Digital Pedagogies and Access
Communities of Practice and Care
Community of Practice: A group of instructors who “interact, share, and participate in a particular cultural practice over time, [and who then] develop their understanding about the practice, about who they are, and about what they know in relation to the community and its goals” (Jiminez-Silva & Olsen, 2012, p. 335).
As we navigate our current teaching and learning landscape, we are opening a community of practice and care on the topics of access and disability justice in post-secondary institutions. This community is open to educators across campus, including instructors, graduate students, and parafaculty educators engaged in teaching and learning.
Access & Disability Justice Reading Group
Our access and disability justice reading group will consider how we can unsettle dominant assumptions about disability and barriers to engagement in universities. As educators, we aim to create the classroom conditions through which students can learn and thrive as whole, embodied humans. However, the ongoing pandemic has underscored the importance of authentic reflection and meaningful, sustainable action on accessible teaching through a justice-oriented lens. This means moving beyond simplistic and medicalized frameworks of disability and accommodation and towards understanding our communities as complex and unique in each instance. Now, more than ever, we need to reflect on how we can support and advocate for pedagogies of care and access.
Caffeinate Your Work Week: Teacherly Writing Café
At the online café, we will cover various pedagogical topics and also periodically engage in short, interactive workshops that connect the writing we do as instructors with the writing that we require/ask our students to do. Collectively and individually, we will identify goals, track progress, and incorporate periodic reflections. We will think about our writerly work as instructors and identify sustainable, community-based approaches to feedback in and beyond the classroom.
Instructor Write-In: Designing, Delivering, and Assessing Writing Assignments
This three-day program allows instructors time to brainstorm and write with a focus related to teaching (i.e., grading, providing feedback, course/syllabus/assignment design and teaching dossiers) using the Pomodoro Method.
Engage in interactive workshops that connect your writing as an instructor with the writing that you ask of your students, identify sustainable and community-based approaches to writing feedback in and beyond the classroom, identify and track goals, and reflect on your writing as an instructor.