Welcome everybody! Welcome to the Future Transform. My name is Brian Alexander. I'm your host, the Forum's creator and your Chief Catherter for the next hour of conversation. I'm really excited by this week's guests. We have a terrific talk to our discussion. Ever since very early 2020, we've been exploring every month, in fact every other week at times, what the pandemic has meant for higher education, what we've learned, how higher education has responded, and where we're headed. Now this week's guest is very interested in questions of disability and what the COVID-19 experience has taught us about that. Lee Scowder-Pussett is an absolute pleasure to host. She's a colleague of mine at Georgetown University, where she's a director for assistant director for digital learning. She is someone who is a fantastic WordPress ninja who has been using WordPress and teaching about it for a long time. In fact, this past semester I've had the pleasure of having her in one of my classes teaching students how to use WordPress. She's a great writer with a long background, a terrific thinker, and for my money one of our best guests. So today we're gonna start off by talking about what the pandemic has taught us and how we can redesign higher education for the future. So without any further ado, let me bring the stage. Lee Scowder-Pussett. Hello Lee. Lee Scowder-Pussett-Hey Brian, how are you? Lee Scowder-Great, how are you doing this afternoon? Lee Scowder-I'm doing really well actually, you know, it's a nice, quiet, penultimate day of final exams at Georgetown, so fingers crossed everything keeps running smoothly. We just pivoted to give people the option of changing their exams at the last minute to remote because of our spike in COVID-19. So we're sort of on call right now for faculty asking us at the very last minute how they could do that. So as you do in these particular times, of course. Lee Scowder-Oh, that's, yes. I introduced you by just frantically gesturing at the many things you've done in the past, but as you know in the forum we'd like to have people introduce themselves by talking about what they'll be doing in the next year. So Lee, what are the big topics, the big projects that are top of mind for you as you look ahead to 2022? Lee Scowder-This is going to be an opportunity to plug my book that's about to come out. So actually I edited a book with Kansas, I always forget, it's the University of Press of Kansas, right? Anyway, it's called Affective Labor and Alt-At Careers. And it's an edited collection of people working in various staff roles from across higher education coming together to write about and talk about affective and emotional labor in our work. And we're really, really excited. It's the first collection of its kind. It's cross, I don't want to say it's cross disciplinary, but it's cross because it is that as well. But it's very much across departments and across silos. So we have people from student services, people from libraries, people from faculty development, people from IT, people from, you know, from across the institution, again, as I said, in various staff roles, talking about emotional labor. We're also going to have a companion podcast, because of course we are, to go with it. As timing goes, the book, the manuscript was completed and put to the press literally a month before everything shut down in 2020. So I wanted to give the authors and the contributors an opportunity to, you know, revisit what they said in their contribution and to think about it through the lens of COVID-19 as well and how that may or may not have impacted, amplified, changed what it is that they said in their essay that they had written in the before time, so to speak. So look for that. I'm really, really excited. The authors and the contributors were all amazing. The book is amazing. And I can't wait for it to come out. So it is, should be out. Everything is going according to schedule. It should be out in March. So that's the big thing that I'm, I guess I'm not working on it anymore, but it is the thing that I'm gearing up and thinking about how to promote, how to talk about, and just trying to get the word out to people about it for March. So you will be working on it? Yeah, I guess that's right. I've podcast episodes to edit. So there's that. Books are like children. It never ends. No, no. And I'm looking forward to finding that one type. I was soon as I get the published copy that no one caught. What else are you going to be doing on Georgetown's campus? Are you going to be teaching more domain of one's own classes? Or can I talk to you doing more WordPress classes with me? Sure, that was actually really a lot of fun because so what Brian didn't say is that he was teaching and a course on the history of technology.  And I always do a brief overview and a really brief history of WordPress that is open source is longstanding. What does that mean? But the students actually don't usually care about that. They're just like, show me how to use WordPress, right? I don't really doesn't really matter to me all that much. They get interested when I say that WordPress is the back end of a lot of the internet that gets them interested because then it's a transferable skill. But in Brian's class, what was great is that we actually dove into the history of WordPress and really did a critical examination through looking at various iterations of WordPress, the various annual themes, the various back end interfaces like the block editor, Brian's favorite thing in the world. And what that says about the evolution of WordPress as a technology. And it was just a really great opportunity to look critically at WordPress, at the history of WordPress and what the evolution of WordPress teaches us about the evolution of technology, the evolution of interface, the evolution of the web, all of these kinds of things. And it was really great because, you know, some of the students are young. And so it's like WordPress is, you know, only slightly younger than they are. So they never knew a world without WordPress kind of thing. And so that was a lot of fun. But I should be, I also do in the learning design and technology program, I do a course on a design studio actually on e portfolios and digital identity. So I work with the LDT students on developing not just their e portfolio, but thinking holistically about digital identity, building their digital identity, and really being able to get into that metacognitive work of connecting the work that they do in the LDT program with the work that they want to eventually do the work that they've done before and who they are. So and with some WordPress sprinkled in there, because that's the platform, we don't require, but we encourage them to use for it. So it's a lot of fun. I saw the question. There we go. It's University Press of Canvas. Thank you, Mark. Well, the the forum community is incredibly brilliant and really, really fast to the URL. And I have a preorder link, which I didn't even know I had. Thank you. You're a good friend. But everybody would lead just to describe. I want to make sure that you hear the the cognitive leaps she made with a great deal of elegance and speed, which was to move from the details of manually using software to the larger conceptual issues around them, everything from design to the human components. This is one of the reasons we love Lee's because she was able to do that kind of work just just effortlessly. I'm really looking forward to that Lee. And I've got all kinds of ideas. Yeah. And thanks everybody for for quickly doing the bibliographic work. John Holmbeck had a quick question for you actually, which may start us off. He asks, Do you find today's students less technically adept when facing code? I think it's just differently technically adept. Go on. Right.   Yes, there we go. Right. And my dad had a, you know, my dad got a compact Presario and was very early on the web and was really into BBSs. Right.  