Intentionally Equitable Hospitality
I’m excited to say I’ve been published in a peer reviewed journal! While this doesn’t define me as a learner or teacher, it does provide external recognition for the work I’ve been doing. First the background, then some reflection on the paper itself.
Bali, M., Caines, A., Hogue, R. J., DeWaard, H. J., & Friedrich, C. (2019). Intentionally Equitable Hospitality in Hybrid Video Dialogue: The Context of Virtually Connecting. eLearning Mag (special issue). Retrieved from:https://elearnmag.acm.org/archive.cfm?aid=3331173
This comes from work I’ve done as a volunteer with Virtually Connecting. This grassroots group attempts to provide open access to conference conversations between those who are privileged to attend, and those who face barriers of distance, time, family commitments, access to financial resources, or other silent factors that prevent conference attendance. As one of the co-directors, we attempted to identify the characteristics that make Virtually Connecting events intentionally equitable and hospitable. When I was working with a few of the Virtually connecting community on the Mozilla Open Leadership project last fall, we struggled with this notion of hospitality since we had been defining it in terms of being ‘radical’ which has developed negative connotations.
As a result of this project, the Virtually connecting co-directors collaboratively authored this article on intentional equitable hospitality in virtually connected spaces using video resources. This connects to my work as a teacher and learner in specific ways. As I do with Virtually Connecting, I consider hospitality as a central tenet in my online course spaces. Equitable access comes from the dual-layered approach I take to my teaching – both within the sanctity of the LMS (learning management system) and open educational web-authored spaces where the course content also resides. The intentionality of building connections comes from how and when I invite students to explore open spaces in efforts to bring them into a digital presence of their own – as learners and teachers.
Connections between Virtually Connecting and my own teaching are echoed in these words “hospitality is a verb and a value which has complex underpinnings that are always impacted by context”. Hospitality in courses, as in the VC sessions, is not the responsibility of one, but the actions of all. Yet it takes one or two to ensure that hospitality is intentionally shared.
“Intentionally equitable hospitality requires a combination of facilitation skills, digital literacies, and intercultural sensitivities.” While this is not specifically or explicitly an issue in online courses, it is something that needs to be brought forward within any virtual space – whether sharing text or video. This requires explicit mentoring and modelling. This cannot happen in isolation.
While I’m excited to share this publication, I hope that it results in a springboard for future conversations about what it means to be intentionally, equitable, and hospitable in open learning spaces.
