Weblearning

Open education has a goal – to make knowledge and opportunity available to all. Open educators are committed to addressing the many barriers that prevent everyone from getting a better education. Some of these barriers are financial, which impacts ability to access materials and resources. Many open educators have addressed these barriers through open education resources, Creative Commons or open platforms, such as MOOC’s. But there are other barriers that prevent education being available to all. These are internal to open educators themselves and might be harder to see.

ODeL attempts to articulate an alternative vision for rethinking how knowledge should be valued. While not separating itself from the system, the ODeL approach are intended to make education more sustainable, just, equitable and appropriate to specific contexts.

Wallis and Rocha suggest that, despite ODeL’s many good intentions to address educational injustices in the social world, our knowledge sharing efforts are also shaped by our own cognitive attitudes, structures and repertoires. When these blind spots are not recognized, especially by those who are responsible for navigating about this open world, then these educators become “epistemically arrogant, lazy and closed minded”.

Educators hold beliefs about the nature and limits of knowledge. Many are keen observers of change, constantly enquiring whether their class knows about something (propositional) and the extent of the ability to apply this knowingness (procedural knowledge). Open educators practices are inevitably shaped and supported by these implicit and explicit beliefs about propositional and procedural knowledge. Teachers put these beliefs about knowledge into action in their class via their pedagogy. Their beliefs about knowledge feel as if they are validated when they can see how their actions have aided their students to acquire that knowledge and to put it into practice. And this pattern is re-inforced

Open educators would like believe that knowledge can be transformative, and they often position themselves as forces for change. But not recognizing one’s own cognitive attitudes, structures and repertoires ( according to Wallis and Rocha) could also means that you are “epistemically spoiled”

Perhaps Tur et al has a kinder way of putting this. Those who are interested in open education are also in the process of attaining or crossing multiple conceptual thresholds. Crossing threshold is hard work. Especially to those who are attempting to pass through them. This effort requires such a significant shift, that the educator eventually achieves a different and deeper understanding of core disciplinary knowledge, even a new identity. Open practitioners are intentional. At some point, they have passed through some “threshold event” that has persuaded them to make explicit efforts to address the needs of the underserved or marginalized. But maybe there’s more than one threshold to navigated?

Openness is more than a package to be trained in. Rather, it’s a choice about how to become knowledgeable. The work of open educators seems informed, perhaps by a mindset and an identity. These are educators who seek to induct students into a subject and also offer them routes to participate in meaningful knowledge creation. For me, what appeals about ODeL is its deliberate intent to offer alternatives to hegemonic and cultural forces that shape a classroom. It seems as if this community recognize that we are all vulnerable to being ingested by a larger machine, that reproduces injustice, no matter what intent we bring into our digital classrooms.

Competent open educators respond to this tendency when they combine their designs and identify with others (a community). If open is to grow, then it will need to

• Constantly develop external capabilities and internal awareness among educators
• Understand how all systems and networks (open or not) might be be aligned and harnessed and see this as beneficial or harmful friction
• Discover the many pedagogical designs available to support student’s thoughts & schema.

I am very inspired by public efforts within the open education community. There, I see a momentum that is focused on developing suitable staff capabilities, internal awareness and friction systems. These practitioners seem to be harnessing digital and pedagogical resources to teach effectively both in remote and in-person settings. However, the “global north” remains the place where most of the open action is taking place. Puzzled that open initiatives are not focused elsewhere. How can open grow elsewhere? Mentorship, I think holds some of the answers.

More to come in a future post!

References

Tur G., Havemann L., Marsh D., Keefer J. M., & Nascimbeni F. (2020). Becoming an open educator: towards an open threshold framework. Research in Learning Technology, 28. https://doi.org/10.25304/rlt.v28.2338

Wallis, P.D. & Rocha, T (2022) Designing for resistance: epistemic justice, learning design, and open educational practices. Journal for Multicultural Education, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JME-12-2021-0231

“Post-modern” was a smug term I encountered 30 years ago at the end of my studies. It represented a questioning of the grand narratives associated with the enlightenment (and my 4 years of higher education). It picked apart the stability that modernity had promised me and my future. This phrase both annoyed and intrigued me. It offered a new way of arranging my paradigms. But it also felt like a trendy buzzword, with little analytic power, that could assist me, as an educator, about to set out into the world of work.

