Friday May 29, 2015, we did our second, post-et4buddy hangout and the first official Hangout to be announced and posted on the Virtually Connecting website. In this post, I’m going to talk a bit about our hangout.
This post is cross-posted to Rebecca’s website, Virtual Connecting, and Rebecca’s HASTAC blog (I was a HASTAC Scholar before I had to step away during cancer treatment).
First, I would like to thank Andrea Rehn for offering to be our onsite ‘buddy’ for this hangout. I met Andrea briefly at the #et4online conference, and Maha has been a friend of hers for some time now. They co-presented about an online Twitter game #tvsz at #et4online. Preparation for today’s hangout, and today’s hangout allowed Andrea and I to connect a little more :-).
As with all ‘buddy-style’ hangouts, we begin with lots of giggles from those participating onsite. As the onsite person at #et4online, I thought this might have been something about me personally, but it appears, that when Whitney Kilgore was onsite (eMOOCs), and now Andrea Rehn, we all seem to like starting the session laughing 🙂
Hangout Notes
Attending today’s hangout were:
Onsite: Andrea Rehn (@profrehn), Mia Zamora (@MiaZamoraPhD), and Anastasia Salter (@AnaSalter).
In addition, joining us online were: Helen DeWaard (@hj_dewaard), Autumm Caines (@autumm), Scott Johnson (@SHJ2), Maha Bali (@Bali_Maha), and myself Rebecca J. Hogue (@rjhogue).
We represented three countries: United States, Canada, and Egypt. I thought it was particularly interesting that three of the online folks (myself, Helen, and Scott) were Canadian – although I was joining from my current home in Santa Clara California.
During the hangout Andrea, Mia, and Anastasia shared a little about their presentations as well as the vibe at the HASTAC 2015 conference. Abstracts from there presentations are available here:
- Andrea – Doing Digital Liberal Arts: Projects and Pedagogies on Student Centered Campuses
- Anastasia – Social Media for Activist Pedagogy
- Mia – Digital Learning Spaces and DH Pedagogy
Listening to each of these powerful women speak about the courses they teach made me wish I was an undergraduate today. I’d love to be in any one of their classes.
Here are some highlights to whet your appetite for the hangout:
- Mia: Writing beyond the traditional sense of writing (writing as making)
- Mia: Learning should be playful – when it is fun it matters more
- Anastasia: Collaboration (getting students to work together)
- Andrea: A religious studies class on Islam in America (the class published a book!)
- Andrea: Finding a real audience for the work students are doing, making scholarship matter
- Mia: two things to get students started: (1) capture a thoughtful idea from the class and share in a public digital space, and (2) retweet something they found useful
- Anastasia: Working against the traditional pedagogy of art history
- Andrea: Challenge with digital literacy when students really just want face-to-face interactions
- Andrea: It needs to be fun but also needs to have meaning for them
- Andrea: Issues with social unpleasantness with online interactions (e.g. bullying) in the current generation of students. We really need to pay attention to their contexts when we introduce / require technologies for learning
- Anastasia: Cautioned about bringing students into social media spaces as a requirement without first discussing what that entails (from a safety/privacy point of view)
- Anastasia: “Participation has different consequences for different people”
- Maha: “it’s difficult to get something on Wikipedia”
- Anastasia: For some people (e.g. black trans women) just existing/expressing an identity in a public space is already controversial
Other things on the web that were mentioned in the hangout:
- HASTAC conference – (http://www.hastac.org/)
- Connected Courses MOOC (http://connectedcourses.net/)
- Pedagogy of Trolls (http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/the-pedagogy-of-trolls/)
- Monica Lewinsky: The price of shame (https://www.ted.com/talks/monica_lewinsky_the_price_of_shame)
- Panel that mentioned Wikipedia as a troubling and problematic space – #dhlimits
- Hogan, Bernie, Pseudonyms and the Rise of the Real-Name Web (December 1, 2012). In J. Hartley, J. Burgess, & A. Bruns (Eds.), A Companion to New Media Dynamics (pp. 290–308). Chichester, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2229365
- Addressing Trust Challenges in Connected Learning – by Jade E. Davis
- HASTAC website on teaching tools – The Pedagogy Project
Rebecca’s Meta Notes
For this hangout, Andrea did a particularly good job of finding an appropriate location. The “couch” in the corner not only helped to avoid background distractions, it also help to make those attending onsite feel more relaxed. It helped to set the tone for the discussion, which those of us participating online could feel. It was like we were all sitting on couches together.
This session ran more like an interactive panel session. I really like the format. Each of the virtual participants had a chance to ask a question to the onsite panel, and each of the onsite folks had a chance to respond. The resulting dialogue was very rich.
Throughout the hangout the onsite folks do a fair bit of giggling. This is something that I remember from being onsite as well. It is both because it is fun, but also is a sign of nervousness. We laugh off the hiccups that happen during the actual hangout.
One of my tips for preparing to host a hangout is to Embrace Imperfection. The ‘buddy-style’ event hangouts are about creating that informal space for conversations while breaking physical boundaries. This hangout does a great job of demonstrating to be both informative and informal. I’m looking forward to hearing what others think about it. Please leave a comment below.
Blog posts about this hangout
If you blog about this hangout, please leave a comment and I’ll add your link here:
- Maha’s comments on this hangout – Virtually connecting w #hastac2015 today w @rjhogue @profrehn and more
Invite
Got a conference you want us to cover? Comment here or send a note to Rebecca (@rjhogue) or Maha (@bali_maha).
Fascinating, absolutely fascinating!