And then, you know, I started an undergraduate program in the mid 90s and had a, you know, forward looking professor, adjunct professor, because we were taking a desktop publishing course. So this is the sort of, you know, this is when I was doing it. We're doing the desktop publishing. We needed a 15 week course on desktop publishing to learn frame maker. And what what what our professor said, he's like, look, the interface is and again, this is why I'm interested also in the history of interfaces and how things have changed is, you know, he said the interface for frame maker is getting increasingly like what you see is what you get. And so we don't need to spend 15 weeks on this, I'll spend seven weeks on this, show you the basics. But then you really all want to get jobs moving forward, you need to learn how to code an HTML. And we were like, okay. And so then we spend the second half of the course learning how to code hand code and HTML, we learned about the one by one clear gift, which I saw through my timeline, somebody had written it recently has written a history of which I'm so excited because no one ever believes me now when I tell them about it. And so I had a certain technical adept, you know, I was technically adept at these things. I wrote on the web, I kind of embraced Twitter. And then in my previous job, though at University of Mary Washington, I taught an intro to digital studies course. And when I was teaching that course, that was when Snapchat was like all the rage. And it didn't matter how many times I taught the course and how many times the students tried to explain to me why they loved Snapchat, I never got Snapchat. I was just like, why not Instagram? Yeah. And so again, and I see my own kids, I have an almost 13 and I'm almost 15 year old.  You know, my daughter's online as an admin on like five different Minecraft servers, you know, my son plays this game called geometry dash. But the cool thing about geometry dash is that they've made it basically open source. So that participant players can create their own geometry dash levels that then they can share with their friends, or submit for approval, then they get integrated into the game. You know, so they're they're technically adapted a lot of things that I, I don't know, I know discord, but I'm not nearly as good as my daughter is is like, she's on like 27 discord servers. But if I asked them to attach something to an email, yeah, no, they probably don't know how to do that. But again, it's different expectations about they they do have technical skills, they just we all have different technical skills, based on what it is we we use every day, and what it is we've kind of grown up using or or embraced using in that sort of thing. So I think that it's it's very much. And again, my kids are also really privileged, right? We live in Northern Virginia, we are I you know, I work at Georgetown, my husband works in DC, we're doing okay. And that's the other thing that I learned when I went on my other previous jobs, I have lots of previous jobs. When I was working at a place like Morehead State University, where there's, you know, very little broadband, you know, very little high speed, not wide access to computers, well, they have a very different technical knowledge. Yeah, right. They have much more of a mechanical knowledge. They know how to do things on mobile phones, in ways that I, you know, that I haven't embraced. So again, it's it's very dependent on the population that you're talking about. In terms of privilege in terms of race. And just in terms of also, I don't want to say generational. But you know what, that matters, right? That thing that you embrace, think of it as like all of our favorite TV shows, right that the next generation just doesn't get. It's a different, different situation completely. We have the, the chat box is going crazy with nostalgia. Glad I could help. John Hollendick may have defeated us all by talking about working on a Sinclair, which is just great. The but one quick question came in from Steve Ehrman, who asks, your session about WordPress in context, is or will there be a way for us to learn from you, either a recording of that session or a forthcoming paper? Yeah, you make it sound like I'm going to write the thing. So, so well, in Brian's class, what we've ended up doing is it was actually a conversation that took place over six different classes. Yeah, was it? And so it was really experimental in that sense, where or experiential, should I say, because we talked about WordPress, and then we got them into the Commons blog, which has the old WordPress interface, and had them in that. And then we talked a little bit about what that meant. And then, you know, brought them back and said, Okay, now set up your domain and install Gutenberg, and then had them, you know, experience that and see what happened. So it was more of a, it was more of a progress going through it. So I never thought to write it down. I guess we could do a blog post, right? You can do things like that. You can write blog posts. Can I do that? Sure. I wanted to ask you a bit about that. Yeah. In one of the things that fascinated me years ago about writing across the curriculum, was that it was based on the assumption that many of the experiences students have in college, either contribute to the improvement of, or the atrophy of their ability to communicate. One thing that's troubled me about the way that colleges typically handle the development of students' capabilities of using digital tools and resources is that it's often completely separate from the liberal education of those students and the professional education of those students. So for example, the way that students learn about the creation of multimedia and video editing has nothing to do with developing their visual literacy. Conceptually, it seems to me that that institutions ought to much, much more often be doing the kind of thing that you did with Brian. I thought it was a really stimulating example of, is there, is there, can you think of ways in which this sort of thing could become more institutionalized? No, I'll just leave it at that. That's a great question. Yeah, it is. And so I think it's, I totally agree, coming from sort of teaching writing and my experience at University of Mary Washington with digital studies, I think they're a really interesting example because they have integrated digital fluency as one of their core learning outcomes for the students. And this came in the new strategic plan that they did. Time has no meaning. I don't know, before the, in the before times. And what ended up happening was, in the new strategic plan, the way Mary Washington has their kind of Gen Ed setup is that they don't have freshman writing or freshman speaking courses. But what they had were writing intensive and speaking intensive courses. And so when they did their Gen Ed revamp, that's what they decided. And we had capacity for digital studies at University of Mary Washington, with first a minor, and then a full major in digital studies and communications, but also a long history with UMW blogs, one of the first WordPress multi sites for educational purposes, as well as then domain of one zone, the digital, digital history component at, in their history department. And so what they did is a strategic plan is they wanted to be leaders in the digital liberal arts. And so in the strategic plan that they said that they would embrace digital fluency. Now we can debate about digital fluency and what that means. That's a whole other session. But what ended up happening is that there was enough capacity that they added a Gen Ed requirement that students will have to complete a certain number of digitally intensive courses, in the same way that they have to do speaking intensive and writing intensive, for that very reason, they didn't want speaking and writing to be divorced from the disciplines that they were in. Right. So you can apply, they have criteria and all of that, there's a committee, and you can apply to be a speaking intensive or writing intensive, and now a digitally intensive course, with the expectations that if the students take these, that they're going to come out with a certain number of not only disciplinary skills, but also digital skills. And so it's a really great model for thinking more integratively about exactly what you're saying. And, you know, it's happening a lot with the domain of one's own schools. Georgetown is the domain of one's own school. They're popping up everywhere annually. And all of them have had various ways that they have used WordPress, that they've not just WordPress, but they've used domain of one's own to try and integrate these digital skills on a disciplinary level, so that you're not just learning how to use WordPress, but you're learning how to use WordPress in the context of your digital history course or your rhetoric and composition course