About 30 years later, I experienced (at first) a similar reaction to the term “post-digital“. It also seemed smug, especially when we clearly (at least in South Africa), were slowly going nowhere in our digital journey. Then I heard @SBayne explain the concept in an interview with @Neil_Selwyn on his podcast entitled “Meet the education researcher” in 2020. Further Googling led to @PetarPjandric‘s memorable presentation & paper entitled: “Postdigital: a term that sucks but is useful“. My reaction changed. Surprisingly, the “post digital” offered hope to repeated bleak disappointments. Light heartedly, he had captured the ambivalence I feel about such weighty meta analyses. Here, I hope to articulate what shifted. My thoughts (below) are my ongoing attempt to reflect on the concept and see if it does anything for my ontological core. The ideas are based on what was shared. But they also have also morphed and grown and this page is changing as I clarify my position. I’d appreciate your thoughts too.

Q: The word “post” implies that there was something prior, there had been previous exposure? Aren’t we only getting started with digital?

Yes. Digitalization is frequently seen as something linear. Am implementation road trip from the present to to an imagined future destination. We are regularly exhorted to look ahead, at our next steps, to avoid being left behind. We are not often asked to look at this “digital everything” – the stack of tech, data, media, people, organizations & practices etc (each with their particular assumptions & coded logics) that combine in peculiar ways. To see the ways in which this imagined future is constructed, coordinated and aligned within ed settings. We tend to focus on the destination and this frames a hegemonic use. Instead of seeing how the “digital everything” is constructed now, and in the future. “Post-digital” is a reminder that there are many uncertainties. Much effort is being made to position and configure this “digital everything” in particular ways. So apart from adjusting to digital in our lives, we ALSO need to see the paradigms that are being built and maintained. Try to locate mindsets that have shaped the frame wherein I am pictured. To explore these uncertainties and paradigms, with dialogue. That’s a more appropriate educational approach.

The word “post”, then, isn’t a point on a timeline. A marker of the period “before computers” and “after digital” (BC/AD). Rather, “post” is an assertion that I should look beyond the “digital everything” in the now and the future. See how this frame might limit my assumptions & actions. Talk about it.

Especially when the digital frame encapsulates the schoolhouse, I inadvertently see a picture with digital as instruments of my practice. I translate what is desired from the perspective of the “digital everything”, and incorporate it into my context and language. I am less likely (at least initially) to notice the harms associated with algorithms, devices and data. And what is really valued, is often neglected, by likes (translation: I appreciate) or clicks (translation: I am curious). However, if I only examine the “digital everything” through this frame, then I forget that everything isn’t digital. I limit the scope of my study. Instead of exploring how the digital everything is studying us. This is one alternative way of seeing “post digital”.

The word “post” is also used to recognize that my efforts to improve or transform teaching practices, have also become somewhat hijacked by data, number and metrics, that are generated & promoted from within higher education. To note that education has become awash with reform, quality improvement or transformation efforts that are being driven from a range of different actors. Post digital allows me to remember that being “tech savvy” isn’t a goal, but a means to be creative, skeptical, weird, exploratory, crazy etc. Not shy away from the awkward and ask uncomfortable questions.

The way that digital is currently being pictured / deployed is as mechanism or lever by those who wish to re-calibrate our professional practices. “Post digital serves as a reminder that the application of digital in education offers intense creative or personally transformative opportunities. That this is something that I can build upon. Ownership of and agency with can lead to something different. But it’s not digital, by itself, that’s the global vehicle for reform or renewal. It’s me, a professional educator, adapting to a set of circumstances and purposefully / intentionality using what is available. The conclusions that I draw from my use of these resources are not generalizable. “The digital everything (to adapt Michel Foucault) is not bad. But the digital everything is dangerous” Best practices or normative assumptions deserve skepticism. Instead of focusing on the “what” or “how it works”. I am then reminded, with “post digital”, that despite my well intentioned efforts to use digital as a mechanism for others, there’s a choice to look only at its use and usefulness. And that we all are unwittingly and/or unwillingly, choosing to avoid scrutiny, discussion, contestation (the why). This is another alternative way of seeing “post digital”.

