Pause. Listen. Make Space.
That’s what educators need to do at a time when post-secondary institutions have shifted to online and remote learning in face of the pandemic, says Sean Michael Morris.
“We have come upon a watershed moment for digital education as we climb our way out of the pandemic and the necessary turn to online and remote learning that resulted. We are faced with an opportunity to remodel our digital pedagogies. What will be needed now is not to rush into new strategies and practices, but instead a pause,” says Morris, Senior Instructor of Learning Design and Technology at the University of Colorado.
Morris was the keynote speaker at the University’s Curriculum Week, a virtual event held earlier this spring. He is also the director of the Digital Pedagogy Lab, an international online gathering for educators committed to issues of diversity, equity, antiracism, critical digital pedagogy, and imagining a new future for education.
In his presentation, As we step forward, we must stand still: Critical digital pedagogy and the praxis of taking time, Morris emphasized the importance of pausing, listening and making space to sustain a human and humane connection between education and students.
“As I've watched us all work our way into and through and out of pandemic teaching and learning, I've had one primary concern and I think that is your concern too. How to sustain a human and humane connection between education and students during this time?,” said Morris.
“The opportunity for us is not technological, it is not simply curricular. The opportunity for us is one of humanizing education to a degree and at a depth which we have not attempted before,” he noted.
He has advocated for teachers to teach through the screen and to be gentle with students who have been struggling under the multiple traumas of a global pandemic, such as unemployment, food insecurity and the threat of poor health or death in their families.
“The confluence of police violence [against Black Lives], trauma, and the sudden disappearance of students from our classrooms has made one thing clearer this past year: We do not know the stories of our students. And as progressive and inclusive as we would like to be, those stories and the communities to sustain those stories are what needs to impact our pedagogies and design going forward, whether online, hybrid or on-campus,” said Morris.
He also stressed that “when we design for digital learning, whether online or hybrid, we design for a specific class, a set of content, … [but] we don't design for community. And when we don't design for community, we're not designing for diversity.”
He urged faculty members to question what voices and fonts our designs come from: “Are these the designs of Indigenous voices heard? Are these the designs of Black voices listened to? If that's what they are, they're still not adequate. Because they must be Indigenous designs, they must be Black designs. They must be the designs of the disabled, not for the disabled.”
Morris hit these points home through a weaving and retelling of his own story of coming out as a gay white man with an invisible disability speaking from the margins, who otherwise acts and looks to those who do not know him personally, like any other cis, bearded white male.
And he advised, “Please do not ever invite a cis, white male like me back to speak. We have spoken enough. And our voices drown out the voices of practically everyone else. I am gay and disabled and so I have done my speaking at the margins. But here on this screen you cannot see my gayness. You cannot detect my disability. You see a bearded white male speaking again. How many times does this need to happen?”
In closing Morris said, “And so, as we step forward, we must stand still … and we may discover by standing still, that it is someone else who will step up. To step us all forward. A voice speaking a language we don't yet understand, but must be humble enough, to learn.”
With these last words, a symbolic roar of applause for Morris broke through the digital boundaries of the talk.