Chapter 13 Digital Learning and Teaching: Insights from What Went Well in 2020-2021

Chapter 13

Digital Learning and Teaching: Insights from What Went Well in 2020-2021

Julian CH Lee, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

Laura Kayes, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

Glenda Mejía, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

Wendy Steele, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

Riccardo Serbolonghi, Columbia University

Tricia McLaughlin, School of Education, RMIT University

Katherine Littlewood, School of Education, RMIT University

Freda Zapsalis, School of Education, RMIT University

Sherman Young, Education Portfolio, RMIT University

Abstract

The onset of the pandemic led much teaching at universities around the world to be conducted online. Students and teachers alike recognised at that time the limitations of online learning and the experience put into relief what was beneficial and taken for granted in face-to-face teaching experiences. This chapter acknowledges this, but seeks to dwell on both the practices in the online experience of university that went well, or which were practices that made the most of the circumstances we all found ourselves in. The authors of this chapter participated in RMIT University’s online learning and teaching experience in 2020 and 2021 in various capacities, including as students-and-teachers, as teachers and course coordinators, or as a member of senior leadership. In these reflections, this chapter draws on the concept of ‘positive outliers’ (aka ‘positive deviance’), which holds that in an area of life or endeavour where there are problems, there will already be practices in the community that address these problems. Rather than innovate to create solutions, the notion of positive outliers focuses attention on existing good practice, the benefits of which can then be shared.

Keywords: Online teaching, pedagogies in higher education, flipped classrooms, quiet pedagogy

Introduction

The present authors were all resident in Melbourne, Australia, during the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, which resulted in long periods of lockdown in the years 2020 and 2021. The conditions of Melbourne’s lockdowns have been described as among the world’s harshest, with travel constraints of as little as five kilometres being imposed in August 2021 (e.g., Brunt, 2021). For those coordinating classes at RMIT and elsewhere in Australia in those years, learning was rapidly put online when face-to-face classes abruptly ceased. At the time, collegial conversations about the experience tended to focus, quite naturally, on the challenges of teaching online; the loss of the diverse elements of the in-class experience was deeply felt, especially at such time of anxiousness and uncertainty when in-person communion would have been especially beneficial.

In relation to the ability for teachers to reach the learning objectives and experiences they wanted to achieve, among the things many felt first was the changed ability to get a sense of how the students in the class – whether as a whole, or segments of it, or particular students – were responding to ideas and activities. In a face-to-face class, a teacher can gauge that an activity or a question hasn’t gained traction or been understood through non-verbal cues, which can be used as a prompt to inquire as to what hasn’t been understood and to attempt a different approach. And likewise, if one group of students working through questions or an activity have finished, or if a group just isn’t functioning as well as others, tutors can perceive this and respond proactively. In a classroom, even if a teacher is assisting one group, they still receive, whether consciously or non-consciously, inputs through the corners of their eyes – such as through changed seating postures of students, as when they think they are done, or bored, or unhappy – and through the audible changes that occur when students become excited or when their conversation has petered out.

Online, however, whether the class that has been split into breakout groups is humming along well or has gone flat is more difficult to gauge. Pressures on teachers mount when, furthermore, they are the conduit for all communication online.  Whereas natural cross-cutting conversations between students can more readily occur face-to-face, teachers often need to mediate turn taking in online conversations, read out textual chats that have been posted during discussion, and, of course, work harder when students seem unresponsive to prompts to contribute to discussion.

These and other challenges of online teaching have fuelled many collegial discussions as well as research and opinion. A report released in November 2020 by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) based on a survey of 118 university students found that, with respect to online learning and teaching, the ‘characteristics of what worked well […] were relatively few’, while ‘More detailed feedback was provided by students on what did not work well’ (TEQSA, 2020, p. 1). The report noted that ‘a very large proportion’ of students ‘did not like the experience of online learning and did not wish to ever experience it again’ (TEQSA, 2020, p. 8). This will be unsurprising to most university teachers, especially given that the report was been founded on those early experiences of online teaching in the pandemic, and certainly prepared by course coordinators and tutors who themselves were harried, frazzled and quite possibly anxious themselves. Furthermore, as observed by Pauline Taylor-Guy and Anne-Marie Chase in The Conversation in March 2020, ‘Many university teachers have had no experience themselves of online learning and have not been upskilled in online course design and pedagogy’ (2020). This lack of experience more likely leads then to a poor experience for students, leading in turn to the sentiments captured in the report by TEQSA.

