[Xmca-l] Re: Love in the time of corona

Tue Apr 14 09:47:14 PDT 2020

For what it's worth here are a few thoughts on creating online 
activities. I don't think there is a one size fits all answer because 
students (as well as teachers!) come from all sorts of different 
cultures with all sorts of different expectation about community. But I 
hope that some of my suggestions will work broadly - my hope is based on 
my background, which is in the competitive individualist west, where the 
biggest problem about learning communities is getting out of students' 
heads the idea that any kind of collaboration is tantamount to collusion 
and will be punished with the utmost severity. (I find I have had to 
work at getting that out of a lot of teachers' heads as well.) So 
basically, if it works on my students, there is a good chance that it 
will work elsewhere.

I don't think you should work at community directly. it is something 
best sneaked up on in the course of other activity. But the other 
activity has to be carefully and artfully constructed. That's one of 
many reasons why you don't make an online course by chucking offine 
material on to the web.

There are two aspects - being online and working together. Being online 
will be a challenge for many students. A lifetime of texting, 
Snapchatting, Tiktoking, and ordering your clothes, holidays and pizza 
over the internet does not prepare people for using an online learning 
environment. So you have to expect people to be clueless to start with. 
But you should act as if this is an entirely natural environment right 
from the start. You need to make it their assumption that they will be 
working together every week if not more often. You need to make it their 
assumption that if they're live online, they will see and hear each 
other. It's astonishing in some of the courses I've seen how many 
students have microphones that don't work :-)

So design your teaching and your assessment work to perhaps enforce, 
certainly encourage, working together. The more they work together, the 
more a sense of community will grow. In my environment, students follow 
the marks, even the disengaged ones. if there are marks available for 
collaborative activities, they will do them. They will do them with less 
or more of a sense of engagement, but the hope is that as they get used 
to them, students will recognise the intrinsic rewards as well as the 
extrinsic ones.

I don't know what your assessment strategy will be. The standard at the 
OU is a series of assignments roughly once a month over a nine month 
course. Each assignment should contain some kind of collaborative 
element. Even the simplest will do - quote two substantial and 
meaningful posts you have written in the online forum. There is plenty 
of room for interpretation of "substantial and meaningful" but you get 
the idea.

Then you work up to them working in teams to produce, say, an annotated 
bibliography on a specific topic, or a powerpoint on something.And you 
can assess the way they work together in a forum to produce this. Sounds 
daunting - I've done it, works easier than you think.

If you're working with them live, give them opportunities to work 
together on exercises or issues. Even if there are only two of them, put 
them in a breakout room together. Without you there, they have to talk 
to each other.

Incorporate exercises like "how am I doing?" Get students to assess 
their own progress against the learning outcomes of the course, and 
discuss with each other. You could give them an exercise after working 
on it individually, to come to a combined ranking of the two or three 
bits of the course that they most need to revisit. (Which you obviously 
then revisit, and get the students who think they're Ok on it to teach 
the others.)

I have so much more to say. I could write a book, as you can tell. I'd 
be very happy to give more detail, perhaps off-list.

Final thought: people often compare ftf and online communities by 
different standards. Ftf communities all have weaknesses and failings 
but because they're familiar, we assume they're working. Because online 
communities are new and unfamiliar, we tend to see all their faults and 
weaknesses and judge them by standards that we don't apply to the ftf world.

