Crossroads: Helping cisgender students understand their transgender peers in Greek Life

Project Description

Transgender and nonbinary (trans/nonbinary) college students face unique challenges as members of Greek Life organizations, as their identities contradict the heteronormative culture of most Greek communities. Despite these differences, trans/nonbinary students still exist within Greek communities, and many Greek organizations have been making efforts to be inclusive of these members. Institutional-level changes, however, do little to prepare individual Greek students to be inclusive of their trans/nonbinary peers, and because GT Greek Life does not mandate LGBTQ+ education, cisgender students struggle to bridge this gap in knowledge, while transgender students are expected to act as educators. Crossroads is an educational mobile application designed for cisgender Greek students. It teaches users about LGBTQ+ concepts, specifically focusing on trans/nonbinary issues within Greek communities.

The Crossroads application has four features: learning modules, community messaging, a glossary, and external resources. In our proof of concept prototype, we designed and tested two modules, one of which focused on basic LGBTQ+ terminology and concepts, and a second that honed in on trans/nonbinary issues. These modules are followed up with ‘daily challenges’ that utilize a spaced repetition model to support long-term learning. We hypothesize that this learning environment will provide cisgender Greek students with an easy-to-access LGBTQ+ learning environment that can be easily integrated into a college student’s schedule and will act as an alternative to relying on trans/nonbinary students for education.

Publications

Stephanie Baione, Yiming Lyu, Audrey Reinert & Jessica Roberts (2022) Crossroads: a transgender education platform for Greek life students, Journal of LGBT Youth, DOI: 10.1080/19361653.2022.2070813
Please contact me if you would like to read the article but do not have access and I will be happy to send you an access link.

Video

Project Team

  • Stephanie Baione, MS-HCI 2021
  • Yiming Lyu, MS-HCI 2021
  • Audrey Reinert, co-advisor
  • Jessica Roberts, advisor