This chapter recognises this, but seeks to focus on the positive experiences of some teachers in their online teaching in 2020-2021. This is not to say that all or any of the present authors regard online teaching as superior per se; it is to say that the present authors did find that one or another practice that they had implemented or experienced had, in their view, either worked well or at least better than expected, or was a useful ingredient for beneficial online learning and teaching despite the drawbacks of digital teaching.

This focus on what worked well is inspired by the concept of ‘positive outliers’, which is also sometimes referred to as ‘positive deviance’. It takes the view that, with regard to a given issue or problem, there will likely already exist practices that address it, and because these have been already tested in the context in question, they are more likely to be effective than practices that are invented to address the problem. Duncan Green advocates for adopting the approach of seeking positive outliers in his development-related book, How Change Happens (Green 2016). There he writes that ‘Before cooking up our own strategies, we ought to look around’ (Green, 2-16, p. 242). He draws on the work of Pascale, Sternin and Sternin (2010) whose book The Power of Positive Deviance focuses on this concept, and quotes them to stress that it is important to ‘look for outliers who succeed against the odds’ (Pascale et al. 2010; Green, 2016, p. 25).

The present authors know firsthand of the amazing efforts by every colleague who, despite challenges on every front – social, personal, professional and technical, among others – strove to keep students engaged and connected while also delivering on the learning outcomes of the courses they taught. However, the experience of teaching online in this context can lend itself to a focus on the comparative shortcomings of online learning, and have a (very understandable) tone of lament. While these shortcomings are real and the laments sincere, we wish to reflect on the fact that there are learning and teaching practices which can either work well digitally, or which are important when teaching online.

The present authors reflect on aspects of the experience of being a member of RMIT University over 2020-2021 with various responsibilities, including as students-and-teachers at the same time, as teachers and course coordinators, and as a member of the senior leadership of the university. These personal experiences are shared so that others might benefit from them, and also to encourage readers to spend a moment reflecting on what went well in their own teaching. Each section is authored by one or a pair of the co-authors of this chapter, and the writing convention that is followed here is that the author(s) of that section will refer to themselves in the first instance in the third person, and thenceforth in the first person (a convention that Lee describes as the ‘third person personal’; see Lee et al., 2019).

Responding as an institution

As Sherman recollects the experience of the pandemic across 2020 to 2022 in his capacity as Deputy Vice Chancellor Education, there are several elements that came together that enabled RMIT University to respond to crisis that confronted us, especially at the onset of the pandemic in Australia. My reflection here canvasses some of the institutional thinking that occurred as part of the pandemic response, and reflecting on how the combination of institutional guidance and individual contributions helped our University navigate the pandemic.

The first engagement with COVID-19 at RMIT occurred in late January 2020. The Australian Government had introduced a ban on travellers from China which impacted both returning and commencing students from that country. Given that it was also Lunar New Year, many existing students had returned to China to celebrate the holidays and were prevented from re-entering Australia. As a consequence, the initial COVID response was designed to provide learning to those students, identified across a limited range of programs; and work focused on identifying those programs, and ensuring that there were online alternatives available for any timetabled face-to-face activities.

In common with most Australian universities, RMIT had an existing baseline for online learning across the institution. Its recent implementation of Canvas not only ensured a common learning platform, but it also enforced a number of mandatory elements, e.g. all courses underwent a Quality Assurance process. RMIT also had opt-out lecture recordings in Echo 360 and an implementation of Collaborate Ultra for online tutorials, alongside other tools on the Canvas platform. Given those resources, it was ‘straightforward to address the needs of those students initially affected. We expected to have to deliver online courses for at least the first half of semester one, 2020.In hindsight. that was overly optimistic.

The initial work consisted of identifying impacted students, ensuring that there was appropriate online offerings for those unable to return to campus, and providing the resources (professional training, quality standards and technology infrastructure) necessary to deliver online classes. This included creating online learning guidelines, confirming the availability of technology across global geographies (acknowledging the challenges of the Great Firewall of China’), and increasing professional development resources.

University level governance around this activity was built around a collaborative ‘small fast team’ (SFT) that consisted of senior educational leadership from across RMIT’s colleges, and its central education team. Even during the early China-only phase, this SFT met weekly to agree on approaches and make key decisions.

However, it soon became apparent that the COVID situation was worsening, and as the pandemic impacted more people in Australia and in Melbourne, RMIT’s crisis team was making daily situation assessments. By early March, there was an increasing nervousness from staff and students around any face-to-face activity, and in mid-March, the SFT agreed that the entire University would cease face-to-face classes. Given RMIT’s baseline online activity, the SFT felt that a rapid shift was possible, albeit challenging, exacerbated by staff needing to work from home, as Melbourne campuses minimised their on-campus activity.