So “post-digital” isn’t like “post-mortem”. We’re not moving onto an alternative plane that comes after our digital life has ended. The phrase indicates that 1) we shouldn’t only limit our gaze by only looking at the “digital everything” and 2) we also need to move away from the analogue or digital, online or offline binary. Instead of asking how we straddle the divide, reform, solve and improve. We need to put ourselves up to scrutiny.

Q: What does “post-digital” mean for ed techies or learning designers who are integrating technology in their courses?

Neil Postman’s insights about new technologies are helpful. An ed tech office, that is removed from the many other aspects associated with teaching & learning, is focused on removing the old and replacing it. Ed techies become short sighted because they can’t see the ongoing infusion of tech into the environment. Because they are mandated (with a budget) to use the latest innovation for efficiency, engagement or motivation or are naivly enthusiastic about a new tool. They fail to see previous and new infusions and the resulting mixture. While it suits the organization to position the new “digital everything” as a home for innovation. Curmudgeons (like me) are seeing that they need to let go of their savior complexes, look away from their screens and notice that everything isn’t digital.

We need to admit the ways which digital has (temporarily) privledged us with shaping power . How political agendas, capital’s interests or our collective consciousness are changing our own and our colleagues offices and practices. Our screens are secondary. What matters more is how ideologies, values and prejudices of their designers and purchasers are being replicated and amplified. And how we might need to counter or subvert these ideologies, values and prejudices.

For learning designers, the digital everything isn’t seamless or virtual. It’s also bumpy, material, broken, messy, intertwined, require labour. That break or distinction that others like to draw between the analogue and the digital world not as clear than we hope. Digital isn’t an isolated element, inserted into the teaching and learning status quo.

Q: There’s so much change happening. What happens to the overwhelmed, the one on the margins?

Post digital does not minimize the effects of change. It probably makes things more challenging. But we have also seen how, during the past two years of ERT, digital skills and competencies have been developed. Old and new forces are working in tandem, combining their intents exponentially, both reinforcing and destabilizing. Perhaps it might be a good idea to self assess your own prowess. In an education setting, there’s still some measure of agency available to marshal these forces. On-campus, lecturers are taking advantage of the new mobilities, different knowledge practices, peer networks etc and incorporated them into every day to day scholarship. But this agency is also being subverted, when we fail to look beyond the “digital everything”

Sian suggested that it always seems to take a while for us (in education), to catch onto something that is quite “old hat”. But I think that the pandemic gave us an insight into how mistaken the common juxtaposition between analogue vs digital is. This hard binary of online and offline was as distinct a hurdle to traverse. As I look at my education experience, its becoming clear that “digital” is no longer the preserve of geeks or those who are technologically inclined. Neither is it that easy to separate “analogue”, or distinguish it as something different from normal, its become woven into every day life. And perhaps this is a better trajectory for ed techies. To try and understand the relationships among technology, humans, politics, social relations etc. Instead of trying to disrupt with the digital everything

Last words

Much like post-modern, I don’t quite think that I have figured out what the term means. However, unlike my reaction “post-modern”, I have discovered that “post-digital” perspective is a relief from the “digital everything”. It seems seems to be a generative piece of jargon, by being a placeholder for uncertainty and enquiry. I’ve enjoyed it as route to connect to others, to be rewilded, inspired by people, who offer a counter narrative, who work together as a community that value people and not scale or stuff. Post-digital reminds me that my screen is just one frame. There many other windows, letting light in here.

This buzzphrase under discussion is explored in a wide ranging interview about navigating uncertainty in a post-digital world (Cramer, F., Jandrić, P. Postdigital: A Term That Sucks but Is Useful. Postdigit Sci Educ 3, 966–989 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-021-00225-9). Theres a plenty of rabbit holes that lead onto the weird internet from here.

I’m an independent e-learning consultant, who is focused primarily on educational technology and learning design. I’m home based, work online, at a distance, from offsite locations and through digital channels that suit my client’s specifications. My absence from an office on campus means that my commute to and from work has been drastically reduced. But the physical world intrudes upon my life in other ways. I juggle family routines and work deadlines with my life partner. A cup of coffee is spilled across my keyboard, damaging the computer chassis, the weeks productivity targets, but not my class conversations. Eskom’s loadshedding delays another deadline. Barking dogs interrupt a video introduction. Take-a-Lot courier deliveries interrupt a meeting. My “virtual classroom” is not virtual or apart from the many messy contingencies of the material world.

