It's time to stop and think about the brave new world we're continuing to go along with

We're halfway through the fifth semester of the Covid pandemic. Many schools either have or are getting ready to move back to operating like the Before Times. Many schools that have spent the last couple of years only teaching online went back face to face in some capacity this semester. Many schools are dropping social distancing, capacity limits, mask mandates. It certainly seems like Fall 2022 will look like any semester from the Before Times on campuses across the country.

I don't think we collectively will, but I think now is the time for us all as educators, staff, employees in higher ed to use the next several months to stop and think about what we're doing.

When the pandmic hit college classrooms, blowing up our classroom instructions, our students' lives, and throwing everyone into chaos and fear, we collectively made a lot of snap decisions that we've continued and we really have not stopped to think about them.

We collectively all moved to Zoom. Is Zoom an ethical company? What are their terms of service? Most of us are not using Zoom under personal accounts we're using them under university umbrella accounts. What data is collected about these meetings? How many times we use it? Are the chats stored? Are people's IP addresses? We moved to Zoom because Teams and Skype seemed not up to the task at the beginning, but why have we continued to use it? I know some people have moved to Teams, but what are these decisions, the assumption that everyone has to participate, based on?

We normalized recording Zoom lectures and meetings skipping over the act of consent. How many recorded meetings have you been a part of where everyone in the meeting was asked for consent to recording? How many lectures or class meetings did faculty ask their students for the consent to record?

In the last few years there's been a lot made of whether or not students turn on cameras in Zoom sessions. Educators have said it's incredibly hard to teach to a field of black boxes. They've also said that requiring students to turn on their cameras, to let us into their personal spaces is a violation. There are ethical issues in seeing students in their pajamas, or on their beds, or in their apartments. Have their family members consented to appearing on camera in the background? Did we consider the consent, the invasion of privacy of the students? Or did we gloss over these issues because we were constantly reacting?

Three years in I don't see any way to make an argument that we're all just still reacting. There has been time, there IS time to pause, to stop, to take a look around at what the situation is now and have honest conversations about what we're doing, why, and whether or not we should continue to do these things.

In fact, each semester we should have been having re-norming conversations with our departments, administration, and students. Part of our planning for return should have been looking at where we are:

For the rest of this semester we've pivoted to Blackboard. I've built all our readings, assignments, there and shifted what would be our class discussions to discussion boards. I know everyone is dealing with a lot and I've tried to think of the best way to proceed. If you need anything, please don't hesitate to let me know. Please take care of yourself.

This summer our class is online only. It is asynchronous which means we will not all be on at the same time. The class is all built. I recommend you use the syllabus to see what we're doing that week, then go into Blackboard for the content and work your way through the materials. However, I understand that we're still dealing with a lot, so once a week I will hold a Zoom workshop, a Q&A for anything you need, mini-lessons on how to do that week's work. I encourage you to attend if you can. If not I'll upload the recordings to the class.

This semester we are teaching hybrid. In this class that means that I will be splitting the class in half where half will attend on X day and half on Y. This is a face to face class, it is not on Zoom. We will have a couple of guest speakers this semester and on those class days we will not meet in person we'll all meet on Zoom because in person and on Zoom has difficulties. I offer office hours both in person and on Zoom, and I'm always available through email.

This semester we're returning to in person learning. However, we recognize that we're returning when Omicron is still very much a threat. So while class is scheduled for face to face if you're unable to attend in person due to quarantine or illness then I will log into Zoom in the classroom every day and you can join us. These sessions will not be recorded. I will also scan and upload my class notes for you. As always if you miss class you should be sure to check the syllabus and ask for help if you need it.

I've always been a big advocate for being honest with students about pedagogical decisions. This is what we're doing and this is WHY we do it. When I survey them and they tell me they're overwhelmed I cut work, revise assignments, make changes, and tell that what changes I made and why.

Yet we have not been communicating with our students about all the assumptions we've made the last few years.

We assumed everyone was fine with Zoom. 

We assumed everyone had computers and Internet access despite campuses flailing to provide laptops, hot spots, and the number of students sitting in their cars in McDonald's parking lots for wi-fi.

We assumed students were fine with having their time logged into Blackboard tracked and gathered, ignoring that this data does not actually tell you how much their working in the course. Some students can log in and work for hours. Others go to the library for wi-fi, download a bunch of work, then have to go to work, and complete school work offline later and the next time they log into download they upload work.

We assumed students would complete our work on computers, at desks, in spaces that were conducive to learning. Not typing on their phones trying to fit in getting reading and work done during their fifteen minute break at work.