or, you know, whatever it is that you happen to be doing, even your biology course. So the domain of one's own schools are doing really great work for that. And in other ways too, so I'm thinking of Martha Burtis, one of the original founders, is now with Robin DeRosa up at Plymouth State. And they are the forefront of using something of the domain of one's own for OER. So allowing students to think about accessibility, to think about affordability, and to make those and to make those available, but also to co-create them with their students. Yeah, I think it would be great too if as institutions scale up the use of high impact practices like undergraduate research and service learning, capstone courses, that the digital media become part of that too, not least because we know that those kinds of practices benefit all students, but especially students from underserved groups. So you really can make it much more integral to the development of the student. I think it's very exciting stuff. I'd like to follow up with you later on. Yeah, sure. Go right ahead. I'm glad you two can connect, especially because you both can guest on this program. And Lee, you might remember that we used Steve's recent book in our Summer Foundations. Of course, yes. Well, you're both awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Steve, for the question. Thanks. That's good to see you. But that actually brings up a really interesting point about what we talked about talking about today, which is this idea of the impact that COVID-19 has had on our institutions. And in this particular case, I am thinking, and I've worked at this is the first time I will be fully transparent. Georgetown is the first time that I have worked at an elite private institution. Just about my entire career, I have worked at regional comprehensive public institutions. I did work for an R1 for a hot minute, but that was still a public R1 in the South, so an SEC school. So take that with what you want. And so there's this interesting experience that I'm having with this change, but then COVID-19 hits. And there is this tension now, and I think a lot of us have experienced that, where what does it mean to go remote? What does it mean to a quote unquote high touch institution to go remote? But as we go on, right, and so we've gone away because we were very we were very careful not to say it was online learning, of course, because you know, don't want to be conflated with that for better or for worse, all other thing. But now that we've gone back to in person, largely in person, and again, most of our undergraduates at Georgetown, there are no online courses for undergraduate students during the traditional academic school year. We have online classes for continuing education, professional education. We do some summer online courses, but the, you know, between August and May, right, September, August and May, it is the residential experience, right, the residential liberal arts experience, except not really not right now, right, where we made the decision that large classes because we couldn't ensure social distancing would remain online, right, and it'd still be smaller seminars in person. But also the other thing that happened this semester, and we've all experienced this regardless of institution type, is that students stopped coming to class when they were sick. And this meant that these classes that had been designed for primarily face to face instruction, right, the back to normal that we were all hoping for didn't work anymore, right. And what was really interesting to me is that it really underlined this ableist assumption that runs through our entire, the entire way we think of particularly elite higher education, but education generally, is that it is based on this unspoken and just accepted premise that 100% of our students are going to be there 100% of the time or close enough to it, right. So this is this is how we've set up our semesters. This is how we've set up our institutions. This is how we set up our courses and our course design is that 100% of our students are going to be there 100% of the time. And, you know, and we've all experienced it probably as students in our own students and even as faculty or instructors where there are days where we probably shouldn't have come to class. But we did, because the most important thing was that we were present. Yeah. Like physically present. Yeah. Right. Because that is you know, one of the keys. And again, I've worked at non elite institutions where it was drilled into our heads. The most important factor for students succeeding is that they come to class. So make sure your students come to class heavily penalize your students that they don't come to class because they have to come to class in order to be successful. And of course, we just sort of took that research. But is that so because we've set up a system that only allows for students to be successful if they're there 100% of the time? We never requested that assumption. But now we are we are really being faced with the limitations of that assumption. And the disability community have been screaming this for years. I can't come to class. I can't make class for physical reasons, for mental reasons, for all kinds of reasons. And there is zero flexibility, right? Because it's just that's not the way things are set up. Let's and see. Yeah, but some seats contact hours. But again, even a accreditation, right? One of the pro what are the challenges of the remote going to remote instruction is that sacks lost its mind. Because what about the contact hours? I also worked at a lot of sack schools. It's my first school in a long time. That's not a sack school. So a little bit of a little bit of leftover from that, too. We heard to the the head of sacks here a few months ago. In the chat, George Station with his customary penetration points out that the link here is to the Carnegie unit and the credit hour that Carnegie gave us. Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of fun back and forth in the in the chat about this, which is which is a lot of fun. But that's what you're putting out is that while this may work for some portion of the population, this is a serious problem for those who have physical and or mental disabilities. And yeah, but do the pandemic is going to be a real to the crack that open? Yeah. And I think it's going to be a challenge moving forward for everyone. Because, you know, again, I'll take Georgetown as the example, because that's the example that I, you know, that I most recently experienced, but we didn't have any problem right up and still right now with COVID. But we had a huge flu outbreak. And then we got the Rona virus and everybody got this like the stomach bug, right, which we all thought was food poisoning at one point.  Are you really there in class? But so you have this where students are going to stop coming to class when they're sick. And you know what, that's not a bad thing. But if students stop coming to class when they're sick, what does that do to our course design? Right. And we can say hybrid. Right. But again, what does that mean? Because typically when we think of hybrid, we think of something that's very scheduled. These three weeks are going to be asynchronous. These three weeks are going to be synchronous or we meet on Mondays. But, you know, disability doesn't care. Depression doesn't care. The flu doesn't care. Flu doesn't care that the rest of the week is asynchronous.  