There’s a fiction about working in the “virtual office” or learning in the “virtual classroom ” that needs interrogating. While apps and platforms might foreground flexibility and present online work or learning as seamless, emancipatory and enabling. I know, from first hand experience, that these devices work within contextual limitations. Their physicality and my routines impose different constraints. The material and social experiences of “virtual classrooms” are not the same as physical classes. And the digital twin of the meeting or lecture is not just a matter of replication.

This comparison between campus or home office, classroom or platforms also reminds me of the many studies comparing face to face learning with online learning. These studies are known as media comparison studies (Moore, 2021) and they show that there is no significant difference between different media format. Digital teaching blurs my work / life boundaries. Remunerated work is not restricted to home office, on a laptop, phone or tablet screen. Design features (either inherent to the platform or third party services, integrated via an API) introduce a host of affordances (and constraints) that require dynamic decision making, leads to unexpected dilemmas, unwanted complexity and additional stresses. Days are neither dull or boring. Nor do they seem to have a definite end point. Whether its because of under recognized divisions of labour, or a vaguely defined workflow, my days work is shaped by a combination of environmental factors and/or individual choices.

Yes, digitally mediated work and learning still offers me benefits. I can be simultaneously employed and able to contribute towards unremunerated household care. But that’s not necessarily true for everyone. Successful engagements, whether on campus or at home, via the lecture theatre data projector or on Zoom are not only reliant on the delivery vehicle, be it “virtual” or the physical. Rather, it’s the situational awareness and design decisions around the delivery that impact the effectiveness of the teaching.

I’m sharing my story because educational technologists, like myself, often appropriate technologies, repurpose them for academics and their students and then attempt to leverage these technologies for specific educational outcomes. But they then leave it there. And don’t question the effects of technologies on latent fragilities. Or explore how they might use design certain practices to humanize the HEI system. I’m hoping to challenge my ed tech brain, my learning design thinking and unpack a few principles and practices that can support remote teaching when using a particular format, the webinar.

It’s easy to see failure to capitalise on the potential of educational technology as the fault of the teacher (Fawns, T. 2018). Mastering a new modality for running post graduate webinars requires more than a set of technical steps on using the conference platform. I set out to avoid producing a webinar manual or a set of technical instructions about a particular conference platform. Rather, I authored a collection of models, activities, experiences that could (hopefully) allow lecturers to be come involved in an embodied and socially meaningful experience. The approach that I took to develop webinar capabilities was micro-teaching – a scaled-down teacher training technique for learning teaching skills. The micro-teaching procedure is to reduce the teaching situation down to a simpler and more controlled class encounter. The intent is to focus on the assimilation of new teacher skills and the development of class room expertise. Teacher trainees plan a short lesson, teach it to a smaller group of students and then reflect on their teaching and receive feedback afterwards. The lesson is recorded, and shortcomings are identified. The trainee teacher re-plans the lesson, reteaches it and receives feedback. Those who move through a micro- teaching procedure learn about certain skills, practice them, and then transfer it to a real setting.

During the pandemic, I’ve witnessed ingenuity, co-operation and resolve from teachers, academics, students and pupils, who have rapidly shifted their tried and tested face to face teaching and learning practices across to a remote environment . And I’ve also seen how utterly unprepared a HEI is for online education, how intuitions often pay lip service to efforts to address inequalities and how a mindset shift is necessary to support digital education. On the one hand, this is the old story about helping academics to become familiar with the affordances of conferencing platforms and comfortable with its use. On the other hand, this is also my thoughts about the ongoing anxiety, stress and trauma of rapid and unexpected change. With many stumbling about, doing herculean work in complex conditions that felt unpredictable and emergent.

My approach will be to interweave my personal experience as an ed techie with critical scrutiny of my practice. I’ll attempt to act as a reflective practitioner, willing to examine my assumptions and approaches. By doing so, I hope to turn my own tacit experiences and iterative processes into practical knowledge that might contribute towards conversations with other third-space professionals.[GU1]  Ultimately, I also remain a pragmatic ed techie, and so while the chapter contains my critiques of pandemic pedagogies, it also catalogues the small manageable possibilities for improving webinar pedagogy. So while recognizing the complex daily challenges facing lecturers and being cogniscent and aware of the inequalities that affect student choices, I would also like to share these resources openly in an attempt to share my practices and perhaps to prompt small changes. 

