Today I watched another asynchronous session. Lisa Chang, Silvia Bartolic, and Hailey Craig presented o the use of Multiliteracies Pedagogy as a framework to support remote teaching at the Lilly Conference online. This short presentation by Chang made me think. They started with survey data from both faculty and students after the transition to remote instruction at UBC. Both students and instructors felt overwhelmed and a lower quality learning experience. Instructors were flexible with assignments and assessments. Students appreciated accessing course content to supplement or review. Students self study habits and space were difficult in remote learning. Multiliteracies Pedagogy was developed to take into account the different modes of media available to students. It has not been used in adult learning. Multiliteracies pedagogy has four cyclical components: situated practice (how teachers build community), overt instruction (diverse range of scaffolded teaching activities), critical framing (alignment with current/previous sociopolitical context), and transformed practice (how students can take their learning to other contexts). Chang emphasized that instructors often shift between components. I like the focus on empowering the student to contribute, as this aligns with my interest in students as co-creators and open educational resources. For situated practice, Chang asked how can instructors help students contribute as participants rather than recipients. For overt instruction, students could take multiple roles and help create. For critical framing, there are several opportunities for instructors to develop learning environments to experiment and focus on critical issues faced by students and citizens. For transformed practice, Chang found instructors adding skills to prepare students for online presentations, for example. Some takeaways from the survey include use of digital tools, instructor flexibility, and community building activities and research. This session by Chang, Bartolic, and Craig made me think about how to emphasize the roles that students will take in the course to create and share knowledge. The importance of helping students develop strategies to successfully complete online courses has come up several times recently, and I want to include an “student course planning” activity at the beginning. I also just completed the NCSU Inclusive Teaching Certificate coursework offered by the Office of Faculty Development and Project SAFE from the NCSU GLBT Center. We need to do a better job openly discussing campus climate for the GLBT community and marginalized people to encourage productive an honest conversation both in and out of the clases we teach. The Multiliteracies pedagogy may help emphasize the diverse group of participants in involved in higher education and their potential impact on society!
