creating an identity on these apps, I can start to make meaningful connections with those who share similar career goals and are giving advice, and with diverse communities where we can learn from each other’s experiences. Engaging in both communities will open up my mind to a lot more learning and allow me to continuously learn from everyone’s experiences and perspectives. 

Inclusion in the Professional Setting 

I have chosen to discuss inclusion in the career path I am most interested in, which is the field of psychological counseling and research. In this workplace, establishing a Personal Learning Network (PLN) is a powerful way to promote inclusion and build diverse online communities. Since modern psychology is deeply associated with intersectionality, connecting with diverse perspectives through personal networks is crucial for developing your career and giving standard care. We can use these online platforms to hear diverse stories of lived experiences of others, gaining valuable knowledge and career advice while also promoting voices of all identities. However, while online networks promote inclusivity and diversity, it also challenges communication in psychological research. Professionals in this specific field have a standard of privacy to uphold, and there is a very thin line of what is considered appropriate to be sharing online. Psychology professionals must ensure that passing advice and educating online is done in a respectful way and does not invade anyone’s privacy or consent. Furthermore, inclusion in a professional setting requires equality to access. It must be ensured that psychological resources and information are accessible to everyone, and boundaries are not being created based on access to technology. By building a diverse and inclusive PLN, psychology professionals can learn from everyone and ensure the work they are doing meaningfully supports the communities they serve 

References

Five Moore Minutes. (2025). Inclusion is not Assimilation: Understanding communities of identity and diversity. On YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IOGOE_qQfM

Jansen, S. C., Pooley, J., & Taub-Pervizpour, L. (Eds.). (2011). Media and Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan US. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119796

Moore, S. (2016). One without the other : Stories of unity through diversity and inclusion. Portage & Main Press.

Regan, P.M., Jesse, J. Ethical challenges of edtech, big data and personalized learning: twenty-first century student sorting and tracking. Ethics Inf Technol 21, 167–179 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-018-9492-2

View of Using ‘Visitors and Residents’ to visualise digital practices | First Monday. (n.d.). In firstmonday.org. Retrieved July 19, 2026, from https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/7802/6515