COVID Diaries
May 6, 2020
WPC Montreal Team
Zoom Meeting
Attendees: Alice Ming Wai Jim, Analays Alvarez Hernandez, May Chew, Barbara Clausen, Varda Nisar, Maya Oppenheimer, Edith-Anne Pageot, Ashley Raghubir
TEACHING/CONCERNS DURING COVID-19
Teaching and Pedagogy - Care and Concern
Maya: It might be constructive to convene conversations that are akin to a teach-in, during COVID-19 conditions: this possibility seems really rich and delicious. I feel like there’s also a need for space wherein instructors may communicate how vulnerable-making it was, when the shut-down unfolded in March 2020, to have pedagogy - let alone everyday life - altered.
I have had some invaluable conversations with colleagues about the doubt and guilt of working in isolation and teaching in isolation. We were asking ourselves complex questions: how do you balance rigour, or a pedagogical arc for a class, while also taking the myriad situations that one can’t even imagine into account; how might we balance accessibility and support but also exercise self-care and privacy concerns? Hearing colleagues and pedagogs share how they navigated that deeply complex compromise could help us approach the semesters ahead with a sense of community. We could place the energy that drains with uncertainty into care and creative pivots with our students and our own networks. This could be as specific as a conversation topic set to pre-COVID-19, anticipated course outcomes and their metamorphoses to accommodate realistic, emergency course trajectories; how educators grasped learning borne of the shut-down and applied it to working over the summer, amidst multiple crises, to approach future course content. Or queries could be as general as: what do educators think is appropriate to expect in the classroom as it is at the moment?
As we gear up to Fall 2020, I’ve been hearing a fair number of anecdotes communicating anxiety about student expectations. Ostensibly we’ll have the summer months to prepare 2020-2021 courses into online courses, but in fact none of (well I shouldn’t say none of us), but a fair number of faculty haven’t had online pedagogy training: this is a specialisation, not a matter of watching a YouTube video on how to set up Zoom Rooms. Will there be an energy of care and tactics emanating from the students and faculty and staff come the Fall 2020, or will there be an overarching sense of absurdity? We will soon find out.
Emergency Remote Delivery
(11:25):
Alice: I was just in a webinar where they explain how e-learning is not the same as online teaching. Theories of e-learning are about delivering content on a device that students can have access to at any time, like on a bus. But when you are talking about online teaching, it’s about real-time delivery. We also have to remember to distinguish between rigorous online teaching (or distance teaching/learning of lessons) normally administered as part of a program or even as part of a course, and what we are doing now, during a pandemic, which is the unplanned emergency remote delivery of content, or emergency remote teaching of content which in most cases were not designed or crafted to be online or distance learning experiences.
(12:18):
Analays: It came to my mind that, as we are all grading, we could reflect on the experience of grading at this time, because I am torn apart in the sense that I want to preserve academic excellence but at the same time I also want to show some compassion. How do we achieve balance in our grading? And then how do we deal with this situation?
Edith-Anne: Another thing that I like to bring up is the fact that for the past 15 years, I have considered teaching as a curatorial gesture. As an art historian, you choose certain items that go together and you create a narrative around them. So, it’s like a theatre in a way. But with the current situation, what happens to me is that because I like small capsules instead of a three-hour lecture it shifts the thing. And I think that I tend to go towards a less material approach, towards a more conceptual approach because I try to deliver the essentials conceptually but not talking that much about each work of art because I give them links to find the data about the artist and the way it’s done and as in comparison to class, even though I am working with reproduction, but it’s another level of media… in an online approach. In class I am always attentive, even though it’s reproduction, to material approach… to the way it is made… so I think that for me at least, there is a shift between… and a less material approach, more conceptual approach while doing those capsules. Of course, because of the current situation and if we had more time maybe it could be done differently. But for now by creating small capsules, very short sessions, it’s more like… I would say… more… like marketing your concepts, you know?! The communication tools are so different, that something happens in the content as well. So, I am reflecting on that. I don’t have a… [French] on that. But it is something that I would like to reflect on.
(19:32):
Alice: … the goal is… [laughter]... the goal is generative… transformative, and generous.
(27:48):
May: I think there also seems to be - I don’t know if it’s a tension, maybe if it is a tension, it is a productive tension - around some of the things that have been proposed. Some seem like longer-standing projects, while other ideas put forward are more tied to thinking through crisis, and ideas about practice and praxis, and care and attention. So I do wonder if thinking about art and research through the time of COVID - just to be crass - can be a kind of anchor in a way, or if that’s just part of the conversation. Because, Maya, I empathize with the complaints that you made earlier…just because my interests are so amorphous and pulled in different directions, that I find myself unable to really concretize things that I want to propose. I am not sure if we should list things that we want to work out individually, things we think are broadly pertinent, things we can cluster around. I think the idea of clusters was mentioned earlier, but I don’t know if we’re starting to congeal themes or just thinking more idiosyncratically.
Edith-Anne: In terms of forms of writing, I am dreaming of a book where we could each have our own text or something. But I would dream of having at least one collective text [“Ahum”]… because that is also a statement about our individualistic society where we are all in competition between universities. But it could also be seen as erasing our individuality … to have only one collective text, common voice, eh? So instead, we could have…and I don’t know…not necessarily as a common introduction…but something a bit more political… [“Ahum”]…even a poem!...I mean…
Alice: (excitedly) OR A MANIFESTO!
Edith-Anne: YES!