Workshop 1 – Encouraging participation, offering support

The first workshop began with an initial consultation. The main reason for running the workshop was to get all staff on board. The centre needed to agree on a common standard and establish a common baseline for its staff. They anticipated that, by the end of the workshop, the department’s online intentions would be clarified, shared and held in common by all members of staff. I took a “participatory culture” approach to this workshop. I modelled the use of technology that emphahsized the low barriers academic expression and class engagement. I emphasized the need for creating and sharing teaching. I hoped that they would see that their unique voices mattered, and let them create a social connection with one another

Staff: At the workshop, staff members said that they had begun the transition from traditional face-to-face academic development to an online mode of provision.
Students: No students were at the workshop. From conversations, I deduced that most of the post-graduate student audience was remote, employed full-time, located far from campus and/or unable to make use of the on-campus workshop opportunities.
The need: Staff identified a standard set of challenges. Varied technology skills. Poor take- up of online options, limited engagement by students and uneven levels of provision by lecturers.
The programme: We discussed suitable use of digital resources to support and extend the scope of their academic consultation services. The day was spent talking about digital footprints, fluency, the different options for interactions. All with the ultimate intent of fostering shared conversation about common goals
My initial reflection: I left workshop 1, assuming that the department could find a way forward. Lockdowns, at that time, seemed like a short interruption. I assumed that the baselines that we had agreed to would be sufficient to guide the department.

Workshop 2 – Matching need to a format
Six months later that year, well into the pandemic, with campus closures and emergency remote teaching, I received a request to run a follow-up workshop. I returned, on Zoom, and attempted to move the needle forwards. To familiarize myself with progress, I reviewed staff members’ use of conferencing packages for offering post- graduate workshops.

Zoom does not automatically replicate the flow of information exchange. Neither does the “webinar” format necessariliy lead to a “seminar” like discussion experience. It’s easy to see failure to capitalise on the potential of educational technology as the fault of the teacher (Fawns, T. 2018). Mastering a new modality for running post graduate webinars requires more than a set of technical steps on using the conference platform. I set out to avoid producing a webinar manual or a set of technical instructions about a particular conference platform. Rather, I authored a collection of models, activities, experiences that could (hopefully) allow lecturers to be come involved in an embodied and socially meaningful experience. The approach that I took to develop webinar capabilities was  micro-teaching – a scaled-down teacher training technique for learning teaching skills. The micro-teaching procedure is to reduce the teaching situation down to a simpler and more controlled class encounter. The intent is to focus on the assimilation of new teacher skills and the development of class room expertise. Teacher trainees plan a short lesson, teach it to a smaller group of students and then reflect on their teaching and receive feedback afterwards. The lesson is recorded, and shortcomings are identified. The trainee teacher re-plans the lesson, reteaches it and receives feedback. Those who move through a micro- teaching procedure learn about certain skills, practice them, and then transfer it to a real setting.

The need: Staff were tired. The enthusiasm that had carried us in the first worshop had disappeared. I now saw staff wanting to protect their time.
The programme: Transferring teaching practices and habits from one context to another is not easy. Many of the embodied skills that we call upon in a classroom are context-specific and cannot easily be decontextualised. The webinar format did not preclude a monologue or a webcast, delivered to a passive and isolated audience. Norr did it minimize technical glitches for those who do not have bandwidth or cannot afford the data. Instead
Staff: ERT had contributed towards a flattened healthcare curve. The prohibition of mass gatherings (including on-campus classes) had reduced the transmission rate. And by being forced online, the centre’s original desire to shift their programme online had received an unexpected boost.
Student: The conference platform had offered a substitute environment for the class to meet. But the structure around which meetings were arranged did not resemble the on-campus equivalent. The conference platform was primarily a vehicle for lecture capture and not as a mechanism for interaction, as is normal in a seminar. Did the synchronous and high bandwidth format choice match the students’ requirements?