Given the suddenness of the shift, there was no expectation of complete course redesign. Instead, the agreed intent was that courses could be delivered as already planned with activities shifted online as far as possible. Therefore lectures could be recorded and uploaded, and tutorials, and seminars could be delivered synchronously through Collaborate Ultra. Those learning activities (laboratories, studios etc.) that required particular facilities or significant reconsideration could be delayed until a return to campus was possible.

Of course, as the pandemic played out, its continually evolving nature required constant iteration of the guidance and resources we could make available across the University – which involved crafting a set of L&T principles to help guide activity for our colleagues. Rather than outline more than two years of evolving responses, identifying the learnings from the pandemic is perhaps more useful for this piece. From my perspective, there are three broad areas where lessons have been learnt.

The first is the growing realisation that any institutional change requires a combination of top-down and bottom-up thinking. Whilst the activities I have just described represented a RMIT-wide approach, it was always the case that individual academics would have the most impact on the student experience, and that in some ways, my job was to provide permission to act (through an agreed framework) and enable and empower activity within the framework. What we can see in this chapter in the sections are the recollections of some of our teachers and coordinators about how they experienced these shifts and made the most of the circumstances and even found unexpected educational opportunities. The second insight was around that agreed framework though – we had a responsibility to our students to ensure that there was a baseline standard for our online offerings, to ensure that the learning experience was appropriate given the COVID circumstances – and that we had the right support in the form of professional development, technology platforms and other resources to ensure that requirement. Clearly, such an approach applies even in non-pandemic times and reinforces the need for an enabling educational framework, with a baseline requirement that empowers educators to be engaging and innovative in their teaching. The final insight is that the pandemic pushed us towards a more sophisticated understanding of ‘blended learning’. This understanding goes well beyond a simplistic online/on campus dichotomy and requires a thoughtful approach to reconsider what education can look like when all expectations are reset, and how we best work with our educators to co-create the best educational approach for the future.

Cultivating active participation in online classes

In 2020, Laura was both a student pursuing a Masters degree and a teacher at RMIT University, delivering a course for exchange students in Australia. Being on both sides of the teaching fence allowed me to comprehend how easy it was for me to become a passive student online, and then to try to enable the students I was teaching to get the most out of their experiences by being actively engaged and participating, thereby contributing to their own and others’ learning through a dynamic and mutually beneficial class environment (see also Sherman & Teemant, 2021). In this section, I will describe, first, how I came to be and feel like a passive student, and then, second, how I worked to establish a positive environment where active student engagement – which, as Wendy Steele describes below, is not to be confused with ‘noisy’ engagement – was the norm.

In the first few weeks of online learning, whether it was due to the technology limiting interaction or the stress of the pandemic, I noted the unwillingness of myself and other students to participate. I found, as a student in my two-hour classes, that I felt inactive and had little desire to contribute. In thinking about my own passivity, I wondered whether the habitual non-active role we assumed while we consumed media on screens may have transposed itself on to our interaction with online education. Viewing internet content, whether on Netflix, YouTube or social media, is largely a passive pastime. When teachers requested responses from my classmates, most of whom had their videos off, there was an inevitable extended period of stunned stillness, as if a television programme had just asked for our opinion.

I pondered whether while teaching, a few modest adjustments may rouse students from their pre-disposition towards passivity. I realised that not all screen time is passive; in some online games, such as Fortnight, Roblox and The Sims, individuals play a central role in world-building and collaboration (Bonning, 2019). Considering this, I implemented in my classes a number of modifications that, I am pleased to say, worked to engage students . In the first online class I taught to undergraduates in 2020, I acknowledged that we would be learning online via the screen and prompted students to discuss their own personal screen usage, based on weekly usage data that could be extracted from our mobile phones. We were all, it turned out, using our phones for between four and seven hours every day.

In our first class, we discussed this ans agreed that this was essentially passive time, so Could we commit, I asked, to taking an active part for the remaining hour of class? Then, we discussed what an engaged learning style might look and sound like. The students’ responses on what they wanted in their class were unambiguous: screens on and microphones on. We decided, as a class, that this would be expected henceforth, though for equity reasons this was not compulsory.

Also, as in a game play, I provided learning choices. I utilised the polling option on the platform we were using, enabling students to experience the impact of their active participation by collectively determining their own future steps in the learning process. “Should we review the texts together today, or would you rather discuss them in small groups?” This “choose your own adventure” format adopted from video games contributed, I believe, to the development of a positive and active online learning environment. The shift towards framing students as having agency in their learning, and towards forming an engaged online community, where students felt empowered in their roles, fostered an online learning experience that seemed much more vibrant and beneficial than the ones in which I was a student. Although I might have wished for a better experience as a student, my insights as a student did enable me to consider and attempt a different approach which, I believe, made the most of the online learning.

