Author: George Veletsianos Page 7 of 81

Speculative Learning Futures podcast: Episode 3 with Dr. Eamon Costello and Lily Girme

One of the knowledge mobilization activities of my SSHRC grant on education futures was a podcast. This post shares episode 3 of 7.

First, a bit of background

The future of education is open and contested. In this podcast we approach the future of education from a storytelling perspective.Stories about the future of education are diverse, complex, and run the gamut of wild hope to doom and despair. In some of these stories techno-optimism drives what is thought to be possible. In others, education is imagined to be a regenerative cultural force. In yet others, the impact of capitalism and authoritarian systems of surveillance already taking hold in education create dystopian spaces of control and management. The stories we tell have the power to create the world we live in. Understanding the stories we tell about what is possible, and the trends in those stories, can give us insight into the present, into ourselves and each other, and the worlds we might seek to or are already in the process of creating.

What are the stories being told about the future of higher education today? Who tells them? What do these stories reveal about our values and our assumptions? What do they reveal about technology and about our universities? What do they say about the future, but also about the present? The speculative learning futures podcast,brings together diverse voices and perspectives, from artists to scholars of different backgrounds, to imagine and discuss the future of education and the role of storytelling in moving towards or away from those futures. [As an aside: More on this questions in this paper and this paper. And if you have a paper of yours that centers these questions, consider submitting it to a journal special issue I am co-editing].

Subscribe to all episodes on Google, Apple, or Spotify. Or, if you prefer to download the mp3 files without subscribing, you can download all of them from here.

Episode 3

In this episode, George and Shandell sit down with Dr. Eamon Costello and Lily Girme to get their insights into the future of education, how speculative methodologies can help us subvert expectations about the future, and how thinking about the future can be an act of resistance. Dr Eamon Costello is an Associate Professor of Digital Learning in Dublin City University. Lily, or Prajaka Girme, is a frequent collaborator with Eamon, providing the visual designs for their shared work. She’s an academic developer in Dublin City University and is pursuing PhD research into the University of Sanctuary initiative. With these two scholars, we begin to wonder how thinking about the future can be a process of connection and appreciation, and where it allows us to work towards not just liberatory futures, but also liberatory presents.

Acknowledgements

We are deeply grateful to the guests who spoke with us for each of the episodes of this series. We’re also fraeful to the Digital Public Interest Collective for their support, in dedicating the third series of the Digital Public Interest Collective podcast to education. Editing was provided by Andrea Galizia, and production advice was provided by Dr. Jaigris Hodson. The podcast was produced with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Grant #430-2020-00404)

Speculative Learning Futures podcast: Episode 2 with Helen Nde

One of the knowledge mobilization activities of my SSHRC grant on education futures was a podcast. This post shares episode 2 of 7.

First, a bit of background

The future of education is open and contested. In this podcast we approach the future of education from a storytelling perspective.Stories about the future of education are diverse, complex, and run the gamut of wild hope to doom and despair. In some of these stories techno-optimism drives what is thought to be possible. In others, education is imagined to be a regenerative cultural force. In yet others, the impact of capitalism and authoritarian systems of surveillance already taking hold in education create dystopian spaces of control and management. The stories we tell have the power to create the world we live in. Understanding the stories we tell about what is possible, and the trends in those stories, can give us insight into the present, into ourselves and each other, and the worlds we might seek to or are already in the process of creating.

What are the stories being told about the future of higher education today? Who tells them? What do these stories reveal about our values and our assumptions? What do they reveal about technology and about our universities? What do they say about the future, but also about the present? The speculative learning futures podcast,brings together diverse voices and perspectives, from artists to scholars of different backgrounds, to imagine and discuss the future of education and the role of storytelling in moving towards or away from those futures. [As an aside: More on this questions in this paper and this paper. And if you have a paper of yours that centers these questions, consider submitting it to a journal special issue I am co-editing].

Subscribe to all episodes on Google, Apple, or Spotify. Or, if you prefer to download the mp3 files without subscribing, you can download all of them from here.

Episode 2

George and Shandell chat with Helen Nde and dive deep into understanding storytelling and the power of story for education. Helen shares her work on storytelling from the African continent, highlighting some of the unique qualities and ways in which different African stories work, and how that can inform how we approach learning as a community and collective process. Helen’s rich insights into story as a cultural process is a reminder of the need for diverse storytelling in our worlds.