Workshop 3

ERT repeated an adoption and appropriation pattern we’d seen before. Just at a grander scale. Zoom was another one of the many enticing interactive media tools that offered prospects for enhancing educational results (Amiel & Reeves 2008). But making it human, safe and secure, or offering protection against harmful actors and practices were not always factored in.

This is a living document. It is an open excerpt from a incomplete chapter that I am writing entitled “Designing the Webinar”.
It will appear in the book https://learningdesignvoices.com/

This is “Job Fog Blog”. A series of explanations about my work, for my kids. I attempted to explain where virtual is – where I do most of my work. Below, I attempt to explain to my poor children (and perhaps to others who care to read), what I actually do.

Every now and then, my kids have the unenviable task of explaining what their dad does for a living to their school friends. They struggle. I’m not surprised. I tell them to look on Twitter. It says I’m a pragmatic ed techie and a critical learning designer. They know I work in university settings, but that I’m not a lecturer. They know that I work with ICT, but I’m not a computer scientist, developer or technician. They also know that I use online technologies with teaching, but am rarely found in front of a class of students.

What they don’t quite understand is that the popular image of the “all-round” academic who could combine teaching, research and service together is incredibly demanding. I’m married to one. I should know. She’s juggling large classes and too many responsibilities. Academics have to make choices between lecturing, running seminars, preparing tutorials, curriculum design, evaluation, assessment, writing papers, analysing data, writing grant proposals, engaging with the public, leadership, management, students advice, peer observation etc. Neither do the kids realize that when universities make choices to “innovate” and advance education with online, blended or hybrid learning, there is also a blind spot which allows for inequalities and exclusions to be encoded into the classroom.

At times it feels as if I am at the center of my children’s two key misunderstandings. I carry on because I think that there are critical possibilities for improving the way we think, teach, work together with (or without) technology. If given the time, we can choose to design our education with (or without) digital to contribute towards a wiser and fairer world. I can offer additional time in the form of assistance and guidance to staff who want to take things forward with ICT. Whether with academics who want advice with putting their work online or to offer additional help to support staff who require additional backup and resources.

My job is to offer local acts of hope. I am at the cross roads between busy academics trying to improve flexibility and accessibility online. I explore the territory between pedagogy and technology and offer provisional and emergent thoughts about the visible and invisible ways in which technology seems to be shaping higher education practices. I wonder out loud, I try to critique and engage in dialogue. Not just for its own sake, but to improve my current and future practices, remind me that I’m still learning and work publicly towards the common good. I’m aiming to build confidence and trust between myself and the partnering institution, academic or support staff member. My job is to

• listen and hear what the staff member wants to achieve. I then see if I can work out how we can use different means and mechanisms to contribute towards reaching their goal.
• build bridges. I don’t have the knowledge and expertise in a very specific field or discipline. My job is to suggest ideas and options for scaffolding thought and content, their job is to respond and approve.
• walk the talk. I am familiar with the landscape and know the territory that we are traversing. I’m up to date on scholarly literature about teaching and learning and informed about evidence based practices. This offers me a backbone, blueprint or map, upon which I can practice what is preach and thoughtfully design a set of quality elements to combine into a course.
• look over the horizon, beyond technology hype and promises. I identify the strategy that lies behind the technology. I don’t always take apps, software of platforms at face value and also look at issues such as accessibility, justice and equity. I offer cautions about hidden agendas and second order effects associated with technology choices.
• make the process visible and clear. I suggest a project management framework for us to follow and use an instructional design methodology to ensure quality and consistency.

An enormous amount of budget has been invested in digital infrastructures over the last ten years. Much of the technology investments have been directed by these “all round academics” who have pursued scholarship. Many who have navigated throughout higher education assume that what’s best for them is best for everybody. Digitization is creating a new set of challenges for universities Universities are making investments in technology, but there isn’t a parallel investment made in academics, who remain at the core of teaching, with or without technology.

My job is to work with the values and mindsets of professionals who are offering to assist academics. Help management to see the precarious conditions wherein they work. Offer wayfinding resources to those meandering and navigating around an unfamiliar landscape with unexpected futures. Let others look in behind the curtain and see the messy digital work that other people are doing.

That’s what your dad does kids. He listens and hears, build bridges, walks the talk, peers over the horizon and makes things visible. Now do you understand what I do? Or is job fog just as hazy as it was before?

