Towards

compassionate learning design for the pandemic and beyond...

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Ass Prof Daniela Gachago,

Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching,

University of Cape Town

daniela.gachago@uct.ac.za

danielagachago.blogspot.com

@dgachago17

Sleepless in Seattle...

How are you feeling?

Where are you?

More introductory activities: https://onehe.org/equity-unbound/introductory-activities/

Overview

• COVID/RETL and its implication on Higher Edu
• The problem with design
• Empathy vs Compassion
• Compassionable learning design in HE

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COVID-19

• Caused one of the major disruptions in the history of higher education
• Long needed re-think of HE provision allowing for more flexible, open, accessible models of education

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‘never waste a crisis’ became a sort of refrain in many ed-tech circles; the pandemic was an excuse to implement bolder changes than would be possible absent the emergency context (Tawil, 2020, p. 2)

Move to online learning

• Extremely quick
• Lack of learning design
• ‘Emergency remote T&L’ (Hodges et al 2020; Manfuso 2020)

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More flexibility �but at whose cost?

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Equity concerns

Specific groups of learners (and staff) who are particularly hit:

• gender: women in particular if they have young children (Malisch, Harris & Sherrer 2020; Meyers et al 2020; Oleschuk 2020)
• race (African Americans, i.e. Harper 2020) and BAME (Wright and Merritt 2020)
• Economics
• geographical areas (ie rural/remote areas)
• learners with disabilities
• international students (Alcorn, 2020; Peters and Rizvi, 2020)

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Population affected: 20%

What if the majority of our learners are

affected?

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Global South

• More concern for equity
• More contextual solutions
• Focus on asynchronous, low-tech solutions (ie UCTs low tech guides)
• Alternatives to online learning (paper-based, radio, face to face), ie CPUTs Carousel model

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Now that the impacts of inequality are clear and visible, they must never again be rendered unseen (Czierniwicz, 2021)

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It is envisaged that there will be a pressing need for an unambiguously critical evaluation and monitoring of higher education’s responses to the lockdown, especially in relation to teaching and learning remotely.

(Motala and Menon, 2020, p. 83)

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The problem with design...

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Learning design models

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Is empathy enough?

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If we believe design thinking is the right tool to use to redesign products, systems, and institutions to be more equitable, then we must redesign the design thinking process, mindsets and tools themselves to ensure they mitigate for the causes of inequity —

the prejudices of the human designers in the process, both their explicit and implicit personal biases, and the power of mostly invisible status quo systems of oppression �

(EquityXDesign, 2016)

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What if we replaced empathy with compassion?

What is the difference between empathy and compassion?

Enter your thoughts into the text chat and wait ……..��before pressing �“Enter”

‘Compassion is a cultivated feeling about emotion. It is a place where how we feel, how we think, and how we act come together. In other words, compassion is a cultivated practice, not an isolated, rational judgement about the world.’ (Curtis, 2014, loc. 1101)

‘[compassion] goes beyond the feeling-for or feeling-with an individual and moves towards understanding the social and political structures of our society. This then is much more than ‘putting oneself in the other’s shoes’, but assumes responsibility for one’s own role in somebody else’s story. It creates urgency for practice, for action.’ (Segal, 2007)

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Compassionate Learning Design (Gachago, Bali & Pallitt, forthcoming)

The desire to increase level of participation of learners- PARTICIPATION

An understanding of power and history and how that affects our ability to participate: our positionality and intersectionality and how they influence our critical pedagogy - JUSTICE

A recognition of importance of affect and how that impacts on learning: humanising, care and trauma-informed pedagogies - CARE/AFFECT

The aforementioned dimensions resulting in a commitment to act, to take responsibility and move towards more socially just learning design - PRAXIS

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Educator decides

Students decide

Educator anticipates, imposes

Student self-determination

Learner Agency

Recognition

Learner empowerment

Potential for some learners to be excluded, not recognized

TO

FOR

WITH

BY

AS

Adapted from Wehipeihana (2013)

Forthcoming: Gachago, Bali & Pallitt

(EMPATHY)

(COMPASSION)

(CO-DESIGN)

Equity vs Equality

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“Equity vs Equality” flickr photo by MN Pollution Control Agency https://flickr.com/photos/mpcaphotos/31655988501 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license

Maha Bali’s take on equality / equity and social justice

Not everyone wants an apple...

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Edited “Equity vs Equality” flickr photo by MN Pollution Control Agency https://flickr.com/photos/mpcaphotos/31655988501 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license

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No Care

Care

Equity

Inequity

JUSTICE?

Intentionally Equitable Hospitality?

PARITY OF PARTICIPATION (Nancy Fraser)

Democratic care (Tronto)

TOKENISM?

DIVERSITY THEATER?

SYSTEMIC?

LIP SERVICE?

