GO-GN Member Research Special VII (15 November 2023)
We’re thrilled to share details of this month’s GO-GN webinar, and our second member research special this year. Join us on Wednesday 15 November 2023 at 16.00GMT to hear more about the fantastic work of Gabi Witthaus (Lancaster) and Helen DeWaard (Lakehead). Our schedule is as follows:
- 16.00GMT Welcome
- 16.05GMT What do dignity and equity have to do with online engagement? (Gabi Witthaus)
- 16.30GMT Media and digital literacies in Canadian teacher educators’ open educational practices: A post-intentional phenomenology (Helen DeWaard)
- 17.00GMT Close
All welcome! We’ll be holding the session via Zoom. Join the call!
Abstracts
What do dignity and equity have to do with online engagement? (Gabi Witthaus)
I am a UK-based learning designer and researcher. In this exploratory talk, I will share insights from my recently completed PhD research, in which I investigated the learning engagement of refugees and asylum seekers in an online Master’s programme through the lens of the capabilities approach. I will focus on Martha Nussbaum’s contribution to our understanding of dignity and equity in open online education. While the presence or absence of capabilities can readily be understood as markers of equity, Nussbaum’s argument that ten core capabilities are prerequisites for human dignity raises important questions for us as educators. Extending my thesis research into as yet uncharted territory, I will invite participants to explore with me the implications of the idea that, where students do not have the capabilities they need to fully engage in their learning, they are likely to experience a loss of dignity. We will reflect on the extent to which the task of designing learning for online engagement overlaps with the task of preserving students’ dignity, and will consider the implications for educators.
Media and digital literacies in Canadian teacher educators’ open educational practices: A post-intentional phenomenology (Helen DeWaard)
Helen DeWaard, a teacher educator and a PhD candidate will share her research into the lived experiences of media and digital literacies within an open educational practice of teacher educators in Faculties of Education across Canada. For this post-intentional phenomenological research Helen applied a crystallization methodology and an alternative dissertation format to the process, presentation, and production of the dissertation manuscript. Helen will share her findings and discuss tensions, technological issues, and potential benefits when crafting a multimodal, open dissertation for her doctorate.