Rob

On 13/04/2020 18:17, Greg Thompson wrote:
> Lois and others,
>
> Inspiring to see all that you and ESI are doing there in the midst of 
> this whirlwind - and in the eye of the storm no less!
>
> This comment of yours seemed to resonate with Liz' and Annalie's 
> comments about mental health:
> "people are realizing how they feel is not inside them".
>
> That seems to me to be a revolutionary thought.
>
> Also, I'd ask this to you but don't want to distract you from your 
> important work, so perhaps others can talk about how activities can be 
> transformed in these times to adapt to this new era (I'd like to call 
> it a "moment" but it feels bigger than that).
>
> What got me thinking of this were the Zoom sessions that Lois 
> mentioned on Creating Connection and Building Community. The fact is 
> that there will be new possibilities to do these things (e.g., the 
> possibility of truly GLOBAL communities and connections - perhaps to 
> Andy's world-perezhivanie), but the activities that enable these 
> things will also need to be transformed and different.
>
> [I'm a bit of an idiot about these things so I'm just realizing that 
> online classes can't just be in-person activities that are taken 
> online. They need online activities that can build connection and 
> community among students. Still working on that.]
>
> So I'm wondering if anyone has had any success or even just 
> suggestions regarding how to create online activities that can realize 
> the possibilities and potential for connection and community in online 
> spaces?
>
> [I'm thinking really practically/locally here in terms of what can be 
> done in my classes to build connection and community in online spaces, 
> but the answer will, of course, be relevant to forms of cross-national 
> solidarity, granting that there may be other challenges as well - 
> e.g., language].
>
> -greg
>
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 10:53 AM Lois Holzman 
> <lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org 
> <mailto:lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org>> wrote:
>
>     Hello All,
>
>     Following the lead of others, I'll jump in. While NYC and state
>     are in serious crisis and all its cultural and economic conflicts
>     even more glaring, the vibrancy and energy has not disappeared.
>     It's just different.
>
>     As Vygotsky is purported to have said, "A revolution solves only
>     those tasks raised by history..." History has thrown us a monster.
>
>     Different too are the forces working to shape this extraordinary
>     historical moment. Much of that shaping by those who are in
>     positions of political and economic, etc. authority—and the
>     pandemic itself—are creating fear and despair, both for now and
>     the future. At the same time, the shaping being done by so many
>     thousands of people and organizations that inspire and
>     organize people to exercise their power and creativity for
>     connectedness are generating hope and possibility.
>     I feel that palpably all day long.
>
>     We in the global development community are re-tooling and/or
>     stepping up our virtual activities, many of which involve play,
>     performance and ensemble building, not to take people's minds off
>     what's happening, but to involve them in some "non-knowing
>     growing" and participation in creating positive responses to
>     what's happening that have the possibility to continue to be
>     transformative of individuals and communities. A few examples—
>          establishing a Global Play Brigade working across borders of
>     nation state, culture and economy (so far performance activists
>     from about 40 countries involved)
>          offering Creating Connection and Building Community
>     <https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Play-Sessions-via-Zoom-Opened-Up--Free-online-social-gatherings.html?soid=1101246158194&aid=qweSrQdaUGo>free
>     play sessions via Zoom, each one originating in a different part
>     of the world (about 150 people per session so far)
>          taking our Creating Our Mental Health conversation/workshop
>     series national and international in a moment when people are
>     realizing how they feel is not inside them, not merely socially
>     produced and organized, but social in its potential transformativity
>           taking All Stars Project programs for poor youth and their
>     communities in NYC, NJ, Dallas, Chicago and the Bay Area virtual
>
>     If you're interested in any of this and more, let me know. And you
>     can always check out the social media listed in my signature.
>
>     Stay safe,
>     Lois
>
>     -- 
>     *Access my latest article—**Why be Half-Human? How Play,
>     Performance and Practical Philosophy Make Us Whole **(written with
>     Cathy Salit)—and read the rest of this marvelous book, Social
>     Construction in Action
>     <https://www.taosinstitute.net/product/social-construction-in-action-contributions-from-the-taos-institutes-25th-anniversary-conference>,
>     which you can download for free!*
>     *
>     *
>
>     Lois Holzman
>     Director, East Side Institute for Group & Short Term Psychotherapy
>     Chair, Global Outreach, All Stars Project, UX
>     Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Vygotskian Practice and
>     Performance, Lloyd International Honors College at The University
>     of North Carolina at Greensboro
>     Address: East Side Institute, Attn:Lois Holzman
>     119 West 23 St, suite 902
>     New York, NY 10011
>     Telephone +1.212.941.8906 x324
>     Mobile 1-917-815-2664
>
>     lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org <mailto:lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org>
>     Social Media
>     Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/lois.holzman.5>| LinkedIn
>     <https://www.linkedin.com/in/lois-holzman-5bb0594/>| Twitter
>     <https://twitter.com/LoisHolzman>
>     Blogs
>     Psychology Today
>     <http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/conceptual-revolution>|
>     Psychology of Becoming <http://loisholzman.org/> | Mad in America
>     <http://www.madinamerica.com/author/lois/>
>     Websites
>     Lois Holzman <http://loisholzman.org/> | East Side Institute
>     <http://eastsideinstitute.org/> | Performing the World
>     <http://www.performingtheworld.org/>
>     All Stars Project
>     <http://allstars.org/>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> WEBSITE: https://anthropology.byu.edu/greg-thompson
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson

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