Performative? (Sara Ahmed)

SYSTEMIC INJUSTICE

SELECTIVE & AFFECTIVE LABOR?

AMELIORATIVE?

PARTIAL?

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Bali and Zamora, forthcoming...

Maha Bali’s Levels of Care & Intentional Equity

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Course philosophy, design, planning

Habitual practices in class

Respond in Situations

Personal/Private

How do you show it at each level?

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Uncertainty, isolation, loss of meaning are all triggers of trauma

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Predictability, flexibility,

connection and empowerment

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Key principles of trauma-informed pedagogy

• Work to ensure your students’ emotional, cognitive, physical, and interpersonal safety
• Foster trustworthiness and transparency through connection and communication between and among students in your class
• Intentionally facilitate peer support and mutual self-help
• Promote collaboration and mutuality by sharing power and decision-making
• Empower voice and choice by identifying and helping build on student strengths.
• Pay attention to cultural, historical, and gender issues

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Maybe someone needs care more than apples today...

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Edited by Maha Bali from: “Equity vs Equality” flickr photo by MN Pollution Control Agency https://flickr.com/photos/mpcaphotos/31655988501 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license

“Design is a living practice, not a done thing. It is a medium for building relationship between ourselves and those who will benefit from or be harmed by our design choices; and as such, design is iterative, a praxis—a process of doing, examining, reflecting, doing... and of never getting so set in our ways that we forget there are always new things to try”. (Morris, 2021)

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ideals of flexible education

are to increase the student-centered and empowering aspects of education, thereby improving not just access, but also equity, diversity, inclusion, retention, completion,

and satisfaction ….

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(Houlden and Veletsianos 2019)

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….radical flexibility is a backdoor into thinking not just about how to deliver education equitably, but to ask what kind of education, what kind of university, do we want—which is in turn to ask, what kind of life, what kind of future do we want, and for whom?

(Houlden and Veletsianos 2019)

Thanks!

Any questions?

You can find me at:

@dgachago17

daniela.gachago@uct.ac.za

https://danielagachago.blogspot.com

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Continue reading

Maha Bali: https://blog.mahabali.me/ @Bali_Maha

Michelle Pacanski-Brock: https://brocansky.com/ @brocansky

Jesse Stommel: https://www.jessestommel.com/ @Jessifer

George Veletsianos: https://www.veletsianos.com/ @veletsianos

Mays Imad http://www.maysimad.com/ @lrningsanctuary

Alexandra Mihai https://educationalist.eu/ @Anda19

EquityMeetsDesign: https://equitymeetsdesign.com/

EquityXDesign: https://medium.com/equity-design/racism-and-inequity-are-products-of-design-they-can-be-redesigned-12188363cc6a

https://hybridpedagogy.org/

https://www.facebook.com/HigherEdLC

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Some of our writings

Gachago, D., Van Zyl, I. & Waghid, F. 2021. More than Delivery: Designing Blended Learning Spaces with and for Academic Staff. In Sosibo, L. & Ivala, E. (Eds.) Transforming Learning Spaces. Wilmington: Vernon Press, pp. 132-146.

Networked Learning Editorial Collective (NLEC)., Gourlay, L., Rodríguez-Illera, J.L. et al. 2021. Networked Learning in 2021: A Community Definition. Postdigital Science Education, 3: 326–369. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-021-00222-y

Czerniewicz, L., Agherdien, N., Badenhorst, J., Belluigi, D., Chili, M., Villiers, M. De, Felix, A., Gachago, D., Ivala, E., Kramm, N., Madiba, M., Mistri, G., Mgqwashu, E., Pallitt, N., Prinsloo, P., Solomon, K., Strydom, S., Swanepoel, M., Waghid, F. & Wissing, G. 2020. A wake-up call : Equity , inequality and Covid-19 emergency remote teaching and learning. Postdigital Science and Education. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42438-020-00187-4? fbclid=IwAR3dWEIwpRz4r7ox3izGoj64g1Flee6eJT0IDOQg42MuPkl1R7211mc7Y0M.

Gachago, D., Bali, M., & Pallitt, N. 2020. No Size Fits All: Design Considerations for Networked Learning Across Contexts in Higher Education. Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Networked Learning, Kodling, Denmark, May 2020. link to paper

Gachago, D., Morkel, J., Van Zyl, I, & Ivala, E. 2020. Nurturing creative confidence and learner empathy: design principles for innovative academic staff development. Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Networked Learning, Kodling, Denmark, May 2020. link to paper

Gachago, D., Cruz, L., Morkel, J., & Parker, M. 2019. Development : Cross-continental design principles for blended learning course design. Proceedings of the 8th International DEFSA Conference: Designed Futures (pp. 105–115). DEFSA. https://www.defsa.org.za/sites/default/files/downloads/2017conference/11TowardsDesignThinking.pdf

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