Discovering the positive qualities of chatting during class

Like Laura, Freda also gained an insight into online teaching because of her experience as a student. As a teacher, I felt quite ambivalent about the use of the chat function on Collaborate Ultra; I wanted students to speak and interact as they would in a classroom setting. I created breakout rooms and activities that would require discussions after presenting concepts or having watched videos or certain topics. Initially, I was always trying to find ways to mimic the face-to-face classroom but understandably, this was not to be. I clung on to the hopes that students would talk. Instead, they chatted through a written medium.

It was not until I was a student at a Summer School that I attended as part of my PhD candidature in 2022, that I realized the importance and value of chat. The Summer School was comprised of presentations by esteemed professionals on career guidance and counselling. It was organised in a hybrid format, more students attending online and some (like me) face-to-face. The pause moments during the presentations gave the opportunity for one of the organisers to read the comments and questions made on chat by online students. When I listened to the comments being read out, I realised the value of these short written contributions as an opportunity for students to reflect on what they were learning as the presentation was unfolding; it also enabled their colleagues to be part of a community and reflect on the comments they were reading. Simultaneous ‘chatting’ would enhance their learning as well – listening to what the expert says and at the same time having other people verify what they were hearing, asking questions and providing examples on how the subject relates to their career practice and experiences. Students physically present in the room obviously had the opportunity to speak and ask questions, but there was something about the simultaneous input of the different voices through the chat function that made the learning experience seem richer. Through ‘chat’ created a feeling of connection to others; it was conversational and dynamic, and the content felt more accessible. Even though I sat in the room listening to relevant and interesting content, without access to the chat, I would not feel a connection with the content as it was unfolding.

This experience and subsequent reflection on it reminded me of a webinar I attended in my capacity as a career counselor, which was about how to engage with clients remotely in counseling sessions. The importance of text-based interactions in counselling was noted for many reasons – it created a “disinhibiting effect”, it allowed clients to reflect on how they communicated their issues, but also helped the counsellor develop rapport with the client as they understood a client’s cognitive processes through their written comments (Anthony, 2000; Suler, 2000). This instigated thinking about how I could use the written word as a reflection tool for the (student) writer and the (student) audience to keep students engaged in the online classroom. By encouraging students to write in the chat and reflect as I spoke or as their peers presented, I realised that this wasn’t a distraction but, instead, could foster engagement and aid learning. There are many exemplary techniques to make online teaching more engaging, but I needed to be a student, to empathize with the needs of the online learner, to be able to value the relevance and benefits of the chat function which I had previously underappreciated (see also Burnett, 2003).

Making the most of and creating opportunities in a university moved online

Virtual classes may not have been initially attractive for those students who had enjoyed the vibrance of campus-life prior to 2020. For Riccardo Serbolonghi, who was a third-year International Studies undergraduate in 2020, the difference in learning environments was acutely felt. However, despite the shortcomings of a fully remote learning experience, I came to appreciate some of the benefits, and sought to make the most of an online university experience. Between 2020 and 2022, I moved from being an undergraduate to an Honours year conducting research for a minor thesis in 2021, and then acting as a tutor for a first-year class that I myself had taken four years prior. Thus, like Laura and Freda above, I experienced the pandemic as both a student and a teacher, and holding multiple roles within the university enabled me to understand the value of being a proactive student who engages in crafting their own study, whatever the circumstances at hand. While acknowledging the alienation inherent in online learning, in what follows, I draw on the concept of study crafting, and also outline how students can make the most of a virtual learning environment, drawing on my own experiences 2020-2022.

As Laura discussed above, remote learning can generate a feeling of alienation among tertiary education students (see also Rudolph et al., 2021). As a third-year student in 2020 I was already aware of RMIT`s various services to support students and had made connections with my peers. However, I imagine that the shift to online learning for those in their first year of university could have felt extremely isolating, since students frequently left their webcams switched off during tutorials, which made it hard to ascertain who was really engaged and there to share ideas about the content we were covering. The alienation seemed heightened by the fact that, upon the conclusion of classes, there was the realisation that there was no distinction between one’s learning and leisure space, particularly at a time when stay-at-home orders were in place.

