Small is all, a slogan that Adrienne Marree Brown uses to describe her approach to stay purposeful in the face of constant change.
Not a stranger to OER
Been involved in prompting the use, creation, sharing and adaptation of OER (open education resources) for years. Useful because of its “reach”! OERs are affordable for students, remove access barriers and are usually designed to encourage flexibility. I’ve been both a user of OER and developer, releasing materials with an open license. Member of OEGlobal, Creative Commons SA and mentored with OE4BW.
I’ve looked at a variety of strategic mechanisms for extending OER in a variety of South African sectors. Higher Education, TVET, ECD. Been wondering whether these attempts to make local “reach” materials a sustainable source of resources for the sector are working. Perhaps I have initially focused on the wrong thing – content? Instead, of making things, is it possible to articulate what we desire, what we want, and then finding the most suitable way to shape what we want – cooperation, communication community ?
Instrumental visions
Good digital education is rooted in dialogue. At present I’m seeing more press about OER and platforms. Filled with stories about technology and content combined in the service of education. This is exciting. I don’t want to dismiss the efforts of those who have put so time into the design and development of these resources. Neither do I want to trivialize the code, iterations and patience, that holds and supports platform (especially the open stacks that I use every day) users. What I do want to point out is that content and delivery is a technical function. Digital education is also about the relationships between academics and students. Technology is a means to get there.
I have also been wondering about a cruel paradox that’s developing here. In our attempts to make OER a sustainable mechanism for “reach”, are our well intentioned efforts being ingested by a bigger socio technical frame. As we attempt to avoid “lockin” to proprietary software and all the perils associated with big tech, we open educators might be floating down the same “content” river as evil publishers or big tech, happily sailing with proprietary software and locked up IP.
As we compare money saved through OER, doesn’t that still send us in the same direction as the rest of the digital world – we’re just sharing nicely on our platform, instead of theirs. A platform where we still login, where our collaboration is mediated through forms and buttons. Where our particpation is measured and value is recognized by the number of hearts next to our post?
What’s the alternative
My current go to read is the author Adrienne Maree Brown, author of “Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds” She has a key phrase – “intentional adaption“. Her challenge to me (and I think to OER), is how do we “live, grow and stay purposeful in the face of constant change”. Her key idea is “small is all”. What matters most is where we are as a group and how we can listen to each other and what we want?
“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 Educ3, 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.
“Innovate”, “transform”, “engage”, “envision”, “upskill”. Words drawn from the lexicon of Distinguished, Innovative or Certified Educators. Individuals employed by educational institutions who have been awarded a level or accolade from a global software company. A signal to distinguish the holder’s proficiency? A marker of mastery of a particular software suite. Or an electronic portfolio, a neatly arranged system for the evaluation of learning
Whether the credit is received from Orange, MacroHard or Backrub, the professional development is framed around their own and their students’ engagement with the company’s products in teaching and learning. The priority seems to be to elevate or maximise the use of the company’s platforms and further equip the educator to fluently apply features in these products to collaborate on projects, share ideas, and expertise. When successful, this work is shared among fellow educators or amplified via social media, by fellow members of these networks, who seem fiercely loyal to their “tribe”. Members of the learning network are often invited to communities of practice, copy and use what has been created. Teachers, students and their work that is associated with the platform are recognised. They are seen for many after-hours work, which comes with the use of technology and enjoy the prestige and perks that come with corporate/academic invitation theatre.
Distinguished, innovative and certified educators are doing more than just building skills, confidence and fluency. They are also promoting a particular educational future that extends the reach of a specific technology company. “We are seeing the emergence of the idea of education as a sector for investment and profit-making, where organizations, practices and networks engaged in these endeavors take on an increasingly global scale” Verger (2016). Education technology ‘brokers’ is what Decuypere & Williamson (2020) call these intermediaries who (at the very least) bridge the gap between educational institutions and a “shadow education industry of business managers, market forecasters, deal makers, investors, venture philanthropists and private equity firms”. Trusted actors within a loose network of members (individuals, schools, regional associations and education departments) with a corporate sponsorship to offer legitimacy and back up their efforts.
Types of intermediary work
Procurement work. Obtain digital service, software and hardware, and necessary licenses.
Branding: Promote the digital service, software and hardware for use in educational contexts.
Lobbying:influence other educational institutions/decision-makers to adopt/use the same service, software and hardware.
