MALAT 2022 Virtual Symposium – A Reflection

Photo by mibby23 on Flickr. (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Our first credit course in the Master of Arts – Learning And Technology (MALAT) program kicked off with a week-long where we were required to participate in a number of live and pre-recorded webinars across three content streams, to ask questions on senior students’ , , and projects on the program Padlet site, and to engage with each other through questions, comments, and ongoing discussions. The range of activities and subject matter afforded us an opportunity to gain exposure to a broad range of issues currently being explored in technology-mediated learning, as well as foundations of academic practice and some insight into paths of completion for the program.

There was a lot of excellent content, ranging from with Dr. Elizabeth Childs and Dr. Doug Hamilton, to with Julia Szucs, to Learning in Turbulent Times: Our Student Stories, with Chad Flinn, Christy Boyce, and Brandon Carson, who are graduating MALAT students. There was so much to absorb and synthesize and analyze, all while wrapping up my own teaching semester at two institutions, with final projects, presentations, and grading.

Many of the sessions prompted me to realize how the tools, platforms, and delivery in online learning have evolved and adapted in the last five years. Dave Cormier’s talk from 2017 entitled Intentional messiness of online communities asks the question, “How can we use the Internet to support student learning?” His talk illustrated the various models of “openness” in learning, and how they can be applied in both theory and in practice. Cormier (2017) also made the excellent point that learning is like a rhizome, difficult to contain, and typically follows its own path. He also stressed that learning takes place independent of whatever technology is used to deliver it, and the choice of learning environments is also an important one. (Cormier, 2017)

The applied research project presented by Christopher Rowe (2022) was particularly intriguing, as it illustrated how an applied research methodology could be employed to draw greater insight and understanding from existing research, bringing it to bear on the needs of a particular group of educators. I look forward to reading the conclusions from Christopher’s research.

I also found the discussion around the subject of signature pedagogies (Hamilton, 2022) very interesting, but also challenging to consider. The idea of a pedagogical identity or culture based on “shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices” (MacDonald, 2013) is a noble goal to aspire toward, and no doubt, some post-secondary institutions are further along that path than others. Some of the barriers to achieving it can include individuals’ desire for academic freedom and to maintain control and ownership of intellectual property, which may at times be in direct conflict with the philosophical framework of open learning. 

The talk that I found the most meaningful and inspirational was Earl Einarson’s talk on Designing from a place of Indigenous knowledge systems. (Einarson, 2022) The idea that “knowledge and the land are the same thing,” (Einarson, 2022) and that the digital environments we create can be considered to be virtual lands, is deeply thought-provoking. How we care for those lands, so that they may continue to support future generations is an idea I had not previously considered.

Overall, the MALAT 2022 Virtual Symposium gave me a great deal to think about in planning out my path through the Master of Arts – Learning and Technology program, and a broad exposure to academic practices and frameworks at the Master’s level, which is a new and exciting experience for me. I am looking forward to the great discussions to come with my classmates and faculty members, and seeing where this adventure leads us.