Despite these circumstances, there was scope to engage. Having classes online offered opportunities to take breaks in ways that were less likely pre-COVID, such as going for walks around the block or spending more time with relatives (whether virtually or in person if they lived nearby enough). Further opportunities to interact with peers were developed by some outstanding members of my cohort in the Bachelor of International Studies. They organized informal virtual sessions that aimed to bring together students for various activities. An example was the “Definitely Maybe” social gathering, which centred on the discussion of political events. Academics from my degree also created occasions to socialise, for example by reinventing, for the virtual space, a decade-old tradition of gathering International Studies students for ‘tea time’.

Group work for classes also remained possible online. Pre-COVID, group work would often take place both in class but also, by arrangement, outside of classes. These latter meetings required some coordination and when I worked on group projects in early 2021, even though we could meet physically, we often chose not to. Meeting online had positive aspects; it was much easier to coordinate and host meetings virtually, without having to consider the time required for the commute to campus or to find days when people were coming in anyway. And while I do not suggest that an online university experience is superior, I do believe that it is not only characterised by that which it lacks and by absences.

Empirical observations have demonstrated that a university experience that incorporates study crafting leads to higher levels of satisfaction with one’s tertiary education experience (Mülder, 2022). My own university experience was not distinguished by the classes I attended and the completion of assignments. Instead, it was the level of academic support and extra-curricular opportunities that were available to me, such as leadership workshops and library services to name but two, which enabled me to appreciate my experience as an RMIT student and to make the most of it. What is required, however, is not only a proactive student, but also a dedicated cohort of peers and supportive university staff that can draw in those students who might not be as proactive or aware of all available opportunities.

As a student, I found ways to enrich my university experience through online seminars and sessions held by the JobShop, RMIT University’s careers’ department. I vividly recall a session I attended run by the JobShop which offered the opportunity to receive insights from an industry partner who dialled in from Vietnam. The purpose of that session was to provide recommendations for virtual interviews and, as Glenda Mejia notes in the following section, the opportunities for global engagements were made more accessible by our shift to online learning.

The value of proactivity, for students seeking opportunities and for the university that creates them, is, for me personally, evident in the fact that, despite the poor job market at the time, I sought and acquired employment through RMIT’s JobShop portal. This paid professional employment opportunity has contributed to developing my workplace experience and my soft skills and opened up possibilities to be involved in short-term paid projects in various parts of the university. The array of online engagements I experienced show that there is more to an ‘online university’ than what one misses out on by not being on campus.

The global collaborations/possibilities of online teaching

When the pandemic hit our classrooms, Glenda put on her creative hat as an educator and thought how to deliver her lectures (sessions) once face-to-face lectures were no longer possible. In 2021, she inherited a course called Global Mobility and Ethnic Relations (henceforth GloMo) from a colleague who left RMIT during the pandemic. Glenda began to create a new course using a decolonial lens and a ‘sensing thinking’ approach (Falds Borda 2015; Rendón 2008). In order to see im/migrants, refugees, and displaced people as humans we need to sentir (feel), and here is where ‘sensing pedagogy’ comes in. This pedagogy refers to teaching and learning with the heart/spirit and mind. Orlando Fals Borda, a Colombian sociologist, wanted to know the culture of fishermen of the Colombian coast and while learning and working with them, he learnt the concept of sentipensantes (sensing thinkers), a term that means that one acts with both heart and mind, and is now used by some scholars, including myself. The purpose of these approaches is to bring other voices, particular from the People of the Global Majority (PGM), who could share their knowledge/s with us, and to create a co-teaching and co-learning space in which we can be in dialogue with every text in a sensing-thinking form about local and global im/migration, mobility, and displacement topics (e.g., Indigenous, settlers, refugees, asylum seekers, among others). With this in mind, as we moved to online teaching, I was encouraged to use a pedagogy that fostered a critical review of already established cultural and historical content in an open and a dynamic form within my online sessions. The best way to do this was to invite guest speakers from other areas, who knew a particular field better than myself, to our sessions.

I know guest speakers have long been part of lectures at universities, but most of the time theirs have been in-person presentations, and often the guest speakers have been colleagues within the same university. However, I saw a crack and heard the voice of Catherine Walsh (2020) reminding me about how to agrietar y sembrar (to crack and to sow), and how, if we pay attention, we can see seeds growing from those cracks. I then put that insight into practice for the benefit of the course, the students, and my own un-/re-learning journey.