In the first quarter of 2020, Zoom burst into our lives and onto the higher education institution (HEI) scene. Promulgated healthcare regulations led to the suspension of all on-campus activities and classes. In March, a state of disaster and a national lockdown was declared. Much like the rest of the world, South Africa’s educational system had been interrupted. Some universities were able to respond quickly and moved courses directly from face class classes to remote learning. Zoom, for better or worse, stepped in to address a teaching emergency.

This chapter is about my ZoomU journey during this emergency remote teaching, colloquially known as ERT. I intend to focus in on a very small “petri dish”. Namely the design and delivery of three workshops that I planned for a client. I intend to narrate my journey with ZoomU, while supporting lecturers who were shifting their mode of provision from on-campus seminars to online webinars.

Coincidently, as President Cyril Ramaphosa proclaimed the lockdown on the 23 March 2020, I’d been scheduled to run a workshop. A post-graduate centre had begun the process of shifting their lecturers and students away from their face-to-face workshops and towards online alternatives. They requested “professional development” for the whole staff. Later into the pandemic, they’d ask for assistance with teaching online. And now, as campus re-opens and classes resume, I’m intending to consolidate what was learned during the experience and enquire how this affect their future plans

Interest in this cloud-based peer-to-peer video telephony service grew rapidly. TENET signed an agreement that enabled eligible institutions in the higher education and research sectors to make free use of the service. Other institutions purchased their own enterprise license (or made liberal use of the 40 minute freebie). Soon, local academia had begun to use Eric Yuan’s trendy “techno fix”. HEI’s in South Africa had access to an all in one, easy-to-use, reliable and readily available software, suitable for desktop computers, laptops, smart phone and tablets and compatible on all major operating systems. A step up, perhaps, from the institutional LMS? Zoom had became one of the continuity solutions for the disrupted higher ed landscape.

Zoom was one of the many information and communications technology (ICT) services available to maintain “university” operations, even though no one was “on campus” or “in their classrooms”. Within the uncertainty of this time, this platform offered more than the casual conversations or “social talk” (Bleakley, 2021) that conferencing packages were normally used for, prior to the pandemic. Working from remote settings increased feelings of loneliness and social distance. Zoom seemed to offer familiarity and connection to colleagues who were disorientated and adjusting to change. Zoom, in the pandemic, altered the purposes that these mediated conversations. Due to Covid-19, campus pivoted online and the social communication features on Zoom could also be institutionalized. Platforms seemed to offer to

• students, access to an event that was perceived as “attendance”;
• the administrators, unlimited capacity to schedule meetings, arrange a timetable and venue logistics;
• lecturers, a presentation facility that permitted teaching to a class of students who were present.

Those who were looking for to teach a class in real time could make use of built in and embedded suit of tools. A lecturer could safely share their screen, thoughts and content, with the knowledge of security compliance. A variety of mediated interactions, supported by accessibility features and options, improved equitable participation and made the space a place of meaningful possibilities.

The screen, in the absence of physical perimeters (campus gates, fences, walls etc), became the boundaried space, an environment where staff and students could cluster and imitate familiar structures and rituals. Zoom packaged real time and rich interactions, and put “institutional turn taking systems” (interview, classroom, committee meeting) online a clone of “normal” or familiar every-day practices in academia (Bleakley, 2021).

Zoom had a range of features that supported social and institutional chat. Informal and formal turn taking exchanges were possible because of multiple user video and voice calls and group conferencing. The integration of web cameras, codecs and synchronous VOIP, compatible on a range of devices and operating systems, created a contingent space that drew in different actors and interests. Additional functionalities such as screen sharing, file/document distribution, a visible desktop, polling and whiteboards made it feasible for these actors to incorporate Zoom further into their online classes. Informal and two way class interactions were available via group chat and instant messaging offered a social back channel for less scholarly interests. Because Zoom also supported separate audio and video recordings, students, who might have missed class, could download a recording and review what they missed (Abdulkarim, 2021).

In March of 2020, Zoom’s corporate blog reported that more than 200 million participants, both free and paid, had made use of Zoom for meetings. Three months prior, the maximum number of users was 10 million. A remarkable global increase in usage.