Right. And so this is and what was striking to me as well was not only on the student side or on the faculty side, but the faculty who are the most flexible, who are the most understanding, who are the most, right? You know, conscious and caring and empathetic. They were the ones who are struggling the most because they ran up against the limitations of the way the system was set up. They were juggling multiple deadlines. They were juggling. We don't know how many students are going to be in class from one day to the next. We don't know who's going to be remote. We don't know, you know, we don't know how we're going to run these exams, you know, because of all of these unknowns. And again, when a student is sick and it can be exceptional, right, then it's okay. I've got one student or maybe two students are going to be handing something in late or two students who need to write the exam at a different time. What if it's half the class? What if it's the entire class and everybody's handing in their stuff on different dates? You know, and so again, this puts a lot of stress on faculty and their ability to be quote unquote flexible. I'm trying to get us to stop saying the word flexible because I'm like, those faculty who are being flexible are just done. They've, you know, they've bent and now they've broken. And so I don't think we need to talk about flexibility anymore. But what, what are we going to talk about instead? And that's the heart of the question that I think we have to grapple with in higher education is not flexibility anymore. It's got to be a wholesale change. And what does that mean? Is this high flex that you're talking about? I mean, that's a baby defines that is, you know, the students and the faculty and any support staff for each given class session have a choice if they're going to be face to face or online. And I think high flex is a way to think about it. But here's the other. Here's the other again, that we were talking about the square peg in the round hole is that when we're talking about particularly certain types of institutions, right, like Georgetown, right, like elite liberal arts colleges, like even, you know, the gold, what is it, the golden dozen, you know, all of these places, they have a very narrow definition of what a quality education is, right, high touch, right? That's where order is held on high touch. Well, what does high touch mean? How do you square the circle of high touch with high flex? Because for a lot of people, they are incompatible. And that's not what we're selling our students on. And that's not what we sold our faculty on to get them to come to the institutions, right? And so while I've seen high flex, I've seen lots of it done again, at institutions that serve various student populations where the demand was there for that kind of experience either to do convenience, either due to student population, you know, whatever it is. But that's not, you know, again, that's not what we do. It's not what we've done. It's not how we've branded ourselves. So then what does it mean to rethink what high touch means in this, I hate to use it, but for shorthand in this new normal, what does high touch mean? This is a fantastic deep way of rethinking classroom experience and class design. We have a bunch of questions that are that are coming in. I just want to quickly a couple of them, Neil Fung and others have asked him about high flex. The there's a great ebook on the subject free by Brian Beatty. We also have two forum sessions on the topic, which you can you can find for free. A building on this, the excellent Chris Mackey has a question. And I think this gives us a way into one way into it. Chris asks, what do we think we've learned that will help remote learners, especially at risk, create remote supportive learning spaces socially and emotionally? That's a really good question. I think the one thing that we've learned is that it's not easy. And that it is in it is resource heavy. Yes, in some ways resource heavier than the in person experience. Yes. I think and so, you know, it's I'm staff and I've, you know, write about staff issues a lot, but this is this is where I think faculty have finally had their eyes open to the importance of staff and the student learning experience. A lot of these students would not have made it through, if not for the support of student services staff, health staff, residents, life staff, because they all pivoted, right? Again, the word that we've all reviewed so much, they all pivoted every single one of them in service of the students pivoted from we're not living together anymore, but we still have residents life. How are we going to do this? We still have student life. How are we going to do this? How are we going to build community? How are we going to do those things? How are we going to make sure that is accessible to all students? Because that's another thing, another big thing that was really pushed forward on it on a campus like Georgetown that is that is residential is that once everybody left, you know, the inequities between our between the students was just amplified to such a degree that you couldn't just you couldn't ignore it anymore, right? You couldn't just know it intellectually, but not worry about it because well, everybody's here on campus or everybody's fine, right? It was it was literally in your face over Zoom or Cisco or whatever it was you were using. So again, these are all these are all realities that we're we have to grapple with for our for our design as we rethink it as as I think we should will be around. But I really think that this is a this is an opportunity to do that. And so to your question is is that that's not my area. I have student services people I'd say Joe Fisher, who's our student life person at Georgetown has they've done a great job there and I'm sure the student life people on your campus have to but there's it's a lot of intense work. It's a lot more when you can't drop in you have to be much more proactive in reaching out to students. You know, we know we know through the research that that in order for that students are more likely to be successful and graduate is that they make a connection with someone on campus. What happens when there's no campus? Right? And so how do we actively make sure that our students still feel connected to someone? That's not something it is someone. So how do we ensure that our students will connect with someone? Okay, first Chris, that's a fantastic question and bring it by the page in a minute and Lee, I really admire the depth and breath of your of your answer. I think there's a lot to be said on this and chat. We had a couple of comments I want to make sure we saw Debra Henner writes during COVID semester way. High relations mean some cell phone text or zoom conferences one on one with students, which is which is very important. David Tobi points out that we shouldn't conflate high touch with elite. He recommends that there are other programs that are able to do this, including the CUNY ASAP program, which is an effort to design high touch support and learning for low income parenting students, which doubles doubles graduation rates, which is truly, truly amazing. Yeah, it's awesome. Let's let's let's poke into this a bit further. Let me bring Chris Mackie on stage, I think for the first time, which is a real pleasure. Welcome. Glad I could bring in here. I'm trying to figure out which camera I'm looking at. Sorry about that. Well, now you're just looking at us. You know, my experience of the pandemic was really deeply, deeply shaped by working with some very non traditional at risk communities, both domestically and internationally. And the prompt for my question, Lee, thank you so much. I thought that was a really thoughtful response.  And I think we're seeing this in the empirical data that are coming out in terms of learning gap and things like that. It's very hard to explain learning gap just on differences in mastery of technology or just on differences in engaging with student services. Some of it is almost certainly the fact that they're they're embedded in very different learning environments in their respective homes, right? Yeah. Socially, structurally, we've done one project I was working with was families of migrant workers in Central California. Okay, you've got family traditions where if you're at home, your childcare, right? I mean, all those kinds. And it occurs to me that there's a tremendous learning opportunity here for us to really dig a little deeply into because we're stuck with the fact that we've been using classroom models for more than a century. Everything we think we understand about learning, we actually only understand about learning in a classroom context. Yep. The pandemic created this massive natural experiment that I don't think was really adequately seized upon to investigate what happens when all the parameters surrounding a learning experience have been have been transformed. And I and I wonder, I mean, you say it's not your area of expertise, but you folks are more deeply networked into American IRA than I am these days. I'm wondering if you know of anybody who's really taken that on as a as a as a direct challenge. It's almost a it's almost an anthropological question in a way, right? Yes.  