In the past, I have often contacted the author of a book, an article or book chapter that made an impact on my teaching, and in my life, without expecting a response. It was just as a gesture of gratitude for teaching me a new way of seeing things. Starting in 2021, I began to contact some of those writers, educators, activists, and researchers who had responded to me in previous years. I then asked if they could do a session for my course on a particular topic in any style they wanted, either recorded or online in real time.. In 2021 and 2022, I invited ten guest speakers from different fields (Anthropology, Politics, Gender, Education, Media, Economics, Human Rights, Development, Memory, Diaspora and Feminism), and from various local and global institutions (Griffith University, Deakin University, Melbourne University, Wollongong University, RMIT University, Ontario University, National University of Mexico (UNAM)). I even had a guest speaker who has agreed to present early in the semester but who at the time of her presentation was in quarantine, and whose presentation therefore happened to be embedded in the topic of borders and displacement, without it being planned that way.

These presentations were topical because of the global events at the time. This allowed students to see a reality outside of a classroom through a different lens, and be closer to real human experiences. Some of the students’ feedback via the Course Experience Survey (CES) expressed that “one of the best aspects of this course was the guest lecturers and their insight, and the visual and audio resources that broke up the chunks of pre-reading”; “the content of the lectures, the weekly readings were eye-opening and definitely sharpened my hunger for more knowledge in the field.” (CES 2021); and “I loved having different people presenting the topic of the week in lectures. It was great to hear their stories as well as their studies” (CES  2022).

In my thinking and rethinking the teaching, I have realised that it does not matter where I teach, the real question is how and why I teach the way I teach. As I (un)learned, I also thought of ways to better teach the rich pluralism that already existed across the diversity of mobilities and cultures, and how I could I bring all this into my classroom, either face-to-face or online, and share it with students so we can engage in critical dialogues. The shift to online teaching opened a crack, which I intend to keep open, and to continue sowing into.

A new geography for group work in tutorials

As Glenda has pointed out above, online learning and teaching opens up opportunities to traverse geographies, but what caused discussion and investigation by Tricia and Kathy in their online teaching was the change in the group dynamics and a ‘new geography of students’ in both of their Education classes. Previously students would sit or arrange themselves so that they would always drift towards friends and known peers when asked to discuss things, work in a small group to solve problems or even plan group assignments. Essentially, we felt students did not want to mix much, especially after the first year of their degrees; they had settled into a “classroom geography” that was difficult to change.

When teaching face-to-face classes, it was really hard to get students to “sit” in different areas, share work with others they did not know, and even arrange group assignments with new people. If we “forced” new groups, there was often disgruntlement, resigned “non-engagement”, or even downright refusals to work in designated groups. There were often  complaints about peers with whom they had been “made” to work.

Once the transition to online classes during COVID occurred, we both felt that students’ attitudes changed and this was a discussion we pursued together, examining what had happened and why.

Using a flipped pedagogy of collaborative active learning activities for the students who suddenly found themselves online seemed the logical approach. Adopting a flipped approach enabled our pedagogy to pivot to quality online provision (Salmon, 2020), rather than simply placing materials online for students to churn through at their leisure, if at all. The online participants were encouraged to complete their hand-in work together during the classes, collaboratively building understanding. This necessitated the use of peer learning and group work. Thus, a social constructivist view of learning where learning is considered as an experience-based, social activity was modelled and implemented (Beck & Kosnik, 2006).

The actual reasons will require more investigation over time, but perhaps because of the technology, or the lack of physical presence of “set groups”, or even because of the new online delivery mode, we discovered students were happy to be “mixed” at random or into pre-decided groups by us. The technology facilitated new, more diverse discussion groups. The nature of the technology we were using – Collaborate Ultra – which could sort students randomly or in pre-arranged groups was a bonus as it meant constant change and new, diverse perspectives were exchanged in the small group “rooms”.

Students worked with new peers in online threads and appeared happy to be assigned new partners for assignment work. It was like the online space became common ground and everyone was welcome. We found that students who were well prepared were the drivers of the group discussions and thrived in this social constructivist ‘new geography’ but even students who were normally reticent or less prepared were engaging with each other and had opportunities to hear new perspectives.

Both Creelman (2020) and Cunningham & Bergstrom (2021) have identified that online discussion rooms, where everyone can observe everyone else, can afford students a more intimate environment for interaction. This endorsed our social constructivist approach and we believe contributed to changed attitudes of students working with their peers in online sessions. We found from group work presented as assessments and from student feedback that the ‘new geography’ of online group work was embraced by students. Although this phenomenon was not deliberately planned, nor designed as a learning outcome, the changed behaviours of students in groups working online, we believe, led to improvements in learning based upon changes to group dynamics and illustrate some potential future value and possible research into online group work.