Credentialing: legitimise the effort associated with obtaining said company’s qualifications
Administering: Whether it’s the technical management/support, work involving the daily management or the integration and alignment required to make sure that curriculum embedding.
Stated bluntly. Vendors are selling software products or platforms in classrooms, and then teachers are being vetted by the company that supplied the product.
So if you are a “Distinguished Educator”, an “Innovative Educator Expert” or a “Certified Educator”, perhaps unwittingly, we have become a broader attempt to embed, normalise and expand the scope of big tech’s involvement in technical infrastructures, education management and data gathering. (Williamson 2022).
Among the assortment of teachers, edupreneurs, academics, developers who are happy to identify themselves with these companies, it seems that there are at least two common dispositions.
A perspective that sees education provision in the future as an object of trade, increasingly for sale, based on competition and consumerism.
A tendency to focus on skills gap and digital divides and use these “deficits” to open up the door for a particular skills-based understanding of education
The result is that educational technology companies are further legitimised as enablers of education for this century. These intermediates are not the same as the traditional service providers, who are paid to by the school receiving the service. Their platforms and products are not just supporting education. But are bending education towards their corporate aims. By offering legitimate alternatives to institutionalised education, for individual advantage or potential profit, they entrench their mindset in professional learning efforts.
During #feesmustfall and the pandemic, platforms carried the traditional learning and teaching functions that were removed by pandemic lockdowns and restrictions. New platforms were introduced to carry the conventional learning and teaching functions that were removed by pandemic lockdowns and restrictions. Intermediaries are reinforcing a particular vision for educational reconstruction, arguing that access to digital platforms and media can help address learning loss and expand educational opportunities for ‘all’.
A growing body of scholars hold that there is a need to develop a perspective that goes beyond the immediate context of education technology use and question the ways in which objects, tools and devices are extracting capital from commodified education processes (Oliver 2011). Similar to the colonial investments in infrastructure such as roads, harbours and railways, which were set up to extract raw materials to Europe or North America, educational infrastructures are penetrating varied instantiations of educational systems worldwide. Terms such as the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (4IR) have amplified the messages of a technology-led change and claims about automation, machine learning, personalisation, artificial intelligence, etc are subtly incorporated into their language.
Most of the literature that examines e-learning systems and their implementation focuses on the demand for e-learning and the success in meeting the demand. Less attention is paid to the supply side and the larger commercial imperatives. Corporate socio-technical imaginaries are being re-imagined in parallel with market calculations and speculative investments. The social and technical imaginary of public service as digitally enhanced and data driven has become increasingly shared. Since sociotechnical imaginaries are actively performed and enacted (Strauss, 2006), understanding how local actors take up, sustain, or transform these imaginaries offers potential insight into the contested political terrain of ‘twenty-first century’ digital technology reforms.
Education systems, up until recently, were publicly regulated & run and delivered mass institutionalised schooling, intended for societal or public good (Riep). But this previously held conception of public education (especially in the Global South) is being re-imagined by pressures of privatisation, marketisation, and commodification. A reconfiguration of education is being driven by global technology companies intent on inserting themselves into the education system, via the codification of education in tandem with a horizontal coalition of educators, influencers and third-party brokers who genuinely believe in the mission to transform public education. Predictions include societal changes that will require shifts in employment and education and “accelerated workforce reskilling”. A large proportion of these efforts to retrain schooling are driven by proprietary digital products and services, developed and offered by for-profit companies.
Support for ICTs in education supposes greater accountability of the government and 4IR has also been positioned by politicians as a mechanism for delivery. We are called to believe that this “revolution” will enabling Africa to “leapfrog into the future”. The pandemic has magnified the depth of penetration and demonstrated that remote provision is possible. These figures about growth and uptake can be used to support the notion of a “short cuts” into a technology future and offer reassurance to those who are concerned about being left behind, as change marches forward.
References
Andersson, Annika & Grönlund, Åke. (2009). A Conceptual Framework for E-Learning in Developing Countries: A Critical Review of Research Challenges. EJISDC. 38. 1-16. 10.1002/j.1681-4835.2009.tb00271.x.
