We are living in strange times! Our world is now more online than ever, and thanks to the COVID pandemic, this class–and many like it–has no physical, face-to-face component.
There are some upsides to all this, but I for one miss gathering in hallways, miss walking into the classroom, miss the movement and engagement of an in-person class, miss the groups and the crowds and the hubbub. It is not the same to be sitting at the computer, peering at images on a screen.
So the first thing to say is that I hope all of us manage to take some time away from our screens. Get out and about. Exercise, if that’s your thing. Sit in the garden, walk down the street, visit a park. We don’t want to be slaves to the technology.
But second, we can acknowledge that there are indeed some benefits to this strange, new normal, and I hope we can seize them and run with them. For one thing, you can go to class in your PJs (or at least PJ bottoms!) if you want.
You can be home with your family, if you want to, or go to a cabin, and still keep up with what’s going on. There’s something cool about the fact that several of us will be tuning in from a variety of time zones scattered around the world.
Third, then, I want to embrace the way in which we can be more open than ever. I like that we can contribute to public knowledge in some way, whether by writing blogs or uploading videos on YouTube, or even inviting others to come join us for some class sessions.
I feel, very strongly, that those of us in the university, especially a public university, have a responsibility that goes beyond the “ivory tower” or walled garden of academia. We have a duty to be involved in public discourse, to intervene in current debates, to spread knowledge and thought, as well as to be open to criticism and ways of thinking that don’t always get much of a hearing in the academy.
This is one reason why we are not using Canvas (or any similar closed “Learning Management System”), and why any content we produce is being released to the world under a “creative commons” license, meaning essentially that people can do what they will with it, so long as they don’t try to make money out of it in any way.
We are creating what they call in the jargon open educational resources.
Fourth, however, I recognize that you (or others) may feel that there are risks to this approach. Some of these are risks that I feel we should take. For instance, there is the risk of looking foolish, or the risk of making mistakes. But without occasional foolishness (and frequent mistakes), no learning is possible.
But you may feel there are other risks, which may arise from your personal circumstances (the country in which you are living, or your family or friends or whatever), and you may want to minimize them. I will help you all I can with that.
For instance, there is the matter of privacy, especially on the Internet. You may not want your name attached to the work that you produce.
For most of you, I think there are good reasons why you would want your name attached, as you begin to establish what could evolve into a personal, academic and professional profile. You may well want to taylor your blog with that end in mind. Certainly, it is usually much better to feature on the Internet for your thoughts on Latin America than for whatever random photos or videos someone may have uploaded to Facebook!
But you may have good reasons to want to be anonymous, or rather pseudonymous. If this is true, then bear in mind the following:
- You do not have to publish your blog under your real name. You can either be anonymous (“a UBC student”) or you could construct a new persona… “Intrepid Voyager”; “Seeker of Knowledge”; “Salsa Kid”; whatever. So long as I can match your persona to your person, that is fine by me.
- In our Zoom sessions, you do not have to turn on your camera. (There may be other reasons beyond security to turn it off, too; bandwidth issues, for instance.) To be honest, I would prefer that you do have your camera on, but I understand if you don’t. Note that if we record Zoom sessions, you name is not displayed, though here, too, it can be your persona that participates!
- On the other hand, in break-out (small-group) sessions, I do hope that, if at all possible, you turn your camera on. There are more intimate discussions, and will never be recorded.
- You do not have to appear in the video that you produce as a final class project. Your work here, too, can be credited to whatever persona you may have constructed. Again, that is fine by me.
So we will be open, we will sometimes be foolish, we will be happy to make mistakes, but we will not be stupid, and above all we will look after ourselves and others.