Discovering a Quiet Pedagogy                                                                                            

The ‘Anthropause’ was a term coined by Christian Rutz and colleagues and published in Nature in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 global health pandemic. They noticed that people were referring to the lockdown periods as ‘the great pause’, describing the unprecedented slowing down of human activity in the face of the unfolding pandemic. This pause, they argued, was revealing – of the nature and extent human and more-than-human interactions – and the interdependencies between the two. Bringing together Anthropos (humans) with ‘pause’ allows the term to neatly riff of broader discussions around the Anthropocene.

Great pauses are not necessarily new –historical plague pandemics, , an economic crisis such as the Great Depression, or indeed the creation of special military zones or wilderness areas – all create different temporalities and types of pauses. However, for many, COVID triggered something akin to an existential crisis, its cascading impacts affecting not just the health and mortality of the physical body, but also the lived sense of community and human connectivity. It is this sense of crisis, when things collapse or break down, that helps to render visible the complexity of modern life, and in doing so forge new, alternative ideas.

As an urban educator-activist in higher education, I found new ideas formed in the spaces and places, the nooks and cracks of online learning and teaching practices during COVID. The entanglement of the personal and the professional for both educators and students was ever present. In a physical sense through the relocation of the classroom to bedrooms (even beds!), dining rooms and kitchen tables; in a technical sense through the uptake and steep learning curve of negotiating online technologies and their virtual tools; and in a socio-political way in that new and unfamiliar forms of community and collaboration were being trialled, enacted and revised. I spent whole semesters during lockdown interacting weekly with students that to this day I have no idea what they look like. There was a strange irony that the ‘student body’ became so disembodied.

I teach ‘Planning Theory’ and ‘The Urban Age’ at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Both courses focus, in different ways, on deep reading, critical reflection and the exploration of speculative futures in climate change. In face-to-face classes my style tends to be performative with stories, provocations, and lots of loud discussion. I like to fill the space with activity, physicality, and ‘noise’. Some students love this, but this style did not translate well to the online platform. The virtual space was very different, and the interactions felt more personal, even with cameras mostly off and names I didn’t recognise. Over the semester I had to become more comfortable with silence and stillness, with quieter forms of expression and engagement. Out of my computer came thoughtful responses from the darkness. Voices mostly, but not always, as some students prefer to type, draw or attach links to articles and videos. I learnt to listen more deeply and collaborate in different ways – to be quiet and to find my own ways to pause within the context of the Anthropause.

In my work on climate activism, I have been interested in longstanding feminist critiques of normative visions of ‘activist behaviour’ as necessarily loud, vocal and antagonistic versus more modest, embodied acts of care, connection and creativity. Much of the focus in this diverse work is on the local, informal, socially innovative and engaged nature of quiet practices: e.g., women’s work at home, at work, in the academy – to support and advocate for women’s rights and reconfigure the nature of work (see Eisenmann, 2005); or creative activity and engagement with local placemaking, equity and sustainability issues through, for example, the ‘Knitting Nannas’ and counterfeit crochet movements.

In lockdown, I noticed that these ‘quiet activist practices’ resonated in my courses, contributing to the depth of collective discussion; reflection was greater and more diverse. Some students responded by turning their microphone on, others typed simultaneously in the chat and, in doing so, as described by Freda earlier in this chapter, were able to share their thoughts, reactions, and experiences in real time. Others engaged with the tutorials while walking in the park. A few students really liked to keep their cameras on. One asked if I minded if she knit during the tutorial. Every week she would sit in her chair and knit with the camera on whilst listening and contributing to the conversation. The dialogue in the classes became less of a performative dialogue between extroverts, and more quietly polyvocal in nature.

As we emerge, blinking, from the latest COVID-19 lockdown and into the climate crisis, we have to navigate the moment of ‘unpausing’ through hybrid practices and blended modes, as we work to reset out pedagogical practices again. Part of this involves reflecting on who is afforded the privilege to pause or ‘unpause’, where, and why, and in what circumstances. Asking such critical questions helps to make more visible the inequalities experienced during COVID‐19 across lines of race, gender, and class, and the ways we can collectively respond to this.

In writing this reflection I do not to seek to privilege or polarize online modes of learning above face-to-face or hybrid modes or interactions, but rather to be more attentive to the power and potential of quiet pedagogical practices in my own work . For me, this has involved more care-full consideration of the shared learning journey and experience as the basis for responsible relationships while we navigate uncertain futures.