Lee, go ahead. I'm sure I do. I just can't think of any right now. Like I and again, I don't and I see that like not to mistake high touch with elite. And I've, you know, I've worked at non elite institutions. I have lots of colleagues and friends who are still there who are doing online and hybrid high touch who are, you know, doing these things. And I'm just from the mentality of certain institutions and certain faculty, even that these two things are incongruent. And there are people who are working to sort of to try and figure these things out and online. I just I'd have to dig in and try and find them, but I'm sure in my network, I have them. I just I just I guess the point I want to sort of register is that I think if we if we get too comfortable with the idea that this is something we can simply push out from our end, and everybody on the other end will thrive. Yeah, I worked with one medical school, actually, that did everything by the book best practices, remote learning and still saw meaningful learning differences with certain at-risk students. Despite the fact, I mean, they were doing things that probably less than 3% of American institutions actually was doing in terms of supporting students and they're still doing those gaps. There's and not trivial. I mean, they they tripled attrition rates in in a couple of cases, right? So I think I don't know. I think I think that we get especially in the in the remote learning community and the online learning community. We mostly came to this as tech nerds, right? And so we tend to want to use the I have a hammer. This looks like a nail approach. Maybe this really isn't fundamentally a technology problem. Maybe this is one of the human problem. Well, I actually wrote about this exact thing and it's coming out soon ish, I think might already be out. Apparently, I don't know when my own stuff comes out anymore. So I wrote about as a thought exercise to address exactly this. So in digital humanities, there's this concept that just come out called minimal computing, right? And in digital humanities, it's usually like the bigger the better. Let's throw tech at it, right?  So you got the database people who all they want to do is build databases, you have the T I people and all they want to do is encode me to T I you have, you know, and I love them and they're my friends and their colleagues and they're brilliant people. But a lot of the times the digital humanities projects that are built are impossible to maintain really expensive and inaccessible to most of the world because they take up so much computing power. So people elsewhere cannot even not even help hope to replicate them. They can't even access them because they're on cell phones. So so that that is Brian will tell you I funded a few of those programs. Yeah, and yeah, and that's, you know, and there's some good advances that are made in there's importance to those sorts of things, particularly when it comes to preservation. But there's this whole movement now that has come out, and it's called minimal computing. And so what they're saying is they're trying to say, let's get rid of the databases, let's do flat HTML. Let's make things low broadband. Let's distribute things on on on thumb drives. Let's make things accessible and create tools that anyone can use anyone can maintain and can be hosted on GitHub for free. I love the idea, but I fear that what we're really talking about is a better hammer, right? And I'm actually wanting to redirect the conversation a little bit too, because there's no hammer that's going to change the cultural practices of a Mixteco family. Yeah, but that's, but that's the thing that that that minimal computing also asks is, is it looks at the tools and says maybe that maybe the tools aren't really what we need. Right. And so it really does start from the question about what is the minimum that we need for this. And so I did a thought experiment where I said, well, what would a minimal, a minimal computing approach take look like if we took that to remote or online instruction, because we've been doing remote instruction, you know, correspondence courses, you know, I went to the University of Alberta and worked as a research assistant at Athabasca when they were still mailing, you know, what it was still done by mail largely, right. So we have this. And so my question was, you know, with exactly this, and we saw examples of it happening on, you know, on Indian reservations in less populated areas where teachers found ways less than a higher education, more in K to 12, but teachers found ways to educate the students given the access that they had, right, and to try and support them. And so that was the thought experiment. It was like, and, you know, there's another one where there is an example of this was again in the disability studies world where they read an entire course over a listserv. Right. And then they said it was the most connected and most intimate and most, you know, affective experience they'd ever had in just all on a listserv, which we all hate now, right. But they did it all on a listserv. And so again, it's sort of thinking through what is what are the technologies that they do or do not have? What are the values of the audience that I'm trying to reach? How do I use those values? Again, this idea particularly in digital humanities. And this also springs from it where there's been this tension between indigenous populations and indigenous knowledge and the sort of impetus that we have in higher education to then go and colonize it and say we know best how to preserve your heritage. We know best how to share your knowledge. We know best how to do these things. And so we're from higher education and we're here to help. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Listen, I thank you for this. I want to stop only because I've taken up way more than I should at the time. It's been great. I really appreciate the thoughtful response. I'll look forward to reading the talk. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Chris. We have a whole bunch of questions and we're actually coming up really close to the end of the I know only shows many people get a chance to ask as possible. This is one of our good friend, Mark Corbett Wilson, who had a question and an answer, I think. Hello, Mark. Hi, Brian. Good to see you. So lately, I've been thinking are all schools, residential schools? Is it really the purpose of the institution to impose a culture onto the students? But that's not why I am. That's not the question I came to ask. So I've been working on a distance student. As you know, I'm way out here on the West Coast far away from all the elite institutions. Some got some out there. Come on. I can't afford them so. But I've been thinking about so I'd like your response to how would you theorize or build the personal learning environment or organization for more self directed learners outside, but perhaps affiliated to an elite institution so that they can build their network, you know, using the internet. And as you say, these low computing technologies, that's definitely the direction things should go. And not focus on assessment or credentialing. But on learning, you know, sort of an archo syndicalist approach. I mean, I think that that's a really hard question to get to kind of get in an answer. We've seen experience experiments with that like there's the P2P University was was an attempt to do that and keeps and keeps being in an attempt to do that.  And I mean, my my answer is going to be if we want to go totally low tech, we need to reinvest in libraries, public libraries. Right. I think that that's where community used to be formed where you could find people like minded people. And if you have a network of libraries, right, what if the library became a node in a larger network, the librarians are networked, we have interlibrary loans, we know what's going on. Why can't that be a system that we leverage for exactly this purpose, right, where it's not credentialing that it's just people getting out, they're getting together and nerding out about things that the librarians have that expertise, some of them do. And the kinds of resources, maybe they don't right now, but it wouldn't it be great if they did, once again, have those resources to be able to support better support and connect their communities with the larger world. So I would say libraries, my librarians love me, I say libraries. Yeah, maybe we focused on the wrong part of Carnegie's legacy. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And so much. I would like to give a plug to Steven Downs is currently running one of his MOOCs. His new experiment is, he doesn't even know who's taking it unless they want to reach out. And that's all run on, you know, public platforms, ethics, AI and analytics and the duty of care. And it's going to run again in the spring. So people that are interested should reach out. Not always at totally free. But as I said, you don't even have to tell anybody you're taking it, you could just participate.  Thank you. Great plug Mark. Thanks. Yeah, come join us. I'm looking forward to the second version. The first version, you know, a little rough, but the second version is going to be outstanding. That's Steven already ahead. Yeah. We had a couple of quick responses to that in the in the chat. Roxanne Riskin celebrated libraries Christopher Adamson linked them to Ivan Illich. David Scoby points to the awesome college and bound using libraries as spaces for cohort based adult college learning. And Roxanne points out the social some of the digital divide issues. And Mark DeFusco adds that Tudor.com started the library. We are almost out of time. And I want to come back to a question that came up a much earlier, which is a very perhaps forward looking question, which is what do you think about the metaverse and NFTs, the whole web three idea? Is that something where is that going to be part of the new education as Richard Schultz wants us to consider?  They're like, yeah, they just laugh at people who are doing NFTs because they didn't just around screenshot them and then share them on social or whatever social media platforms, they think NFTs are dumb. Um, most kids aren't on Facebook, right? Like, it's whether you call it metaverse or not, most kids aren't on Facebook. And until and again, you know, that maybe this means that it will actually happen. But until something like virtual reality takes serious consideration about disability, um, I don't think it'll take off, right?  If you have vertigo, like I get super dizzy doing, I can't do virtual reality, it makes me sick. And so while it may empower some people, other people, it just again, it excludes.  It's an art. It's an art journal. And it did a study of NFTs. And it said this conclusion was, huh, NFTs have just advantaged the same artists that it always has it that the that the the network or, you know, the market, there we go. Market is always advantaged, right? The rich just got richer.  Color me shocked. You know, thank you. So that's a that's a very, very powerful critique and response. Get some people chiming in. Roxanne points out the people who are hearing impaired or deaf. Yeah, the DERF asks us to remind her, remember the distinction between meta as the company and the metaverse. Rich Schultz says that his college students think NFTs are ridiculous. And John Hollenbeck adds metaverse where we can look pretty what we learn. And Mark, the fast coach chimes in for your son. Hurray for your son.  I'm like, unfortunately, gas and he would like just launched on a tirade. It was it was really entertaining, actually. Noah Geisel. Noah, please. I hope I didn't mango your name too badly. Ask us to take a look at one educational implementation called Invisible College, which is from its front page, quote a learning DAO or DAO for web three curious builders and creators, which has links to Twitter and to Discord. So thank you, Noah. That's a great pointer. And thank you for remembering the question. Friends, this has been an incredibly rich conversation. And there's way too much coming up in the chats and in the in the questions that we don't have enough time for. If anyone would mind, if I post this to to my blog, please let me know in the chat. And if you think it's a good idea, please let me know in the chat. Lisa, thank you for that. I hope you have a good meeting. Lee, how how can people keep up with your terrific brain? Is Twitter best or which blog Twitter? So Twitter is best. I'm ready writing. I'm best known as ready writing on Twitter. That's where I will typically share anything and everything that I write. I don't know know how much impact of people read on it anymore, but I definitely share everything there. If you want cute pictures of my napping dog, I'm also ready writing on Instagram. Those are kind of soothing. He's very chill old man dog. And my blog is ready writing.org. I try to make sure I update it with various writings and those kinds of things. When they come out. But Twitter is usually the best place. I'm still pretty active on Twitter, despite everybody saying that Twitter is dead. It's still until you give me one place. I can't do my daughter might be able to do 27 Discord servers. But until you tell me one place just like Twitter that I can go to and meet and still hear from all the people that I know and love, because I'm not doing 27 Discord servers trying to get everybody. So Twitter is still for me where it's at. And Roxanne risk and shared shared your handle in. Oh, yes. Thank you. Thank you, Roxanne. There you go, Steve.  Thank you, Lee so much. It's been a privilege to host you and it's also privileged to be your colleague at Georgetown. Same. Thank you. And thanks everyone. Sorry for keeping you along. No apologies needed or accepted. This is terrific. Friends, but don't go. Let me just point out where we're headed the next few weeks. So just to remind you that some of the topics that we have coming up. Eco media literacy, the climate crisis student libraries and careers, minority students on campus and by the way, next week, we will not have a forum because of the holiday. It's going to be impossible to get guests and all of you in the same place and not totally overwhelmed by eggnog. So next week is a time off, but then we'll come right back roaring at top speed. Now if you'd like to keep talking about this, everything from web three for education to what does it mean to rethink the classroom in a high flex hybrid or whatever we're going to call it. Just use the hashtag FTTE on Twitter. You can find me Brian Alexander or Shindig events at Shindig events on my blog, Brian Alexander.org. I'm going to post the recording of this session along with the chat. And if you'd like to go into the past and take a look at our previous sessions on class design on the pandemic, just go to tinyurl.com slash FTF archive. You can find a great deal there. If you now all of this is in a hurry, I have to say this has been a delightful conversation. As usual, it shows the brilliance of the questions and thoughts that the community brings to bear. It's absolutely delightful thinking together with you. I hope you all have a very safe, productive yet also restful end of this year. Please take care and be safe. We'll see you next time online. Bye bye.


For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello, you're watching People's Dispatch May 25, 2021 marks one year since the very brutal murder of George Floyd in the city of Minneapolis. Now, this is nothing new in America. We know there have been innumerable instances of black people being murdered by law enforcement, by police officers. In the case of George Floyd, the footage of this incident went around the world. We saw the brutal disdain with which Derek Shaw in the police officer had his knee on George Floyd's neck. We heard George Floyd's dying words that I can't breathe. And this sparked waves of protest not only in the United States, but in solidarity across the world. There were protests in Palestine, there were protests in Europe, in Latin America, in every part of the world. So, one year down the line, we've joined by Eugene Cooley to talk about what has changed, what has not changed. How has the movement that broke out last year, what kind of impact has it had on American society? Thank you so much Eugene for joining us. Well, thank you so much for having me. Happy to be here. Eugene, my first question would be maybe to sort of, how would you see the situation in the United States one year later? We talked about, of course, the protests. There's been a lot of mobilization, a lot of demands. So, one year down the line, especially in connection to some of the demands that were raised, especially in connection to justice for black people, how do you see the situation right now? You know, I think that's a great question. I think the best way to see the situation is, I think culturally and socially, there has been a tremendous change. And it's