Chang, E. (2019) Beyond workforce preparation: contested visions of ‘twenty-first century’ education reform, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 40:1 29-45, DOI: 10.1080/01596306.2018.1549702
Decuypere, M. (2019). Researching educational apps: Ecologies, technologies, subjectivities and learning regimes. Learning, Media and Technology. DOI:10.1080/17439884.2019.1667824
Decuypere, M. & Williamson, B (2021) Breaking open the black box of edtech brokers – new project and PhD studentship Available https://codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2021/06/02/black-box-of-edtech-brokers/
Riep, C. (2021) Unmasking Global Education Industries and Their Capital Accumulation Strategies. On Materiality and Discourse (Unpublished doctoral thesis), University of Alberta https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-w2ya-vj09
Samnan Ali, M. Amaad Uppal, Stephen R. Gulliver, (2018) “A conceptual framework highlighting elearning implementation barriers”, Information Technology & People, Vol. 31 Issue: 1, pp.156-180,
Verger, A., C. Lubienski, G. Steiner-Khamsi. (2016). “The Emergence and Structuring of the Global Education Industry: Towards an Analytical Framework”. In Verger, A., C. Lubienski, G. Steiner-Khamsi (eds). World Yearbook of Education 2016: The Global Education Industry. New York: Routledge
Williamson, Ben & Hogan. Anna (2021) Pandemic privatization and digitalization in higher education
Picture the instructional designer. Putting together a course home page on the institutional LMS. How do you want to “dress” this page? To impress? Do we reflect the department or faculty “brand”. Do we watch the intended user, noticing how they interact with the page, and then make changes. Do we make the interface intuitive and pleasing on the eye. Satisfy wayfinding and aesthetic preferences with a complimentary corporate colour scheme, a dash of white space, icons and breadcrumbs.
Or do we look away from the screen and consider the values that are congruent with the discipline. Creativity, participation, integrity? Then identify an “expected action” that arises from these values. We have the ingredients on these platforms to make personal connections, individual welcomes, to offer each other generous hospitality. We also have a choice of learning designs to draw from for inspiration for the action possibilities. Our home page choices implicitly talk to your values. Paying attention to being present, to humanizing this mediated and impersonal space, to building on loose ties, forging the beginnings of a community of practice.
I am a fan of beautiful design. This conversation about the course home page is not an “either-or” argument. Its more a “yes-and” discussion. Dressing up course pages has to also be about what you value on the course, be more that a “prettyfication” exercise. Branding guidelines or latest promotional campaign can be applied later. This is the place to to introduce yourself; for finding your voice; for signaling what is to come; for developing a class community and for preparing the way for these possibilities, with a focus on students. Far more important than styling an outfit.
My sequence of actions, when designing the course home page, is to
recognize the student’s context
acknowledge the degree to which the medium is fully available, and
identify ingredients on the platform that foster these actions.
take small steps that prompt these “action possibilities”.
Then dress up the course home page
Let’s look at the front matter of a tatty textbook? Might these initial pages, a forward, preface and introduction, be where we find a model inspiration from. These pages are often glossed over. But they act as an initial container for an author to share their backstory, their expectations, offer an explanation as to why the work was compiled, and a desire for possible outcomes.
Or lets look at the physical features of an ordinary classroom. Jal Mehita and Sara Fine, in their book “In Search of Deeper Meaning”, use a metaphor of “Ceiling and Floor” to describe the minimum requirements (floor) and highest expectations (ceiling) in a class situation. It is here, in the course home page where students and their teachers encounter both the constraints and enablers of the learning experience. How a recognition of materiality (floors and ceilings) becomes as important as dressing up the page.
I’m often involved in a course homepage discussion. I’d suggest that the course home page needs to primarily signal a certain intention. Help the student to know how they will be taught (the floor) as well as assisting them to comprehend the expectations around their performance and day to day practicalities (the ceiling).
So, can we do this? Here’s five archetypes to consider, and make choices about.
An essential, text driven page. Numbered headings, short introductory briefs, and links from summaries create an organized and consistent logic for the user to follow.
A balancedtable driven page that is arranged in a grid format. The cells in the table contains clickable buttons and/or thumbnails that identify high impact course activities and lead the student further to these features or content
A coordinated corporate look and feel page that promotes the brand. Intended to project credibility, the page offers positive first impressions and reinforce a particular identity.
scheduled release page where all content is modularized and topics are released according to what students know or are confident in. Each topic contains readings and learning activities. Larger assignments hold the modules together
“personalized” page filled either with notifications, replies and an activity stream. Information is arranged into widgets or blocks and changes regularly. Students can immediately click through and engage further.