Acknowledgements

We are deeply grateful to the guests who spoke with us for each of the episodes of this series. We’re also fraeful to the Digital Public Interest Collective for their support, in dedicating the third series of the Digital Public Interest Collective podcast to education. Editing was provided by Andrea Galizia, and production advice was provided by Dr. Jaigris Hodson. The podcast was produced with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Grant #430-2020-00404)

Speculative Learning Futures podcast: Episode 1 with Dr. Jen Ross

One of the knowledge mobilization activities of my SSHRC grant on education futures was a podcast. This post shares episode 1 of 7.

First, a bit of background

The future of education is open and contested. In this podcast we approach the future of education from a storytelling perspective.Stories about the future of education are diverse, complex, and run the gamut of wild hope to doom and despair. In some of these stories techno-optimism drives what is thought to be possible. In others, education is imagined to be a regenerative cultural force. In yet others, the impact of capitalism and authoritarian systems of surveillance already taking hold in education create dystopian spaces of control and management. The stories we tell have the power to create the world we live in. Understanding the stories we tell about what is possible, and the trends in those stories, can give us insight into the present, into ourselves and each other, and the worlds we might seek to or are already in the process of creating.

What are the stories being told about the future of higher education today? Who tells them? What do these stories reveal about our values and our assumptions? What do they reveal about technology and about our universities? What do they say about the future, but also about the present? The speculative learning futures podcast,brings together diverse voices and perspectives, from artists to scholars of different backgrounds, to imagine and discuss the future of education and the role of storytelling in moving towards or away from those futures. [As an aside: More on this questions in this paper and this paper. And if you have a paper of yours that centers these questions, consider submitting it to a journal special issue I am co-editing].

Subscribe to all episodes on Google, Apple, or Spotify. Or, if you prefer to download the mp3 files without subscribing, you can download all of them from here.

Episode 1

George and Shandell chat with Jen Ross about the future of education and the role of speculative methodologies for thinking about the future. Jen is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Education, co-director of the Centre for Research in Digital Education, and Education Futures fellow at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. She researches, teaches and publishes on online and open education, digital cultural heritage engagement, and digital cultures and futures. She’s one of the team behind the Manifesto for Teaching Online and the E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC. She co-ordinate the Digital Cultural Heritage cluster in the Centre for Data, Culture and Society, and lead the Digital Cultural Heritage Research Network. Jen, who recently published with Routledge the book Digital Futures for Learning: Speculative Methods and Pedagogies, helpfully defines for us what we mean when we talk about speculative methods. What is the value of speculating about the future, and the future of education? How does thinking about the future help us make the present a more just place to live? It’s a wide ranging conversation helpful not just for thinking about education, but for anyone who wants to have a better sense of why thinking about and imagining diverse futures is important, and almost as importantly, why it’s fun.

 

Acknowledgements

We are deeply grateful to the guests who spoke with us for each of the episodes of this series. We’re also fraeful to the Digital Public Interest Collective for their support, in dedicating the third series of the Digital Public Interest Collective podcast to education. Editing was provided by Andrea Galizia, and production advice was provided by Dr. Jaigris Hodson. The podcast was produced with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Grant #430-2020-00404)

Running and hurting

With the weather in Victoria finally changing, and seemingly skipping Spring straight into summer, I’m itching to run again. I was doing pretty well for a few months in the middle of winter, but I somehow managed to hurt my back. I’ve been trying to sort that out for the last five months or so and after a series of visits to massage therapy, physical therapy, and sorts/chiro therapy I feel stronger and ready to start again. I run two slow 4kms this week, and that felt good. A bit stiff still, but good. And even though I enjoyed the fall/winter running, I can’t wait for warmer temperatures. I’d take running in 85F/30C over 40F/5C any day. Here’s to hoping for continued progress.

New paper: faculty members’ hopes and anxieties

In a new paper for the Canadian Journal of Learning & Technology (paper and citation below) we highlight the ways in which faculty members hopes and anxieties about the future are shaped by both personal and environmental factors. Importantly, we note that imagining and working towards more hopeful futures (a concept which we examined in earlier work), may be a fruitful approach in addressing the challenges that the higher education sector (and our societies) are facing.

