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Panic‐gogy: A Conversation With Sean Michael Morris

2020; Wiley; Volume: 29; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/ntlf.30239

2166-3327

Kelly J. Baker,

Impact of Technology on Adolescents

Our editor interviewed Sean Michael Morris, senior instructor in the Learning, Design, and Technology (LDT) program at the University of Colorado Denver's School of Education and Human Development, about the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on higher ed. This interview is edited and abbreviated. I saw the term being batted about on Twitter before I used it. At first, it was referring to this idea of just grasping at straws, trying to figure out what you could possibly do. Teachers are suddenly forced to go online and experiencing that kind of panic about how to maintain [their] teaching in this environment that [they] don't understand. People are feeling a real strong desperation to maintain some sort of continuity. There's not going to be continuity. But people are trying to grasp it. How much of the normal can I keep? If we're looking at a pedagogy that is going to bridge that gap between the on-ground and the online in the midst of a pandemic, it really has to come back to the human side of things. Critical pedagogy is a kind of pedagogy of resilience. It's very flexible [and] human-centered. When conditions change, the pedagogy doesn't have to necessarily change. The problem that people are facing with the switch from on-ground to online is that methods change. If they return back to the center of why they teach and what's important to them when they teach, then think about how to get that done online. Why do I do this? What do I care about? What do I not want to lose? Most of the nervousness around this pivot online has been about how do I do this right? How do I take something that works in face-to-face classes and put it in online? How, how, how. I like the way that you moved it to the why. Why are we teaching? This moment forces folks who maybe weren't thinking very carefully about their pedagogy to really examine it. I hope that's what happens. When this [pivot] first happened, a whole bunch of instructional designers rushed in saying, “We know how to do this. We'll help you.” What instructional designers do is design courses modeled after a very specific kind of teaching. But a lot of people have a more unique individual approach to how they teach. They sample from different places: teachers that they had, some professional development they've done, reading [and] some other kinds of training. They don't have just one way of doing it. Instructional design, especially very standard instructional design, emphasizes a single way of doing things. It's reliable and research-based and produces certain kinds of results. But to take the individual approach of a teacher in a classroom—who's never taught online, doesn't have an interest in digital and connects with their students in other ways—and try to move that into an online space by instructional design, it's going to completely erase their pedagogy. So, what do you do? When you are in a crisis situation, you use what's available to you. The advice I've been trying to give is don't try anything new. Use tools you're familiar with to keep students engaged in the learning process. What matters now is you just keep people engaged to keep them feeling like school is still there. Students still care about their education. The assumption that they're suddenly gonna go rogue on us and disappear is just kind of absurd. This fear plays into a lot of approaches in online learning that emphasize monitoring of students. Essentially if they're not in front of you, if they're behind a screen, you have to control them somehow. And the solution to that is not more surveillance. The solution to that is more trust and a recognition that students don't come to college to cheat. They come to college to learn. Your students are still your students. If you can somehow figure out a way to teach through the screen, then you can still maintain the sort of individual pedagogy that you practice. This crisis lays bare assumptions that some college professors make about students' intentions. They're not taking what you do seriously. They're only in this class for a certain grade or a certain requirement. Across the board, we need to be generous, forgiving and patient with each other. Instead, we should be extending grace to people right now, and always really. Assume good faith. Assume that folks, students and teachers, are doing the best they can. Students are not trying to pull one over on you. Maybe they have kids at home. Maybe they're now in places that aren't safe for them. Maybe they are looking for a job in the middle of a pandemic to help support their family. Students' lives are complex. This pandemic really shows that in a way that maybe wasn't apparent to instructors before. Across the board, we need to be generous, forgiving and patient with each other. No one is going to do this right. Everyone's going to make mistakes. So, don't stop talking to each other. Don't stop trying to understand their motivations or trying to have these good pedagogical discussions. This [pandemic] does get people to think about what's at the core of why they teach—what's at the core of what education is for. I just hope that if we can keep dialogue going in a forgiving compassionate space, we're going to learn more from this [dialogue] than if we start shutting things down. I'm kind of hopeful that one of the silver linings is that folks will make their and their institutions' approaches to education more student-centric. My colleagues are checking in on students more frequently than they might have in a face-to-face class. Seeing that grace and generosity is heartening. We all really need both now. It's hard to tell what good things will come out of this or what are the kind of things that we don't necessarily want to have happen that have a real capitalist edge to them. And you see people rushing into the gap who have something to sell, not only tech companies but also people who are claiming to have solved this problem long ago if you just do it the way that I tell you to do it or the way my book says. There are people who are making this [crisis] into an opportunity to sell themselves. That's really unfortunate, because there's people who need real help out there. And you're right, if they get the right kind of help, if they get the right kind of support, they will have the motivation and the freedom to look at their own pedagogies to think about what matters here, probably for a really wonderful outcome. Everyone also is very strongly hoping that everything gets back to normal. If it [the pivot] lasts the summer, then we'll get back to normal in August and probably won't see any effect from this. If the pandemic lasts 18 months, as some of the projections say it could, we are going to see education change dramatically in that time. But in order for any kind of change to happen, we have to be encouraging people to be critical and reflective in the moment. Eighteen months is a long time to then move back to face-to-face classes, back to being in the classroom. And not even to speak to what that does to enrollments. But I was talking to the group of adjuncts from SEIU (Service Employees International Union) and one of the things that came up was “I have to use this program, and I'm not familiar with it, but my administration is saying I have to use this thing.” So, I said, “OK, if you have to use it and you don't know how and your students don't know, then learn it together.” And be really honest: “I don't know what I'm doing. You don't know what you're doing. Let's do this together and figure this out.” A more collaborative, community approach to teaching is valuable to folks who are stumbling their way through. And we're all going to be stumbling our way through. There's a pandemic going on. That's on everybody's minds. It's going to affect the way people teach and learn. I saw someone coin the term “pandemagogy,” which rolls off the tongue better than panic-gogy. Pandemagogy recognizes our very unique situation. What is your parting advice to instructors? What's the best thing that they could be doing right now in this pandemic as they teach? What should they focus on more rather than tools? What should motivate and guide them right now? The most important thing is keeping in touch with each other. Making sure that you are forming networks. Keeping in touch with your administration. Keeping in touch with your students. Stay engaged in the process of education, whatever that means to you. It's not about grades. It's not about learning outcomes. Right now, it's really just about can we get through this as people, so let's just stay engaged with one another. Stay in touch with each other and support each other through all of this. Yes, we're all just trying to get through, which might be the best instructors, and all of us really, can hope for right now. This is an opportunity to make teaching and education an even more meaningful experience. Because if we do discover that there's community in this [crisis] and that teaching and learning can be a collaborative effort, that enriches everybody. It teaches us something very new about what education can do. That part would be fantastic.