Alice: I have always wanted to write one.
WPC Montreal Team
Zoom Meeting
Attendees: Alice Ming Wai Jim, Analays Alvarez Hernandez, May Chew, Barbara Clausen, Varda Nisar, Maya Oppenheimer, Edith-Anne Pageot, Ashley Raghubir
TEACHING/CONCERNS DURING COVID-19
Teaching and Pedagogy - Care and Concern
Maya: It might be constructive to convene conversations that are akin to a teach-in, during COVID-19 conditions: this possibility seems really rich and delicious. I feel like there’s also a need for space wherein instructors may communicate how vulnerable-making it was, when the shut-down unfolded in March 2020, to have pedagogy - let alone everyday life - altered.
I have had some invaluable conversations with colleagues about the doubt and guilt of working in isolation and teaching in isolation. We were asking ourselves complex questions: how do you balance rigour, or a pedagogical arc for a class, while also taking the myriad situations that one can’t even imagine into account; how might we balance accessibility and support but also exercise self-care and privacy concerns? Hearing colleagues and pedagogs share how they navigated that deeply complex compromise could help us approach the semesters ahead with a sense of community. We could place the energy that drains with uncertainty into care and creative pivots with our students and our own networks. This could be as specific as a conversation topic set to pre-COVID-19, anticipated course outcomes and their metamorphoses to accommodate realistic, emergency course trajectories; how educators grasped learning borne of the shut-down and applied it to working over the summer, amidst multiple crises, to approach future course content. Or queries could be as general as: what do educators think is appropriate to expect in the classroom as it is at the moment?
As we gear up to Fall 2020, I’ve been hearing a fair number of anecdotes communicating anxiety about student expectations. Ostensibly we’ll have the summer months to prepare 2020-2021 courses into online courses, but in fact none of (well I shouldn’t say none of us), but a fair number of faculty haven’t had online pedagogy training: this is a specialisation, not a matter of watching a YouTube video on how to set up Zoom Rooms. Will there be an energy of care and tactics emanating from the students and faculty and staff come the Fall 2020, or will there be an overarching sense of absurdity? We will soon find out.
Emergency Remote Delivery
(11:25):
Alice: I was just in a webinar where they explain how e-learning is not the same as online teaching. Theories of e-learning are about delivering content on a device that students can have access to at any time, like on a bus. But when you are talking about online teaching, it’s about real-time delivery. We also have to remember to distinguish between rigorous online teaching (or distance teaching/learning of lessons) normally administered as part of a program or even as part of a course, and what we are doing now, during a pandemic, which is the unplanned emergency remote delivery of content, or emergency remote teaching of content which in most cases were not designed or crafted to be online or distance learning experiences.
(12:18):
Analays: It came to my mind that, as we are all grading, we could reflect on the experience of grading at this time, because I am torn apart in the sense that I want to preserve academic excellence but at the same time I also want to show some compassion. How do we achieve balance in our grading? And then how do we deal with this situation?
Edith-Anne: Another thing that I like to bring up is the fact that for the past 15 years, I have considered teaching as a curatorial gesture. As an art historian, you choose certain items that go together and you create a narrative around them. So, it’s like a theatre in a way. But with the current situation, what happens to me is that because I like small capsules instead of a three-hour lecture it shifts the thing. And I think that I tend to go towards a less material approach, towards a more conceptual approach because I try to deliver the essentials conceptually but not talking that much about each work of art because I give them links to find the data about the artist and the way it’s done and as in comparison to class, even though I am working with reproduction, but it’s another level of media… in an online approach. In class I am always attentive, even though it’s reproduction, to material approach… to the way it is made… so I think that for me at least, there is a shift between… and a less material approach, more conceptual approach while doing those capsules. Of course, because of the current situation and if we had more time maybe it could be done differently. But for now by creating small capsules, very short sessions, it’s more like… I would say… more… like marketing your concepts, you know?! The communication tools are so different, that something happens in the content as well. So, I am reflecting on that. I don’t have a… [French] on that. But it is something that I would like to reflect on.
(19:32):
Alice: … the goal is… [laughter]... the goal is generative… transformative, and generous.
(27:48):
May: I think there also seems to be - I don’t know if it’s a tension, maybe if it is a tension, it is a productive tension - around some of the things that have been proposed. Some seem like longer-standing projects, while other ideas put forward are more tied to thinking through crisis, and ideas about practice and praxis, and care and attention. So I do wonder if thinking about art and research through the time of COVID - just to be crass - can be a kind of anchor in a way, or if that’s just part of the conversation. Because, Maya, I empathize with the complaints that you made earlier…just because my interests are so amorphous and pulled in different directions, that I find myself unable to really concretize things that I want to propose. I am not sure if we should list things that we want to work out individually, things we think are broadly pertinent, things we can cluster around. I think the idea of clusters was mentioned earlier, but I don’t know if we’re starting to congeal themes or just thinking more idiosyncratically.
Edith-Anne: In terms of forms of writing, I am dreaming of a book where we could each have our own text or something. But I would dream of having at least one collective text [“Ahum”]… because that is also a statement about our individualistic society where we are all in competition between universities. But it could also be seen as erasing our individuality … to have only one collective text, common voice, eh? So instead, we could have…and I don’t know…not necessarily as a common introduction…but something a bit more political… [“Ahum”]…even a poem!...I mean…
Alice: (excitedly) OR A MANIFESTO!
Edith-Anne: YES!
Alice: I have always wanted to write one.