Abstract

Higher education worldwide is facing several challenges spanning from economic, social, technological, demographic, environmental, to political tensions. Calls to rethink, reimagine, and reform higher education to respond to such challenges are ongoing, and need to be informed by a wide variety of stakeholders. To inform such efforts, we interviewed thirty-seven faculty members at Canadian colleges and universities to develop a greater understanding of their hopes and anxieties about the future of higher education as they considered what higher education may look like five years into the future. Results centred on four themes: (1) anxieties and hopes are shaped by supports and resources from various sources, (2) faculty members face anxiety over matters that negatively impact them but are beyond their control, (3) faculty members hope that “good” comes from the COVID-19 pandemic, and (4) faculty members hope for a well-rounded education that will enable students to succeed both within and beyond their careers. Implications for these findings suggest a need to direct research efforts and practices toward more hopeful futures for higher education, especially in the context of online and blended learning.

Veletsianos, G., & Johnson, N. (2023). Canadian Faculty Members’ Hopes and Anxieties about the Near-future of Higher Education. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 48(3), 1-23. https://cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt/article/view/28319

Tech Trends Special Issue on Race and Racism in Educational Technology

TechTrends Volume 67, Issue 3 is now available online and includes a special Issue on Race and Racism in Educational Technology.

 

Call for papers: Higher Education Futures at the intersection of justice, hope, and educational technology

Please share with interested colleagues our call for papers for a special collection to be published by the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education.

Submission details and guidelines are available here.

Our societies face enormous economic, demographic, political, ecological, and social challenges. In this environment of uncertainty, doubts about the future of higher education have proliferated, particularly as demographic changes take hold, technology rapidly advances, wealth inequality increases, and climate destabilizes. In the face of these challenges, and in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many have argued the time is right to not only tinker with the status quo, but to imagine otherwise, to imagine alternative higher education futures that are more hopeful, more equitable, and more just.

This collection invites prospective authors to turn towards reimagining the futures of education, and to contribute scholarship that speculates what higher education at the intersection of justice, hope, and educational technology could look like.

This is not a call for papers grounded in technological solutionism or technological determinism. The educational technology literature is replete with papers which are optimistic about the possibilities of technology. Rather, this call invites writing that imagines higher education and its practices otherwise, writing that engages the imagination from diverse and justice-oriented perspectives. In Houlden and Veletsianos (2022), for example, we noted that hopeful futures are shaped by themes such as “connection, agency and community and individual flourishment” and we have suggested that “hopepunk, solarpunk, and visionary fiction” can serve “as models of storytelling grounded in hope which imagines more liberatory education and learning futures.”

We are especially interested in scholarship that engages critically with educational technology issues while resisting oppression and despair; scholarship that begins with the ongoing undoing of colonial, racist, ableist, patriarchal, heteronormative, capitalist structures of power; and scholarship that invites hope as a practice of change and not as a return to an idealized past.

This collection is open to diverse forms of research and scholarship, including empirical, theoretical, speculative, and anything in-between.

Topics of interest include higher education futures at the intersection of justice, hope, and educational technology that engage with

  • Speculative methods and pedagogies
  • Indigenous, Black, Queer, and (Dis)ability issues and methods
  • Reimagining technology in higher education
  • Co-creation with learners and/or other communities
  • Local and contextual realities

Research questions of interest may include but are not limited to

  • What does the intersection of hope, justice, and educational technology look like, or ought to look like?
  • How do current education systems need to transform to enable just and hopeful education futures?
  • How can we understand hope and justice in the context of higher education futures?
  • What is the role of hope and justice in imagining diverse education futures?
  • What are the roles and limits of technology in desirable, just, and hopeful higher education futures?
  • In what ways are hopeful and/or just technology-infused higher education futures similar or different across contexts?
  • How can hopeful futures be enacted beyond envisioning in higher education systems? For example, how might speculative futures scholarship address problems higher education faces today?
  • What do hopeful, speculative futures approaches reveal about current contexts and future orientations for higher education practices and policies?
  • What methods might be used to support generative higher education futures that are at the intersection of hope, justice, and educational technology?
  • What might empirical approaches to such futures look like within higher education settings?
  • Whose voices and perspectives are made explicit in generating hopeful educational futures, and how?

 

Houlden, S., & Veletsianos, G. (2022). Impossible Dreaming: On Speculative Education Fiction and Hopeful Learning Futures. Postdigital Science and Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00348-7

 

Call opens: May 1, 2023

Call closes: October 31, 2023

Guest editors: 
George Veletsianos, Royal Roads University, Canada
Shandell Houlden, Royal Roads University, Canada
Jen Ross, University of Edinburgh, UK
Sakinah Alhadad, Griffith University, Australia
Camille Dickson-Deane, University of Technology Sydney, Australia

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