I’ve argued that to much effort is placed on an initial eye catching design and too little is placed on surfacing values.. The overall result is a spruced up content dump. A pleasant to look at and easily navigated page. Creating a learning experience that prompts engagement and activity on the part of the student requires expressed values. Discussion boards don’t initiate debate. Tools don’t lead to conversations. .
My advice, if you want to build a course that student will want to come back to, is to develop a course architecture that surfaces your values and is designed around the action possibilities available to students. Look for strategies that lead to presence, connections and community on the course home page. Make students feel as if they belong.
Ten places to share values and develop action possibilities form the course home page.
Create a bio profile of yourself and prepare a brief video or audio clip where you introduce yourself and the course topic to the class. Presence is important when going online. Present your best teacher self and set the mood for the semester.
Pin a “Welcome message” at the top of the announcements and/or the Course Homepage. Greet and welcome them warmly. You are the host, and this is when you can legitimately gush while informing them about the basics (how to get started and how to get help) without insulting them.
Consider how students will become comfortable and confident on the platform. Perhaps design an infographic with useful tips that they can save on their phones. Or create a a separate page that sits off the course site with different helpdesk resources. You might also provide them methods for obtaining assistance in case of an “emergency”
This may seem a bit obvious, but compose an email to students, introducing yourself and pointing them to your bio (see point 1), referring to the welcome message on the course (see point 2) and providing help related information (see point 3) This email will probably be accessed repeatedly.
Duplicate static information. You may have essentially the same information as in your welcome email, welcome announcement and your personal introduction. Because it’s the web, students often scan through information, to find the content. Duplicated information, in an online environment, is probably beneficial. Although be sure to use static content (information that won’t change) when you duplicate the message.
Ask the students to emulate your friendly introduction and offer a similar personal introduction to themselves. Remember to link them to your example
Set up a “Class Lounge.” as your back channel. Find a place where everyone is comfortable with informal conversations. Within the LMS, use the forum tool (chat can be a headache). If data is precious, then use a mobile platform, where students usually can connect on a social level. Don’t abuse this space. But see it as a vehicle to offer class members a head up.
Establish “office hours”. In addition, or as a complement to, the Class Lounge, create a regular slot in your calender called “office hours”. Students know that they can drop in. Or you can invite invite a students for one-to-one appointments.
Consider accessibility. In all communications, particularly early on when establishing “first impressions,” strive to be approachable, supportive, and actively interested in mentoring them. This disposition will involve some technical effort on your part. But when a course is universally accessibility, everybody benefits.
Build a learning community. Encourage students get connect to you and each other (point 1 and 6). Find ways to create cohesion (point 7) form pairs, define common connections. Provide meaningful interactions.
A course homepage is both a design choice and a collection of action recipes that pull together an amazing set of ingredients. The course hompage can reframe the unfamiliar and solitary experience of digital learning . Use this page to reach out and communicate these possibilities with students. Or, haul out the style guide. The dry content dump needs to be branded. Let’s carry on creating course eye candy.
It is expected that you will package the “facts” of your career. Neatly select and present a list of credentials, previous employers and responsibilities held. Remember, they say, to sound professional. Inflated job titles. Humble brag your accomplishments. No harm in posturing?
I’ve been watching this. For a long time. Tried pushing significant things that I’ve done, across to my CV. The result seems formulaic. I’m bland & wooden. I’ve avoided most self-congratulatory discussions, where everyone reinforces each other’s opinions. But the mutual stroking in this echo chamber, filter bubble a mutual admiration society is very cringe worthy?
I’m not convinced anything better. I’ve colluded with the machines, so that they can read me*. I’m not blaming them. Rather, I’ve been thinking of other ways to lift the “fog” about me. I think that Michael Sacasas would say that our connected and corporate rodolex is an example of “perception-as-interpretation”, which builds up over time. LinkedIn’s assortments of “I cans” (or affordances) offers me a frame of refence that includes a global network, work connections and greater reach. These features assist the gate keepers (HR personnel). They don’t do much for the interview or the quality of conversation with the panel. Yes, I’m connected with 500 plus people on the platform. And another 20 saw my profile last week. Knowing my history may be important for your job search. However, I don’t like how this assemblage of bio pics, profile summaries or status posts are influencing the details of what I say I do, what skills I say I’ve gained (or haven’t) and who I say I am.
