The Digital Classroom: Social Justice and Pedagogy

The workshop focused on 3 chief challenges in contemporarypedagogy and teaching in higher education in India as identified by HEIRA: The need for innovativecurricula, challenges to social justice in education, and possibilities offeredby the intersection of digital and internet technologies with classroomteaching and evaluation. In the open discussions, the participating facultymembers used their multidisciplinary skills and teaching experience to look at possibilities that we might implement in our classrooms to create a moreinclusive and participatory environment. The conversations were varied, andthrough 3 blog entries I want to capture the focus points of the workshop. Inthis first post, I focus specifically on the changing nature of studentengagement with education and innovative ways by which we can learn from thedigital platforms of learning and knowledge production and implement certaininnovations in pedagogy that might better help create inclusive and just learningenvironments in the undergraduate classroom in India.

Peer 2 Peer: One of the observations that was madeunanimously by all the faculty members was that students respond better, learnfaster, engage more deeply with their syllabus when the instructor has apersonal rapport with them. Traditionally, the teachers who have establishedhuman contact which goes beyond the call of duty are also the teachers thathave become catalysts and inspirations for the students. Especially with thedigital aesthetics of non-hierarchical information interaction, this has becomethe call of the day.

Establishing the teacher as a peer within the classroom,rather than the fountainhead of information flow, is an experiment worthconducting. Like on other digital platforms, can we think of the classroom as aspace where the interlocutors each bring their life experience and learning tostart an information exchange and dialogue that would make them stakeholders inthe process of learning? This would mean that the teacher would be a facilitator who builds conditions ofknowledge production and dissemination, thus also changing his/her relationshipwith the idea of curriculum and teaching.

Reciprocal evaluation: It was pointed out that the gradeoriented academic system often leads to students disengaging with innovativeand meaningful learning practices. With the pressure of completing thecurriculum, the students’ instrumental relationship with their classroomlearning and the highly conservative structures of higher education that do notoffer enough space to experiment with the teaching methods, it often becomesdifficult to initiate innovative pedagogic practices. Learning from thedifferently hierarchised digital spaces, it was suggested that one of the waysby which this could be countered is by introducing reciprocal evaluationpatterns which might not directly be associated with the grades but wouldrecognise and appreciate the skills that students bring to their learning.

Inspired by the Badges contest at HASTAC,it was suggested that evaluation has to take into account, more than grades.Different students bring different skills, experiences, personalities andbehaviours to bear upon the syllabus. They work individually and in clusters tounderstand and analyse the curriculum. Recognising these skills and the rolesthat they play in their learning environments is essential. Getting students tooffer different badges to each other as well as to the teachers involved, helpsthem understand their own learning process and engages them in new ways oflearning.

Role based learning: Within the Web 2.0 there is a peculiarcondition where individuals are recognised simultaneously as experts andnovices. They bring certain knowledges and experiences to the table which makethem credible sources of information and analysis in those areas. At the sametime, they are often beginner learners in certain other areas and they harnessthe power of the web to learn. Such a distributed imagination of a student asnot equally proficient in all areas, but diversely equipped to deal withdifferent disciplines is missing from our understanding of the higher educationclassroom.

We discussed the possibility of making the student responsible notonly for his/her own learning but also the learning of the peers in theclassroom. Making the student aware of what s/he is good at and where s/he islacking allows them to gain confidence and also realise that everybody hasdifferential strengths and aptitudes. Such a classroom might look differentbecause the students don’t have to be pitched in stressful competition witheach other but instead work collaboratively to learn, research and produceknowledge in a nurturing and supportive learning environment.

These initial discussions look at the possibility ofinnovative classroom teaching that can accommodate for the skills anddifferences of the students in higher education in India. The conversationsopened up the idea that the classroom can be reshaped so that it becomes a moreinclusive space where the quality of students’ access to education can beimproved. It also ties in with the larger imagination of classrooms as spaceswhere principles of social justice can be invoked so that students who aredisadvantaged in language, learning skills, socio-economic backgrounds, are notjust looked at as either ‘beyond help’ or ‘victims of a system’. Instead, itencourages to look at the students as differential learners who need to be madestakeholders in their own processes of learning and education.