obvious that the events of last year, the uprisings that took place, you know, have changed the shape of politics in the United States and continue to be a major factor in how politicians are responding to the issue of racism in this country. But that being said, there's been almost total intransigence from the point of view of a policy level around the actual issue of police murders and police violence, which I think speaks more than anything else to how fundamental police violence really is inside of, for the needs of American capitalism, that even when you have a huge sort of rhetorical and verbal recognition that quote unquote, something has to happen, nothing happens. And so if you look at sort of the exactly where we are, the best maybe example of this is the Justice, the George Floyd Justin Policing Act, which was the congressional Democrats response to what happened last year in the uprisings after George Floyd's death. And that bill in and of itself was widely panned by almost all the activists and organizers who have been working because it was so minimal. And almost all of the things that it was proposing, banning chokeholds, banning no knock warrants, had been implemented in many places and people had still been killed under the implementations. So there was almost nothing within it that was any different than had been done in the past at the federal and local level and failed to solve the problem. There was one issue, which was to change a little bit of the legal responsibilities for police officers in terms of financial civil culpability. But because of that, even this very milk toast, watered down sort of rhetorical bill that doesn't really do anything is now dead in the Senate and will never pass. And in fact, the Democrats have given a deadline of this week, actually, to whether they could find a compromise, it looked like it's not going to happen. So they're actually about to just completely let it go. And it's been more or less on the same on the state and local level, although not exactly. We've seen some relatively important things. If you look just outside of Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed, for instance, in Brooklyn Center, many of Minnesota, where there have also been several killings this year, last year, several other years, there have been some changes by the city council there, for instance, to reduce the role of police in dealing with mental health crises, which is a major issue in terms of how the police end up killing many people in the United States. So we're seeing some small wins here and there, but we're seeing a combination really now of a big pushback. And I'll close here. Right now, a big pushback because the number of murders in the United States rose all across the country in most major metropolitan areas. And so now there's an attempt all across the line by politicians to say, well, maybe we went too far last year, and maybe we should slow this down and give more money to the police. So we're in sort of a precarious time where many, many more people recognize the issue of Black Lives Matter. Many more people agree with that. The most notable fact in many ways of the election in 2020 are one of the most notable facts. In Georgia, 53% of people told CNN in an exit poll that they supported Black Lives Matter, but Joe Biden only got 49% of the vote and third parties didn't get all of that. So even some Trump voters were saying Black Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter was more popular in Georgia than either major political party. So we've seen huge change, we've seen sports, we've seen entertainment in that sense, a recognition of the problem, more people willing to protest, more people embracing the challenge that racism is something that has to be addressed in America. But the actual powers that be the elites are very intransigent in terms of really wanting to change something because changing policing is much deeper than just a few policies here and there. And that's something they don't want to touch. Absolutely. You in this context also wanted to go into the demand to defend the police, which was one of the most important slogans and demands made last year. We saw how right now, like you said, there's a pushback even among the Democrats where sections, for instance, were blaming the demand for the reverse of certain suffered by certain Democrats, which is really an absurd statement. But have you seen any concrete instances of, say, the community and administrators working together to actually bring laws at a local level, which might actually reflect the true essence of these demands? We've seen some. So I mentioned Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. There also is Minneapolis itself, of course, the epicenter of all of this. And there's a lot of controversy over it, but there are two what are known as charter amendments that are being put forward to change the local constitution, if you will, to try to move in the direction of defunding the police in the sense of reducing the scope of what the police do, disarming some elements of them or large numbers of them, and moving a lot more resources into social programs designed to sort of get in front of the issue when the police just show up afterwards. So there's a lot of controversy over the different bills and the different proposals, but it is notable that that is a big discussion in Minneapolis. It's going to go before the voters. People are going to vote on something, it seems, in elections that will probably happen later this year to determine how they will make potentially some very significant changes, but there, again, is a big pushback from the mayor. So it's unclear how it's all going to play out, but that is on the ballot there. So it has the possibility of bypassing some things as well. And one of the proposals, like I said, is a pretty comprehensive proposal to make some changes to the police department that would be in the vein of defund the police, if not everything. I think you look at sort of the reverse. Los Angeles just increased the budget to the police last week and is saying that, well, the real thing we need is more money for the police so that they can do better things, better training or whatever it may be. But we have seen, I would say in a few areas, some improvements in terms of police accountability. In Chicago, even though there's an attempt to water it down, there's a big fight happening in the city council, really over what the proposals are going to be to establish more community-led accountability over policing, the ability to hold people responsible to investigate these crimes and take that out of the hands of simply the police themselves or these appointed boards, which is more or less what they have now there in Chicago. It looks like something will pass. It's just a question of how watered down will be. And again, the mayor, they're pushing back. But that's another city where I think there's at least some hope that there could be some changes, even if there's small changes, based on what we have seen from really the power of the people. In New York City, which is the biggest city, there was like a fake defund the police, where the city council, they tried to claim they cut a billion dollars from the budget for this year, 2021, from the police. They really just moved it around in a lot of different ways. But I think one thing that is notable, even though all the people who've been out in the streets were denouncing this rightfully so, the fact that they even felt they needed to pretend that they were doing something to speak to the issue of defund the police, I think does show that we're seeing, again, maybe more rhetorical momentum than in terms of actual policy change. But we are seeing more durable campaigns start to take root in a lot of cities in Washington DC, in Baltimore, and other places to devote more resources to non-police means of addressing public safety. And we're getting little wins here and there, increased funding for existing programs. But the overall transformative change piece is what we're lacking, even though I do think there is a lot of vitality on the ground in a lot of places and in a lot of cities that are moving some things, getting some small wins and setting the stage for the conversation to really continue, because I don't think it's going away as an issue, even though, of course, it isn't as prominent in terms of millions of people on the