By way of conclusion: Let’s see where this goes

It was in the less uncertain-seeming past of 2015 that the practice that was important for Julian in his transition to teaching online in March 2020 began. In that year, I ran a course that I had created, titled ‘Digital Technology and Globalisation’. Although by then I had already started posting many of my lectures online, I had not conducted a fully online course before. In 2015, I had decided to so as an experiment, in the knowledge, as I confessed to my manager at the time, that it would likely not be as good as a regular face-to-face class. It was this willingness to experiment with digital teaching technology – to be allowed to run a course that might ‘not work’ – that enabled me to react with some confidence that I could at-least-adequately conduct a course entirely online in early 2020. This I believed I achieved with my tutorial team; we didn’t miss a single class and the feedback from students was reassuring.

In preparation for delivering that course in 2015, I asked a few students if they had ever done a fully online course before, and a very small number had, in other parts of the university. I asked about how the course was run and learned; at the time, the bar was low. In some examples, there were not necessarily even online tutorial classes or any form of interaction. At the time, the learning management system (LMS) in use was relatively rudimentary and there was not a prescribed platform for hosting an online tutorial. In order to create an intuitive and straightforward student experience with the course’s content, I hosted my lecture content and readings on a Google Site and scheduled tutorials to take place in Google HangOuts.

I attempted to temper student expectations for the course by emphasising that experience would be entirely new for me, but also that we would not only be learning about the intersections of globalisation and digital technology, but also experiencing the nature and opportunities (and the limitations of) digital technology. Students seemed to understand and accept this premise of experimentation. It turned out that many of my suspicions about the shortcomings of fully online courses were confirmed. This included challenges in building rapport, the impact of the technology on the ways students interacted, and the turn taking in conversations, which became less fluid and more serial. This is not to say that it was all bad. The efforts I had put into creating watchable and engaging lectures seemed to be appreciated, and we all acknowledged that the medium enabled people to participate from afar.

In my opinion, the benefits of this experiment that I felt in 2020 were not related to specific online teaching skills or awareness of how to use specific tools or platforms; the benefit was more abstract. The key benefit for me in running this course experimentally in 2015 and 2017 was the confident state of mind I had when we all had to transition all our teaching online. Even though I had to use a completely different learning management platform in 2020, I felt that throwing my courses online was well within my abilities and that I could deliver them to students in a way that would be at least regarded as satisfactory, under the circumstances.

Among my inspirations for this attitude towards experimentation and curiosity came from the author and economist Tim Harford, whose book Adapt: Why success always starts with failure (Harford, 2010) I had read with enthusiasm some years before. In it, he advocates experimentation, but has three key principles to guide it:

First, try new things, expecting that some will fail. Second, make failure survivable: create safe spaces for failure or move forward in small steps. […] And third, make sure you know when you’ve failed, or you will never learn. (Harford, 2010, p. 224; see also Harford, 2011).

Although Harford’s book revolved around the notion of failure, the spirit of Harford’s first and second principles combined to make me feel okay about running a course in a way that might not work too well. I expected the course to have a small enrolment and thus, if it went badly, it would at least have done so ‘on a survivable scale’ (fortunately, the student feedback was positive and kind). My intention was to observe what transpired in this online course to inform future practice, to observe the experiences that were beneficial and those that were not – with more attention undoubtedly paid to the latter. This probably captures some of the spirit of Harford’s third principle which focuses on learning from what doesn’t work well.

My relative feeling of confidence in making the transition to online teaching resonates with a point made by Jane McGonigal in her book Imaginable (McGonigal, 2022). In it, she describes a simulation she ran in 2010 involving nearly twenty thousand participants who, over a six-week period, imagined what it would be like to live through a global pandemic involving a respiratory virus, that originated in China, during which there was widespread misinformation on social media about it. When a real global pandemic struck, McGonigal’s participants reacted relatively well. She writes:

In January 2020, I started receiving emails and Facebook messages from people who had participated in the pandemic simulation. They wrote things like, “I’m not freaking out, I already worked through the panic and anxiety when we imagined it ten years ago.” […] Simulation participants kept telling me, in their own ways, that pre-feeling the future helped them pre-process the anxiety, the overwhelming uncertainty, and the sense of helplessness, so they could move more rapidly to adapt and act resiliently when the future actually arrived (McGonigal, 2022, pp. xxvii-xxviii).

Thus, the practice I felt worked for me during the pandemic wasn’t, in fact, a specific digital learning and teaching practice, but a more general disposition and practice of experimentation. “Let’s see where this goes,” I thought. Although the time and mental headspace for experimentation may often seem limited in the scramble to deliver our teaching and research goals, the value of these experiments can be great in fostering both resilience and creativity in teaching practice, as well as potentially being sites for the cultivation of ‘positive outlier’ practices, which can be drawn upon and shared, which is something to which we hope this chapter contributes.

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