We told students they had to agree to surveillance software, to being treated like they were automatically criminals, forcing them to spin their laptop around to show us a 360 view of their space before taking a test. We ignored the fact that there were a hundred good reasons why surveillance software would log not making eye contact from neuro-diverse students. Or why a student might need to hit pause, go deal with a toddler or parent, or other family member, and come back to the test.

I think we also have to have honest conversations with our students. One thing many people have pointed out the last few years is how the line between personal, work, and school has blurred to the point to almost be non-existent. We taught from our couches, we learned from our bedrooms, we worked outside of "normal" hours in an attempt to get it all done. In an attempt to provide support, show we care, we've asked about our students, checked in, and probably heard from horrific, traumatic, heartbreaking and personal stories from them than we ever thought we would. We've probably shared with them to be sympathetic and empathetic. Recognizing the fact that in many ways we were all adrift together, doing our best to just make it through. All of us have coped in different ways. Students and faculty have done amazing things to get through all of this. Faculty have designed and redesigned classes on a dime. Spent ten times as much time building classes in order to do everything they could to help and support their students. Students have used games, Slack, Discord, social media, to support each other, share resources, be there for one another.

One thing we have to stop and think about is what of all this we will move forward with and what we won't. Where will we redraw borders and boundaries? How do we disentangle the personal and professional and neither go back because there is no going back, but also don't continue ahead like nothing happened.

As has been true throughout the pandemic we have a chance to rebuilt education in a way that is equitable and accessible and better serves our students and communities. For the most part we've failed to do this the past three years. We've continued with a focus on "seat time" and "content coverage" and worried about "learning loss" and standardized test scores when we should have been caring about so many people dead we can't personally comprehend the number. Of 30% of survivors of Covid with long-term if not lifelong disabilities, many of which are neurological and will impact our students and classrooms for decades. We should have faced the hard fact that many of the people we work with and socialized with were unwilling to take simple steps to not kill people. We should be asking how we help the 1 in 500 children who have been orphaned because of Covid.

I worry that we again and again and again watch the chances to make real, important, institutional change sail by and do nothing.

We've been pinballs for three years rocketing from one thing to another, reacting, not stopping moving, moving, moving. And when you're so focused on just surviving, just getting through the day, dealing with the million horrible things happening in the world every day, ease of use, convenience, and lack of decision making can make us NOT think about whether or not what we're doing is ethical, moral, in the best interest of our students.

I think now is the time to stop what we're doing and have these conversations. We need to have them with other faculty, our students, administration. 

We have to pay attention to the accessibility that online classes, Zoom for guest speakers, conferences, provides to a large percentage of students and faculty who have been locked out of a lot of activities because of the lack of accessibility.

We have to recognize that attendance policies are ableist and harm students and we need to get rid of them.

We need to recognize that online teaching and learning is not just dumping recorded lectures or PDFs online. We need to recognize that not all teachers should or want to be teaching online. We need to recognize the need for good, engaging online classes. We should be investing more in our distance learning and IT infrastructure. We should offer professional development to teachers who want to learn how to do this better.

We need to realize that when we adopt software we need to make informed decisions. There should be school committees made up of faculty, students, technology experts that look at these options, discuss the ethics of the company, draft language about what data it gathers, and share this with students. We need to empower students to opt out of programs and software for ethical reasons.

We need to admit that surveillance software cannot be used ethically. It is racist, it is ableist, it sets up an "us/them" relationship where faculty members ALWAYS assume their students are liars and cheats. Schools need to stop, immediately, all use of it. They should also stop using any form of plagiarism software for the same reasons. Instead take those tens of thousands of dollars those contracts cost and instead invest in professional development that helps faculty redesign assignments, informs them about cultural differences with plagiarism, and puts it in the larger context of Internet information, NFTs, citations, memes, and who owns information.

One casualty of the last few years has been trust. We have broken trust in governments, in public health, in institutions. We have broken trust with our students in a thousand ways large and small. I think campuses stopping, having these conversations, including students in the process, being transparent about what we're doing and why, is just one step in trying to rebuild and restore this trust.

I don't know what the world looks like if we don't.

I don't know what the future looks like if we have a large percentage of the population that doesn't trust in anything. I don't know what day to day life looks like if the interactions are all adversarial, if educators see their students as enemies and vice versa. I don't know how students learn, how they live, if they are traumatized daily by surveillance and distrust.

I think there is a reckoning coming in education. I think that we have not collectively even begun to acknowledge