Technology as Meaning Maker in Teaching (Blog Three: The Ethics of Technology Series)
Technology is most often referred to as a “tool” for teaching. However, in a recent bi-locational, virtual class, I experienced technology as meaning maker which transformed pedagogical style, power relationships, and the overall learning experience. Here I reflect on the various technologies used and how I understand them to contribute to the shaping of the class community. The course was a January Term one week intensive taught by myself at Drew Theological School and Dr. Kristen Leslie at Eden Seminary in St. Louis.
In the last two decades, scholars in media studies and religious studies made a shift from a technology-as-medium focus to considering technology as social meaning or how humans are mediated and created in relationship to technology. This is a movement away from a concentration on the tools or processes of technology to considering the social context.[1] An example of this shift is the work of Heidi A. Campbell. She developed the religious-social shaping of technology or RSST framework based on the sociological framework SST (social shaping of technology). [2] In SST, technology is presented as a product of the interplay between different technical and social factors in both design and use. Thus it is a social process; neither human nor the device or program is solely determinative.
I would argue class “WTF: Young Adults, Ethics and Ministry” falls into the category of religious-social shaping of technology or the shift to a value-centered approach rather than a technical-centered approach. Such an approach suggests that one cannot view technology as a morally neutral tool, but rather as an interactive, mutually constitutive relationship. In other words, what I am most interested in is how we engage the values and opportunities of such systems, and thus how the technologies reinforce, disrupt, and transform communities and individuals interacting with them.
Pauline Hope Cheong and Charles Ess, suggest in the introduction to their new volume on Digital Media, Social Media and Culture: Perspectives, Practices and Futures, that “[v]ery clearly, digital media facilitate and mediate social relations, including people’s notions of relationship, patterns of belonging, and community—and in doing so, digital media thus immediately intersect with, and significantly impact, central religious concerns with (re)establishing right relationship or harmony in these various communities.”[3] In other words, we may be shifting our values around storytelling, product development, access, or information sharing. Specific to this course, our intentions were to promote an explicitly interactive and co-constitutive process between technology and humans.
The technology we used in the class is as follows.
Webex – web conferencing that allowed:
- multiple audio visual inputs (four cameras two on immediate speakers and two on the full classroom)
- recording (archive of each days lectures and discussions)
- private chat (to help the instructors communicate about class time management).
Wikispaces – course management or course website tool that allowed students to have equal access to the course site and material.
Rumble chat – an embedded chat function on wikispaces that all members of the class could use during class discussions and lectures.
Google docs – open source documents that can be simultaneously edited.
Skype/gchat/facetime – software that allows for voice and audio calls (mostly two-way) which we used for small groups between Eden and Drew students.
The following is a video specific to technology examples in class.
Dr. Kristen Leslie is a professor of pastoral care and I am a professor of social ethics. We come from two distinct disciplines which created differences in content and methodogical starting points. However, both of us are trained in a liberation theology tradition and share feminist pedagogical style. Let me also say, we are friends, we have taught together in person at other times and that relationship makes a huge difference in my mind for how well this class came together. It also raises the question of how technology shapes relationships with strong prior in person connections versus those of our students who were meeting the first time via virtual link.
Given a shift in how we might approach technology, the proposal to develop a virtual, bi-locational seminary class, was not simply an exercise in finding various technologies that would allow us to “see” each other. Instead, we had to start with the ethics of our teaching, related to how we form community in a classroom, responsibilities and roles of students and teachers, use and purpose of assessment, criteria for choosing content, and so on. We began developing the course with a specific set of values related to teaching and learning and sought out technologies that would further develop those values rather than inhibit them.