So, its not LinkedIn that’s responsible for my dissonance, for me feeling cringy or out of sync. Neither am I blaming the bulleted list of “accomplishments”, arranged in chronological order, the hyping up colleagues, or posting humble brags. I’m trying to look perceptually at the world at the world unfolding around me. Asking how I am guided by the grain and contours of the world, and not only the platform itself. Reviewing the feeedback loop that draws out certain actions, and alters the way I show up. Reconsider the perceptions generated with my professional communication choices. Not bowing to the pre-set attention patterns and practices that seem to define the modern day CV.
Job Fog: Explaining work to my kids
I’m calling these posts my job fog blog. They are not very structured. Neither should they be read for promotion purposes. I’m writing for my kids, my folks, for myself. When read from a distance, you’ll probably only see a haze. But, if you know me, and have a conversation, the mist might lifts. Maybe, perhaps, a less blurred or indistinct image will be replaced by a clearer picture.
You want to know what’s on my mind? I’m not sure if I can tell you, really. I don’t have space for self reflection. But I can tell you what’s on my plate. And I’ve arranged this information in a manner suggested by a professional group of peers. Not a platform.
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.
Tie and Collar
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.
“Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT)” became the key term to describe a temporary technology led response to campus closures. (Hodges et al., 2020). South Africans assumed this would be over in 3 weeks. The shift online was supposed to be a short-term solution for an immediate crisis. But as the pandemic stretch from weeks into months, a critical consensus emerged, among practitioners. A distinction between the intentional design and evidence informed methods of orchestrating teaching with digital technologies and this temporary fix was necessary. ERT became a statement. These choices that were being advocated were not ideal or business as usual. The remote work that we were doing on Zoom (and elsewhere) was in response to an escalating crisis. ERT permitted learning technologists to distinguish between “emergent practices”, which are derived from a complicated situation and “best practice”. It allowed us to adapt to the new landscape, to mitigate risks and commit to working collaboratively on the adjustment of delivery modes, teaching methods and resources as needs became apparent.
The phrase ERT also permitted us to stand back. To set ourselves slightly apart from the rapid and massive move away from the campus and classrooms to PCs, phones and platforms. To remind ourselves that their is a significant body of knowledge about online or distance education that has both a history before the pandemic and would, in the future, be applicable when everything returned back to normal. The term was useful for me because it
separated my ongoing work in the field of digital education (which includes including e-learning, online learning, blended learning etc) from the immediate crisis of continuity, that I was drawn into because of my professional role and assumed expertise.
prevented the immediate procurement decisions and choices about providers, platforms and technologies, made to address the COVID related continuity crisis, from stretching further into the future (when we returned back to normal) than necessary
pre-empted the negative associations generated from this urgent and unplanned use of the internet for continuity purposes in education from being conflated with future digital education decisions
For me, this distinction was important. I wasn’t up to this extraordinary challenge of ERT. This was a global migration, staff development, student support and an instant curricular shift on a scale never seen before. The mechanisms that were available to practitioners were limited. All my efforts were essentially assembled on the fly.
But as ERT dragged on, we found our roles becoming more vague and murky. We got caught up in doing urgent things, being reactive and not intentional. Although we were very busy, we also experienced a sense of limbo. Our usual place was to span boundaries, act as change agents. This rapid move to online platforms and education technology blew past any attempts at change. Without direction, ERT could change the way learning technologists functioned and their operating modes.
the institutional silos and forced its way across the organizational mission.
as we situated ourselves within the organizational response to the pandemic.
Institutions, equipped with network(s) that usually would be used for face-to-face, blended or hybrid classes, utilized their “campus solutions” to address classroom closures and lab lockups. Various platform led teaching strategies emerged. Academics selected tools and services and built a “bare-bones” curriculum using technologies that permitted connectivity, storage and data transfer. Learning technologists would normally play a key role in supporting this solution.
But because of the urgency and inadequate staffing, we all were inevitably drawn in, expected to “take more control of the course design, development, and implementation process” (Hodges et al). The pandemic sparked a flurry of abrupt migration activities. Internal resources and external practitioners, like myself, were called upon to support, what we all thought, would be a short transition. The context meant that there was no opportunity for innovation. The job was to transition and port existing course outlines across to this “campus solution”. We hauled out our skills, taught how to use the built in functionalities and demonstrated examples of platforms, populated with suitable media formats. Academics began to retrofit their class based teaching approach to a screen.