There was no single “right” way to shift educational provision away from campus.  ERT was about “surviving in a time of crisis with all resources available, including offline and/or online (Bozkurt, 2020). Zoom (or any one of the approximately 20 other online conferencing platforms*) had gone from an occasional novelty to an edtech necessity. ERT had brutally introduced HEI’s to an innovative and digital experience of space. ZoomU allowed HEI’s an environment to meet service delivery expectations. Universities could feasibly close their gates. Displaced staff and students were able to work from home in an alternate space. Just as “Google” entered the lexicon to denote a web search, so “Zoom” became the eponym in higher ed to represent a synchronous online gathering of students and academics.

ZoomU’s growth in popularity was accompanied by an increasing growth in global uncertainty. Emotional trauma and cognitive discomfort led to a desire for structure, control and epistemic coherence in this shifting and flickering space. The seminar format offered a certain academic familiarity. A few scholarly events broadened visible use cases and allowed further consensus to emerge about conditions wherein this niche model may be used. A comparative search using Google trends and the key words “webinar” and “seminar” shows interesting shifts (see image). There’s a massive surge in interest in the keyword “webinar” at the end of March 2020, when lock down measure were announced. Later on, Google trends reveal how Zoom fatigue and pandemic burnout resulted in a steady drop in use of this pandemic pedagogy. In HEI’s where technological infrastructures were available, the initial period of the lockdown was followed by a marked period of emotional fatigue, a sense of overload, stress and burnout. Digital divides, physical and material limits and insufficiant digital pedagogical expertise and shifting this the responsibility across to teachers. They could not go further.

The word “webinar” is a “neologism for a seminar that is offered online” (Garner, 2010). At its simplest, a web-seminar happens online over the Internet, rather than offline in a traditional classroom. (Gegenfurtner & Ebner, 2019). In contrast to a lecture, where information is conveyed by a lecturer and received by student, a seminar (and by inference, its online equivalent, the webinar) sets out to develop an understanding via a flow of exchange between participants.

Whether it was a substitute for the lecture or seminar, Zoom’s offerings unconsciously resonated with academic actors and interests drawn from the global HEI constituency. Zoom’s popularity was reinforced by the ritualized norms of “teacher talk” and “student listen”. The webinar confirmed the accuracy of Conway’s Law  – “organizations which design systems … are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organization”. Isomorphic forces would shift classes online, but ultimately, isomorphic forces would create a copy or clone, and not introduce any meaningful large scale change.

The webinar came about as a result of a continuity crisis, an intersection between of software providers, decision makers, academics and practitioners. Zoom’s in built functionalities drew colleagues, peers or classmates from different geographic locations together and co-located them in an imagined class or virtual campus. This was a solution that offered efficient and accountable mechanisms to address concerns about academic continuity. At its best, ZoomU became a place for teachers to be more present, to make distance disappear an opportunity to design remote experiences where class members might gather, connect, share and learn differently. At its worst, ZoomU was a contractual obligation, filled with dull monologues, directed at passive, isolated and lonely students. No matter which way it is seen, Zoom metamorphosized from a niche within business communications to a globally accepted format, known as the webinar.

* Adobe Connect, Apache Open Meetings, Avaya, BlueJeans, ezTalks Meetings, Google Classroom, Google Hangouts, Google Meet, GoToMeeting, join.me, Life Size, Loop Up, Omni Join, Pexip, Polycom, Ring Central, Skype, Star Leaf, Team Viewer, Vidyo, Webex, Zoom.

[2] Zoom Blog https://blog.zoom.us/a-message-to-our-users/

This is an excerpt for a chapter that I am writing entitled “Designing the Webinar”. It’s about how conferencing technology became ubiquitous during ERT and how our practices were shaped by platforms. It’s about how (with hindsight) might we take on the challenge of instructional design and enacting a suitable teaching methodology.

Abdulkarim, A et al (2021) COVID-19 lockdown and remote attendance: A review of some online pedagogical resources

Boskurt et al (2020) A global outlook to the interruption of education due to COVID-19 Pandemic Navigating in a time of uncertainty and crisis

Garner, B. A. (2010) Webinar https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28FOBonlanguage-t.html.

Gegenfurtner, A. & Ebner, C. (2019). Webinars in Higher Education and Professional Training: A Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials.