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Posted on by Alison Langmead

Critical Digital Pedagogy and the History of Art and Architecture

This Co-Learning Encounter is primarily designed for those who wish to participate and learn about critical digital pedagogies and the history of art and architecture. By the end of this two-week encounter, the community participants should feel prepared to begin teaching, with a workable syllabus and online interaction design in-hand.

Critical Digital Pedagogy and the History of Art and Architecture

A Co-Learning Encounter designed by Kate Joranson and Alison Langmead

Proposed Schedule of Topics

Unit 1 Unit 2 Unit 3 Unit 4 Unit 5
Introduction, Community Creation, and Intentions Critical Digital Pedagogy Object-Based Learning, Online Active Learning/ Class Discussion Mid-CLE Retrospectives and Forward-Planning
Unit 6 Unit 7 Unit 8 Unit 9 Unit 10
Accessibility Conveying Information Assignments / (un)grading Liberatory Pedagogy in a Time of Crisis Retrospectives and Forward-Planning

Time Commitment Requested

 

Asynchronous Engagement

About 30 hours total

 Synchronous Engagement

About 30 hours total

Foundational Learning Foci

  • A critical digital pedagogy is about connection and the creation of community even when our ability to see, read and listen to one another is always mediated by technology.
  • The process of moving from a face-to-face learning environment into a remote learning environment is difficult, heavy with intentionality, and potentially liberatory.
  • The work of learning about the affordances of the remote learning environment is also the work of learning about the assumed and perhaps never-before-clearly-seen affordances of the face-to-face learning environment.
  • This transition also makes possible a study and recognition of the inequitable distribution of educational resources, whether face-to-face or socially distanced.

Asynchronous Efforts

1. Preparing Your Syllabus

We ask for the first component of your asynchronous work during this CLE to be that you arrive with in a syllabus (new, old, of any type) that you want to re-design in order to teach it anew in the remote learning environment. Keep coming back to it and working on it as we move ahead. With engagement and persistence, you will find it transformed.

2. Summative Document

  • Over the course of this Co-Learning Encounter (CLE), we would like to encourage you to make particular conscious effort to note your questions and reflections on this experience, and take the time to write them out each day.
  • We would like to encourage you to produce a summative document at the end of this CLE designed to share out what you have learned, opinions you have garnered, resources you find helpful, or any other such information that might be useful to our wider community.
  • Overall Questions to Prompt Reflection:
    • What do/did you want to learn?
    • What are you learning?
    • What did you find surprising?
    • What are you curious about?
    • What are you never going to do that you learned today?
    • What seems possible, and what seems impossible?
    • In what ways did the experience of this CLE allow you to see what your students might experience in your online classroom?

Synchronous Efforts

In this design, there are 10 synchronous sessions, each held in two, 45-minute engagement periods

Unit 1: Introduction and Generous Thinking

Content Offerings

Intentional Preparation

  • Make an honest assessment of your dreams for, and your attachment to, the syllabus you have brought to this CLE, and how you might like to work through it during this Co-Learning Encounter (CLE). That is, reflect on the course you are bringing to the table–your personal connection to its content, how you view your own teaching style at this time, what your teaching goals are (both onsite and online), your thoughts on what you’d like the students to learn, etc… 

First Engagement

  • The co-learning, co-hosts will provide their own context for participating in the co-learning environment, followed by invitations to contribute from the whole community. 
  • You are invited to consider questions such as:
    • What questions are you going to be chewing on for the next two weeks?
    • What are you wrestling with currently? 
    • What syllabus did you bring and why? 
    • What are you feeling strong about in terms of your online pedagogical approach?

Second Engagement

  • Discussion about our preferred shared group practices, think through the topics that have been set out for this two-week CLE, contribute ideas about its organization, and consider what it means to practice generously in academia.

Unit 2: Critical Digital Pedagogy

Content Offerings

Intentional Preparation

  • Reflect directly on the current state of your syllabus and think about where it is now and where you might like it to be. Think through its relationship to your vision of the course itself, but also to the logistical details it represents. We will be presenting brief, “current snapshots” of our syllabi in the second engagement this week.

First Engagement

  • Discussion of Stommel’s definition of Critical Digital Pedagogy and the affordances of synchronous and asynchronous learning. How are we thinking we would like to structure the actual logistics of our classes?

Second Engagement

  • We will continue setting up workshop norms, in practice, through the process of presenting the current state of our syllabi: where they are and where we would like them to go.
  • We will be deciding together if this is best done in breakout groups or as a community of the whole. This arrangement can also change as we see fit.

Unit 3: Object-Based Learning

Content Offerings

  • Shari Tishman, Slow Looking: The Art and Practice of Learning through Observation, Chapters 1 and 2, pp. 1-27 (New York: Routledge, 2017).
  • Jennifer L. Roberts, “The Power of Patience,” Harvard Magazine (Nov-Dec, 2013).
  • Other content as contributed by the co-learners

Intentional Preparation

  • Think over how you would have used objects in your on-site classroom for the course you are working on in this CLE. What would you have liked for your students to have learned from these object-focused activities? How much of those learning outcomes are truly predicated on your students co-viewing particular works of art, and how many of them could be achieved using household or neighborhood objects? How many of them could be achieved by using digital surrogates?

First Engagement

  • How could we engage slow looking, material analysis, consideration of facture, and/or site analysis in an online/distance education environment?

Second Engagement

  • We will work together to apply the concepts (and realizations) from the first engagement to our course methods and materials. How might we apply our knowledge of object-based learning to an environment that sometimes undermines—but sometimes supports—its goals?

Unit 4: Active Learning/Class Discussion

Content Offerings

Intentional Preparation

  • Reflect on 1 or 2 meaningful class discussions that you have either led or to which you have contributed, in your capacity as an instructor, student discussion leader, or student participant. What made them meaningful?

First Engagement

  • Discussion of intentional preparation prompt, and how to bring these qualities/techniques/outcomes into an online environment.
  • What is active learning and what’s it all about, for real?

Second Engagement

  • We will work together to apply the concepts (and realizations) from the first engagement to our course methods and materials. How might we produce an active, engaged class experience through online/distance education?

Unit 5: Mid-CLE Retrospectives and Springboards

Content Offerings

  • None from us. Please focus on preparing your syllabus and course outlook in order to participate in the Mid-CLE Retrospective conversations!

Intentional Preparation

  • Return to the questions you offered on Day 1. Where does this question stand now? How have your questions shifted? Do you have new questions? Where would you like to go over the next week (and beyond)?

First Engagement

  • So that each co-learner may have 15 minutes of our attention, we will be breaking out into groups to present our mid-CLE reflections to one another, ask for advice, and get feedback. 
  • When your breakout group comes to any sort of consensus on a topic, comes up with any communal questions, or in any other way has something that they’d like to bring to the whole community, please do make a note!

Second Engagement

  • Group discussion of the findings, questions, and feedback shared in the breakout groups of the first engagement, along with an overall summative conversation.

Unit 6: Accessibility

Content Offerings

Intentional Preparation

  • Consider what you, personally, find challenging about learning in online environments.

First Engagement

  • Discussion of content and intentional preparation prompts, as well as accessibility resources within Canvas.

Second Engagement

  • We will work together to apply the concepts from the first engagement to course methods and materials. Let’s consider how we might adapt as well as design course activities with the lens of accessibility and inclusivity. 

Unit 7: Conveying Information

Content Offerings

Intentional Preparation

  • Consider your experience as a teacher and a learner, and how those roles have intersected over your lifetime. When you are conveying information in either role, what modes are most comfortable for you, and what modes are challenging? How has this shifted over your lifetime?

First Engagement

  • Discussion of content and intentional preparation prompts.

Second Engagement

  • We will work together to apply the concepts from the first engagement to course methods and materials.

Unit 8: Assignments and (un)Grading

Content Offerings

Intentional Preparation

  • Reflect on your own experience being graded and assigning grades, and consider your relationship to being evaluated and evaluating others. How are your values challenged and/or reinforced as you consider methods of un-grading?

First Engagement

  • Discussion of content and intentional preparation prompts.

Second Engagement

  • We will work together to apply the concepts from the first engagement to course methods and materials.

Unit 9: Liberatory Pedagogy in a Time of Crisis

Content Offerings

Intentional Preparation

  • We are revisiting some of the critical pedagogy concepts we discussed in the first two days of our Co-Learning Encounter. How have these past 2 months affected your own sense of identity?  How would you describe your relationship to productivity and compassion? 

First Engagement

  • We will break into pairs and talk about our plans for “Day One.”

Second Engagement

  • We will meet as a large group and discuss the Intentional Preparation prompt (as noted on the course plan) and also think ahead to the summation of the course. We will be asking you to post the beginnings of your summative ideas on a Canvas discussion board before synchronous CLE time on Friday.

Unit 10: Retrospectives and Springboard

Content Offerings

  • None from us. Prepare your remarks on the summative document you’d like to produce for our larger community. We hope that the “Intentional Preparation” prompts offered throughout this CLE have helped you to better identify what you have learned, what new opinions you have garnered, what resources you have found (and will continue to find) helpful, or any other information that you’d like to share out.

Intentional Preparation

  • Go back to the questions you offered on Day 1, and your reflections from Day 5. Where do your questions stand now? Do you have new questions? Read also through your reflections and do some metacognitive work: What have you learned about how you think, what you value, and what you fear about online/hybrid teaching, and teaching in general? Where do you plan to go from here?

First Engagement

  • Synchronous conversation for all who wish to join! We are also happy to facilitate any breakout groups you all might wish to have.
  • However, if you would like to spend this time reading, reflecting, and responding to the summative posts on the discussion board, we welcome that as well! As we build up a community record of this experience, focusing our attention on the discussion boards at this moment will reap benefits for us all.

Second Engagement

  • Synchronous conversation for all who wish to join! We are also happy to facilitate any breakout groups you all might wish to have.
  • However, if you would like to spend this time reading, reflecting, and responding to the summative posts on the discussion board, we welcome that as well! As we build up a community record of this experience, focusing our attention on the discussion boards at this moment will reap benefits for us all.