The considerable agility of academics, who mastered the “campus solution”, must be recognized. The non-stop support of learning technologists, who gathered, organized, and distributed resources, designed rapid course development workshops, provided technology advice, and advocated for students also deserves respect (Xie et al, 2021). Bond (2021) lists a number of other phrases that might be used instead of ERT, such as “online learning”; “distance learning”; “emergency remote online learning”; “digital higher education”; “home learning” etc. No matter what the preferred flavour of phrase is, they all have the common purpose of permitting practitioners, such as me, to draw a distinction between good, intentional instructional design or evidence informed methods of orchestrating teaching and what transpired during an emergency.
The pivot’s pace jolted many others in the HEI system. It forced other parties (not students, staff or learning technologists) within and beyond HEIs to absorb a range of unintended consequences. Rapid digitization (converting analog data into digital form) and digitalization (using digital technologies to change a business model) became indistinguishable from each other. A synchronous approach to teaching caught everyone’s attention. Scheduled classes offered a regular and familiar time tabled connection, perhaps a community, a means to encourage resilience (for those who had the means to access the net and the space to study). Information was primarily communicated by a talking head, accompanied by two-dimensional media and tools. A graphical user interface (GUI) mediated mutual conversations and interactions. Campus life became associated with a single modality, the screen, which we were all expected to peer at, usually at the same time.
Commercial platform providers were drawn in, supporting the pivot. Despite our attempts to distance ourselves from commercial technology and corporate platforms, many ended up addressing ERT need with this technology stack (Teras, 2020). I don’t think corporate’s saw their work as an emergency and temporary response. Rather, this was a market opportunity for their proprietary products and services. Under normal circumstances, we would have been aware of access barriers, the notice the voids in student data, and acknowledge that there were a multitude of on the ground realities that we were unaware of. Stuck at home behind a computer, we were less able to address persistent rural-urban divides or how harms were being exacerbated by technology in COVID-disrupted homes across the country. As the pandemic wore on, their position in ERT became entrenched. We failed to listen to those who had concerns about our technology choices, its use in practice, the many ethical questions and risks associated with the rapid and widespread application.
Its impossible to evaluate the effects of ERT and its disruption to everyone’s lives. We all found ourselves unexpectedly struggling to stay afloat in the delivery deep end. It is however possible to ask, how well I, as a practitioner, was able to maintain the intended education continuity.
I have collected my observations and experiences into a narrative written after Zoom became the platform of the pandemic. My piece is about conference platforms, webinars and online practice within in the time of ERT. I’m going to confine my writing to a post-graduate setting where I was working. I’d like to question my own digital education practices. To engage in some form of inner dialogue. To understand how “instructional designers” or “learning technologists” like me could be both trauma aware within the current moment, and contribute towards equity, so that the work does not only benefit the “ideal student”. I’m intending to take a critical gaze as my own practices will also courageous in challenging the ‘solutionism’ that accompanied ERT. I’m hoping that my reflections on the experience will allow me to find ways to feed forward methods or approaches that might assist with the design of future technology mediated experiences. And perhaps offer a commentary about the capacity of practitioners, like myself, to address change at scale and to design (at least hypothetically) an alternative that is not just instrumental and led by a pandemic pedagogy.
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 can be for any 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.
Teaching was reengineered during ERT. But the campus solutions also paradoxically exacerbated uncertainty. As time passed, ignored or buried inequalities became more visible with the dearth of meaningful interactions or fruitful engagements. As digitialization continued, a distinctive “pandemic pedagogy” emerged (Williamson, 2021) This pedagogy often had a didactic format, where the lecturer decides on content, organizes it and delivers it to the student, via technology (Bates, 2022). Classes, on these platforms, were described as “exhausting “ or “alienating” for both academics and students.
I do not want to romanticize digital education, prior to 2020. Before the pandemic, classroom interactions (on campus) were interpersonal, visible, facilitated and managed by tutors, academics, peers – those who were assigned particular roles . Devices, networked services and technology infrastructure within HEIs offered a hidden layer of connections. Platforms were concealed, acting as an alternative library, a repository for storing content or deployed as an electronic notice board, delivering pertinent information. Software seemed a neutral tool, available to be used if needed. Students were assumed to be familiar with the in and out of the digital medium, their skill sets presumed to be innate. Commercial providers were called in, where necessary, to pull these parts together.
Under ERT, the campus’s digital layer emerged, far more visible than ever before. Platforms, at one time an unfamiliar space, with occasional visits, were foreground. Students and teachers interactions could only be mediated. The most prominent tools teaching students were those which supported real time interactions during live online classes. Technology had already begun to shape both the ways in which campus is structured and engagement (in and out of classes) is managed, but misplaced sedentarist practices migrated online during ERT. With ERT, campus became the complimentary or imagined space and the digital layer was dominant, with the screen becoming infused into everyday academic activity .
Pre-pandemic, HEI were often called upon to integrate digital technologies, to develop ICT competencies, collaborate online and offer students flexibility or expanded opportunity. Those who used technology, no matter what shape or format, were depicted as “innovative”, for contributing towards extending educational practices.
During the pandemic, online learning and ERT have been conflated. Educators efforts to teach on platforms were described as “thin pedagogical gruel” (Laporte, C. 2020). In other institutions, online learning was labelled as a threat to the entire residential learning model. Digital had already played a part in making the “university” “simultaneously real and imagined, absent and present. Online offered a ‘constancy’ which was knowingly ambiguous, but nonetheless deeply significant” (Bayne et al.2014, quoted by Gourlay, 2021). As the pandemic word on, educators had to chose between
isomorphism – conform and comply to centralized expectations and create a comparable educational equivalent where you teach from behind the screen.
compromise – decentralize common norms, prioritize dialogue and wellness during the traumatic experience, offer choices and teach through screen or
defiance – subvert institutional expectations and platform norms and work in parallel, teach beyond the screen
ERT and my instance on using it had another unanticipated side effect. My insistence on the term meant that painted myself into opposite corners. Was ERT an easy and obvious cop-out to anticipate a problematic future when campus was hollowed out. ERT fails to acknowledge is that practitioners cannot do it all. Did we remove ourselves from those at the coalface, showing courage, resourcefulness and resilience. Could we have marshalled our capabilities and become embedded among decision makers at all levels? I’ve been wondering if anything was accomplished by attempting to avoid a conflation of these two concepts “Emergency Remote Teach” and “Digital Education”. Wondering if our insistence on the designation ERT has also been used to draw a distinction between “us” and “them”. Us – the critical users who labelled this time ERT. Them – those from within and without HEI’s who developed pandemic pedagogies on top of the campus solution.
Its also easy to over-generalize about institutional unreadiness for digital education during the pandemic. To complain and lay the blame on a range of different parties for poor choices about digital teaching. Yes, campus shutdowns were a catastrophe. ERT wasn’t the ideal. But I don’t only want to limit negative experiences with Zoom or uncertainty about how to how to address the common challenges with digital as a peculiar feature of the pandemic. Despite what the hype says, “doing” things online can’t be separated from the ongoing and historical stagnation in education quality and systemic decline, and how these circumstances have affected institutional readiness.
I want to take hope from the people who did heroic work in keeping the academic project alive for the past two years. Despite all the stress and trauma, the capabilities (no matter how uneven) of lecturers to shift their practices to another medium when circumstances demanded change is to be celebrated. Despite all the stress and trauma, the inexperience with digital networked media, the ability to shift teaching practices from one modality to another (working in exceptionally difficult circumstances) should be be recognized.
I’d like to take a step back from these hasty measures and the unreal moments that followed. To go beyond the obvious pain points that accompanied the pivot and were amplified by the many gaps and shortcomings when physical and in-person, face-to-face teaching became impossible. 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. And look at the workload ramifications for me, as a practitioner who works professionally in this space. I’m hoping that this will be helpful for those who identify with my position and find themselves burdened by the knowledge of appropriate use and the required ongoing labour and effort that was necessary to achieve these ends.
This is a living document. It is an open excerpt from a incomplete chapter that I am writing entitled “Designing the Webinar”. I’m exploring how conferencing technology, that became ubiquitous during ERT, has shaped our provision. It’s about how (with hindsight) might we take on the challenge of instructional design and enacting a suitable teaching methodology.
Hodges et al. (2020). The difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning, Educause Review, 27
Teräs et al. (2020) Post-Covid-19 Education and Education Technology ‘Solutionism’: a Seller’s Market. Postdigital Science and Education https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00164-x
Xie, J., A, G., & Rice, M. F. (2021). Instructional designers’ roles in emergency remote teaching during COVID-19. Distance Education, 42(1), 70–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2020.1869526
A long, long time ago, I was a member of a listserv. My subscription to IT Forum (run by itech1.coe.uga.edu), delivered a regular digest of technology and education expertise.
ITFORUM was a mailing list for anyone who was interested in instructional technology. It was place to discuss theories, research, new paradigms, and practices in the field of Instructional Technology. IT Forum had an archive of discussion papers and members would publish and respond each others thoughts.
The Forum supported the mission of the University of Georgia which was to “teach, conduct research, and provide service related to the integration of all forms of technology into learning in a variety of settings.” The group was open to anyone, but only those with an interest in IT and education joined. I remember the “voices” that posted were funny, incredibly erudite and insightful.
Us CAE newbies, who were doing our masters in Computer Assisted Education, were lurking on IT Forum. I was astonished at the continued generosity of this community and read the expertise. For me, a high school teacher who was just beginning to incorporate ICT into my teaching, there wasn’t a shortage of enthusiasm on our part. But there was a dire need for local expertise. I wasn’t brave enough to do a paper. But I think that I had found some of my teachers.
What has replaced the listserv?
Jump forward 25 or so years later, and our social feed has made sure that advice is available in abundance. Chat GPT will now also oblige. But are there meaningful, workable and ongoing conversations between learning designers, practitioners, academics, researchers, teachers and techies? Or has this become contested information territory between big tech and local experts. From my side, frankly, critical local expertise is in short supply. But this does not have to be the case.
Do we need to be thinking about another place for open thinking to be shared? An updated IT forum where relationships might offer
direct assistance to address particular problems
collegial support and career scaffolding
a role model to emulate.
One of the great strengths of IT forum was that it offered informal conversations and formal a component. A practitioner would produce a paper and we would discuss the position, long before it was published. Yes, contributors came and went. But this commitment to growing a knowledge ecology was the glue that held everything together.
In this time of formal and bureaucratic organizational forms, I think that we need to be wary of creating another structures. Perhaps our critical thinking needs some “re-wilding”. I was wondering if we could use gardening as a metaphor to visualize the critical process.
Critcal ed techies are knowledge gardeners. They seem innately able to inject life and beauty into their their own back and front yards (or screens). Their work requires a shed of garden tools, and bookshelves with information about plants and horticulture techniques. But it also requires much more. Although this knowledge and skills are crucial to cultivating your garden and tools make the job easier. Good gardeners are able to think ecologically. Work practically. Impose their will on nature and let nature take it course. They see the whole life cycle experience, seeds, sprout, bloom, produce seed, and ultimately die. Breaking a gardener’s work down into disparate parts as gives a very shallow understanding of the overall work and effort required . Good gardening is often modeled by folk who are happy pottering around. These people show (rather than a read instructions from the packet). Gardeners talk through their experience with their patient friends, children or spouses. Even the experience of not growing what they were hoping for and how they learned from errors and mistakes makes them happy. Digging the hole and embedding the plant is only a small part of the whole experience. Gardeners also know that it is more important to induct others into the ecological way of thinking, so that others can successfully grow their plot. And perhaps, if necessary, also meet the greater needs of the village where they are located.
In my experience the conditions and practices for encouraging the ongoing improvement of individuals and organization have always been rooted in relationships. Platforms (whether list serves, blogs, social media, Zoom, Mastodon or now Wikipedia) have been the way in which we connect and grow our ideas. But just like gardeners in one part of the world don’t plant certain plants, because they don’t suit local conditions. We too need local gardeners, who can mentor other aspiring gardeners.
This blog post is in response to CSET 2025 – Critical studies of education and technology: an invitation to connect. Neil Selwyn asked us to look at four questions. This is my answer to Q 4
Question 4: What grounds for hope are there? Can we point to local instances of digital technology leading to genuine social benefits and empowerment?
PS Laura noticed that this post is dated 2021, and the dates for the CSET event was 2025. The 2021 is half complete. I ditched it and am going to use that work in Mentorship Building Part 2.