Our pedagogy, theological roots/ethical values, and disciplinary overlap can be described by three commonalities:
1. “Democratic” classroom (or even perhaps a radically inclusive space)
2. Learning through praxis (engagement with experiences and reflective process)
3. Commitment to transformation (challenging and responding to current oppressive social structures)
The following are examples of how technologies brought about these pedagogical values:
1. “democratic” classroom (or even perhaps a radically inclusive space)
– The wikispace was open to all and students often added materials as the course went on as did Instructors with Power points and notes. Google docs were provided for note taking in the Drew class and shared with the Eden class due to time differences of morning discussion. In other words, everyone had access and was contributing to the course content and learning.
– The disciplines were not competing, but in conversation as demonstrated by our interactive teaching and group discussion questions. Webex allowed Dr. Leslie and I to ask each other direct questions about how ethics or pastoral care might respond to a similar issue.
– Some of us were required to give up power (e.g. control over content, or other students seeing each other’s work).
– All members needed to use the online spaces with accountability and responsibility (e.g. not erasing what someone posted, helping others to gain access, etc.) .
2. Learning through praxis (engagement with experiences and reflective process)
– Assignments in the course required self-reflection and critical engagement with ethical and pastoral care theory. One example is the interview with a current Young Adult (YA) minister. The students had a conversation with a current YA minister engaging them in a process of reflection on their current work (praxis). That information was shared on the wikispace and in class discussions. Akin to #1, we expanded the classroom beyond even our two groups of students.
– We attempted to create correlation between approach and subject matter (teaching about YAs) required that we experience the world as YAs do through social/digital media. Students prior to class introduced themselves on a wikispace page with photos and information about their ministry. Small group discussion was conducted via skype and goggle hangout. During class lectures the students were on a chat forum discussing their thoughts and answering each other’s questions.
– We also did a daily check-in and evaluation of our relationship with the technology considering ways to improve communication or help individuals with access.
3. Commitment to transformation (challenging and responding to current oppressive social structures)
– The class was comprised of two groups of students, two instructors as well as a few guest lecturers (including a Navy chaplain) which afforded us a greater diversity of experiences related to race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, geography, and religious traditions.
– Members of the class learned new technological skills to utilize in their own education as well as opening up possibilities to new forms of “church” or “ministry” – twitter blessings, second life congregations, awareness raising of sexual violence in social and digital media relationships.
– Admittedly there was a level of access required to be part of the “group/class.” Everyone had a laptop or tablet (and also had to be a student enrolled in Drew or Eden). On the other hand, Eden didn’t have the same hardware or software that Drew had. This collaboration was a sharing of resources, but also raises questions of how open our access can be.
– Other than Webex, the software was open source and free so that everyone had equal access.
Once the class ended, we agreed to keep the materials live on the wikispace page so that participants would continue to have access. However, this begs the question of how we might apply our values to issues of archiving. Is data truly unlimited? What permissions do we need to seek from students if we were to re-use the wikispace for a similar class? Should the wikispace, recorded lectures, responsive assignments become a “text” for the next class? As I have mentioned in other blogs, the mapping of data can tell a human story. In this case, I’m suggesting the WTF: Young Adults Ethics and Ministry ‘data’ tells the story of how one class (full of humans) was shaped in a co-constitutive learning experience with technology. I stand by the claim that “the data tells a story, and as a feminist ethicist, I would contend that the story is undergirded by particular values and even normative behaviors.” My hope is that through this recent class the following values were known and experienced: radically inclusive space, learning through praxis, and a commitment to transformation.
[1] Noreen Herzfeld, Technology and Religion: Remaining Human in a Co-created World (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2009), 8.
[2] Heidi A. Campbell, When Religion Meets New Media (New York, NY: Routledge, 2010), 42.
[3] Pauline Hope Cheong and Charles Ess, “Introduction: religion 2.0? Relational and Hybridizing Pathways in Religion, Social Media, and Culture” in Digital Media, Social Media and Culture: Perspectives, Practices and Futures, eds. Pauline Hope Cheong, Peter Fisher-Neilsen, Stefan Gelfgren, and Charles Ess (New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing, 2012), 12.