street every day. Absolutely. And even in this context, I also wanted to ask you about the judicial process that has followed many of these brutal incidents. We know that Derek Shawin was, of course, convicted, although activists and organizations had raised many questions about how the process took place. But also so many other cases, Elijah McLean hasn't received justice so far. The case of Brianna Taylor, for instance, in so many other instances, we still see the legal process either not moving at all, or in fact, like in the case of Elijah McLean, those who are fighting for justice actually being targeted. So how do we see, especially the past one year, the kind of judicial response that has taken place? You know, I think that is the key issue is that the judicial response is the issue that no one really wants to address. And it comes at two levels, really. I mean, the main issue is what is the threshold by which these people are considered justified to kill people. And right now, the legal threshold in the United States is very low. It basically boils down to this. Did they think there is a chance that someone could potentially kill somebody or do seriously bodily harm to them? So anything that even is remotely in that. But it's not just that in the abstract. It's, would a reasonable police officer in that exact moment agree? So it takes everything down to a split second decision and says, if you can come up with some story that says in a split second, you couldn't know whether or not this was going to be really dangerous or whether it was going to be fine and you just had to kill them, then you are essentially not culpable. And so since obviously there are a million different threads to every sort of piece, it means that it's a very high bar to convict a police officer because it's very difficult to prove that they either did it intentionally or that they acted recklessly because of the courts. But that can change. You could pass a law that could detail this is the standard and it's a higher standard. Now then a police officer who is arrested could challenge that in court and say, well, based on these legal precedents, I'm actually not guilty. But that's what a lot of people would like to see in the United States because they want that issue to be argued. They want it to be put in play that the standards of use of force should be higher than they are now and that there should be a higher justification. And it could in fact be enshrined in law. But there are also other pieces to this, which is, I would say, most legal experts in the United States believe that prosecutors oftentimes do have a good case, but choose not to go forward because, of course, the police make the prosecutors cases. It's a symbiotic relationship. They don't want to do it. And that is something that I think has also been a big issue here. And we saw it in the Derek Chauvin trial. And we've seen it. We saw it with Amber Geiger as well in Dallas, who was convicted of killing Bartham John. That was she walked into his apartment and just gunned him down. And so it shows that in a lot of these cases, it's also political. And that really the desire of the district attorney's office and the prosecutor's offices to look tough on crime, to be for law and order, to be cheek by jowl with the police department rather than hold them to any level of accountability at any statutory level is something that they're not interested in doing. So there is a still legal struggle that is happening in a discussion about how to either make a federal amendment or at a lower level. And in California, they tried to do this last year, but the bill was gutted how to just pass a law raising a standard that would make a lot of these police killings that we see basically legal and try to take it back to the courts and try to establish a new standard. But then there also is the political element of it that as we see, when people burn down a police station, they all of a sudden can convict a cop. So there's certainly a relationship there. But I think the legal issue is going to be interesting. And I think there's a number of cases coming up, including Andrew Brown in North Carolina, that are going to raise a lot of the most potent issues around what the real standard should be to murder someone for no reason. Absolutely. And usually finally, one of the most important developments of last year was also this very powerful movement which took over the streets, which raised a variety of demands, of course, talking at a very structural level and posing very difficult questions to those in power. You've spoken at some of these events and you also talked about them. So one year down the line, how do you see how these events have sort of progressed, established themselves? I mean, there was a very definite attempt by the Democratic establishment to co-opt some of these, but nonetheless, many of these radical strands have continued their growing strength. So maybe could you talk a bit about that as well? Yes, I think so. I think it's probably the Democrats must be frustrated. I don't think they have been able to co-opt it to the level they thought. I mean, the fact that their major police reform bill wasn't picked up by any organization that is credible on the ground in terms of the issues of police violence and community transformation, I thought was a very telling reality. I think that there are other Congress people that are responding more to the popular organizations who themselves are promoting their own bills and their own moves. Some of them are good, some of them are whatever, but it just speaks to the fact that there is a feeling, I think, amongst a lot of people that the movement is not just going to come to you, but you have to go to it to some degree, even if you want to exploit it for electoral gain. And I think also what we've seen is some of the forces that are the sort of closest to the Democratic establishment, but have some level of movement credibility have themselves not really established hegemony over it. I mean, we have so many millions of people come out. There's dozens of organizations that people have formed. There's informal networks. And so even those who I think would prefer to channel things into a more electoral frame can't just keep it in that lane because there are so many other voices that are out there that are calling for people to continue to be in the streets, continue to do political education. The rise and the spread of independent media and social media has also raised the ability for sort of the radical critique of the role of policing as an integral tool of capitalism to become a much bigger poll. And now, I mean, even the biggest intellectual magazines, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, are forced to write articles that are talking about the history of radical black politics, the contemporary versions of that, police abolition, challenging capitalism, people who are building socialism. I mean, they're sort of forced to address this and in their own ways, good, bad, or indifferent, but it does show that the movement is variegated to such a degree and has become such a major force in society that so many millions want to see change when it concerns racism in this country that it has created the space where even though there is a lot of co-option and a lot of somewhat successful attempts by people to make their electoral careers off of allegedly being for black lives, there's also a new vital current of radical, even revolutionary people that is growing and getting a hearing in a way that's not superficial, where people want to know what people are thinking and what they're saying. And a lot of people are embracing themselves positions they maybe wouldn't have held a few years before because they've been challenged to do so in a real way by the actual sort of street politics of the movement, despite the sort of high politics of the movement being in a very kind of stagnant phase because very little is happening at Congress and the people who are most willing to be co-opted in a way know that they'll lose credibility if they go with the congressional strategy. So there's gridlock at the electoral level in that sense. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Eugene, for talking to us. No, of course, thank you so much for having me. That's all your time for today. Keep watching People's Dispatch.


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