Month: September 2023

We’ve been asked to write about a contributor to the field whose work is at the intersection of learning and technology and consider looking at the writing and scholarship of those who may not occupy an ‘obvious’ or dominant space in the literature.

I was pleased to come across Dr. Maha Bali, who was one of the guest narrators for the audiobook version of this textbook. She is a Professor of Practice in the Centre for Learning and Teaching at the American University of Cairo. Her areas of focus include digital literacies and intercultural learning.  

One of the concepts that Bali writes and speaks of, is “intentionally equitable hospitality” in learning design (Bali and Zamora, 2022). This is a notion that teachers, or workshop facilitators, are hosts of a learning space, and to practice intentionally equitable hospitality means to be cognizant of who that space is hospitable for, and who it is not.

A related idea, which is Bali expands on in this keynote presentation about an equitable, community-oriented approach to AI in education, is that of the “equity care matrix”. The origins of this concept was a question which Bali posed at a talk she presented at the OpenEd20 conference, which was: “What is equity without care, and what is care without equity?” (Bali and Zamora, 2022). Here, with a lens on educational technology, she demonstrates with examples how there cannot be one without the other.

References:

Bali, M., & Zamora, M. (2022). Intentionally Equitable Hospitality as critical instructional design. Designing for Care.

Bali, M. Towards an Equitable Community-Oriented Approach to AI in Education, YouTube, July 14, 2023.

Bali, M., & Zamora, M. (2022). The equity-care matrix: Theory and practice. Italian journal of educational technology, 30(1), 92-115.

Confession time: reading this third of Weller’s book made me nostalgic. I started getting into publishing and sharing content online during a time when most spaces I engaged with were filled with people using social media and blogging for good. So my reflections in this post draw on some of those experiences.

From ivory tower to online community

One lesson from 2002 to 2011 that has immediate relevance is how blogs and social media enabled greater access to information and learning opportunities. In Chapter 10, there is a fulsome discussion of how the advent of blogs gave academics and other public intellectuals the ability to share their work outside the traditional confines of the ivory tower and perhaps a pathway out of the dreaded “publish or perish” option for those in academia. I have benefitted from the ideas and teachings from those who have chosen to maintain an active presence on social media and give freely of their knowledge online – perhaps because they see it as a privilege and a duty to contribute to civil society. Current toxicity online notwithstanding (cue sad music here), I think this kind of knowledge and information sharing by reputable, credible experts is needed more than ever.

Hmmmm….are we really ready for this?

One of my other professional hats is contract instructor in higher education where I work for a teaching-focussed, public polytechnic university in the lower mainland of British Columbia. As I read Chapter 16 about Personalized Learning Environments, I thought of the well-intentioned goals of seeking to provide learners with experiences tailored to their individual needs. However, anyone who has experience with public, accredited post-secondary schools will tell you that getting a course from conception to open for registration is not an easy feat. Between acquiring Senate approval for the course, identifying learning outcomes, and aligning the course with appropriate skills and knowledge, it is a lot. Throw in varying levels of language proficiency, pre-requisite skills, and learning styles, and you have a very challenging threshold for scaling Personalized Learning Environments in this kind of environment.

References: Weller, M. (2020). 25 Years of Ed Tech. Athabasca University Press

As I was reading the first eight chapters of Weller’s book 25 Years of Ed Tech, there were a couple of concepts that really resonated with me, both as a student who has taken courses via e-learning, and an instructor who has delivered courses using methods made possible by the innovations mentioned in these chapters. Specifically, the ideas of: e-learning having a “less-than” status in comparison to face to face instruction; and the challenges with developing consistent and practical standards to govern the quality and usability of digital resources. These ideas stood out to me, as I have encountered all of them in my own work and academic experiences.

In Chapter 6, we read about the “angst about the implications of e-learning for higher education at the end of the 1990s” (Weller, 2020). In this chapter, we see some of the history of the long-held belief that face-to-face instruction is the legitimate gold-standard of teaching and learning. Even today, we see some of the legacy of that thinking played out in our biases. As a post-secondary instructor, I have heard students and faculty raise concerns that a program or course that is offered online is somehow less rigorous, engaging, or worthwhile.

In Chapter 8, I found the ideas about standards very interesting. As someone who is at this time in the midst of creating an online course for employer, I have a keen interest in SCORM compliance as this is one of the standards of our organization’s Learning Management System. In reading about the history of attempts to create standards using meta data and other requirements, I could fully appreciate the balance between rigour and pragmatism. If standards are too onerous, they won’t be used. If standards don’t exist at all, the quality of resources will ultimately suffer and not address user needs.

Reference:

Weller, M. (2020). 25 Years of Ed Tech. Athabasca University Press