 to this next conference session. I'm with Eileen Dawn Alexander and she's going to be discussing consulting and co-creating as a learning partner. So thank you for joining us, Eileen. I'm going to pass over to you. Perfect. All right. That little bit of an introduction and part of my introduction is also to say I'm going to look over to the right for my scripting and notes. I'm a University of Minnesota consultant and that's where I am this morning, missing Manchester and happy to be with you in this virtual way. Christine is going to share with you the links to the slides and the resource folder if you want to have them handy while we talk. One of the things we call ourselves in this work that I'm going to describe which involves another instructor and four undergraduate students heavily in this project, we call ourselves the Amplified Group and we talk about walking roads together, taking our cue from a book that was put together as a conversation between Miles Horton and Paula Freary. I have six sections in here. The last two are really just slides. I'm going to do a bit of an introduction, talk about the consulting context that I'm in, the design base that Alex, the co-consultant, the consultant I worked with or the teacher I worked with use that we use. We gain five key insights through our work and then again those last two things are resources and a bit about things that happen beyond the course. So to the introduction here, we in our introductory collaboratory work with undergraduate students and one of them, BEMNet talks about crushing the idea of teacher versus student roles as one of the things we did and BEMNet had to think about what it was like to be in that role because they learned how to be a best learner that a professor asked them to be. So in the first class when they learned they would have a role in being teachers and that their learning would be interconnected. There was a great deal of tension and stress and people wondered in the class around 10 to 20 enroll in it if they were in in the class by mistake, if they should be in some other setting, especially when it got to the point of having to create a rubric and other means of assessing their own work. In the end, they decide of course that it's not a mistake. This co-creating team included Kaya, Morgan, Alex Fink is the teacher, me, and with us BEMNet and Angela who have joined us for a larger project that we're doing right now as we are working on a book chapter in a hybrid pedagogy piece. One of the things that in this consulting role that I've really tried to do is help my cohorts in the collaboration, Alex and the four students specifically think about the fact that what we're doing makes us not the first. There's a rich history that we draw and one of the core histories for Alex and I is Highlander Folk School which organized itself in southern United States in the 1930s and was very active in the 1950s and 60s with civil rights education and leadership and launched citizenship schools which were about voter registration one of the largest movement education entities in the United States and also sparked freedom summer at the schools that happened in 1964 in the south. Miles Horton, Septima Clark, Bernice Robinson were part of this work. We're also part of a long history of fugitive pedagogies as we call them might put together here feminist, anti-racist, critical and abolitionist pedagogies and in the slide I name a few teachers and a few cortex. These were the places where I learned how to be a teacher and that's part of my consulting role is to draw on a deep history of fugitive pedagogies and help people design courses that are aimed at social change and taking on difficult complex wicked problems. We also draw on some service learning work in that community and what we do. Highlander Folk School is key to what I'm going to explain in just a few minutes about the work we did in this project. Again this is in the southern United States and in time periods of high segregation. It was pretty much the only place in the south that was an integrated school where people learned, lived, cooked, ate, sang together. If you know the song We Shall Overcome its roots are actually at Highlander Folk School and if you've heard of Rosa Parks especially you've seen the episode of Doctor Who her sort of springboard for becoming a more public activist was through workshops at Highlander Folk School working specifically with Septima Clark. Highlander operates on five primary objectives which Alex and I consider vital to what we're doing. The needs of everyday people, our learners, the crisis and the social order working at the edge of people's knowledge and understanding and upending boundaries around how we work together and knowledge and then piloting projects to create change. I want to go right into the consulting content and talk a little bit about that and then I'm going to move into talking about how we design this and offer some glimpses of our work. One of the things that I think about deeply as a consultant and I'm a consultant who does teaching, learning and technology all of those. I'm also a teacher in higher education, teaching people how to teach and also teaching first-year students how to write. One of the things from Frearian Horton is that the dominant ideology interjected by students into their classrooms. They see that the teacher is supposed to give a class to them and I do have teachers who still talk about giving classes and about coverage. This was a thing that I needed to undo as a consultant too, is to make sure that I wasn't looked at by the teachers I was working with as someone who would give them a class, who would give them knowledge they could use. In the context that we were working in, I used studies program. Alex pointed out that some youth programs are invested in what young people need from the perspective of experts, educators, that sort of group of folks and what they judge important. I as a consultant wanted to find out what the teachers I was working with and the learners found important. So again, upending some of those ideas about expert and going to Highlander Folk School and thinking about people as the experts. So in my expertise, one of the things I needed to think about was overturning some hierarchies within our University Consulting, where it's well established and enforced by supervisors, administrators that we should be following particular protocols that are fairly neutral. We find it difficult at times to overcome the hierarchies, just like students do, breaking out of roles, having been told that specific practices in particular sequences are what we should be using and that we are indeed the experts. And in fact, we're considered people who should be employing the banking telling people what to do, which I find difficult as a human being and it doesn't fit with Highlander Folk School and their principles and ethos, which form a base for everything that I do. In that context, Highlander Folk School trying to break hierarchies, bridging them, something Alex and I share in our work together for the last 11 years. I've known him since he was a student in my teaching and higher education course. And then we became co-teachers in a couple of courses designing online courses as part of that. The spark, of course, was the pivot, the March 2022, where there were very few things available for people in youth studies. One of the things Alex pointed out in thinking about how to do the pivot is that since there's little professional development, what if his students created OER modules on issues in youth development? And that became his new project to create an OER assignment with the students around issues in youth development that they would decide to cover, address, explore, present as a teacher. He prepped them by offering early modules where he modeled different ways of putting together those class sessions and giving them a framework from which to work in the assignment. All of those resources are in the resource folder that you'll have access to from this session. So in this, he got to cover issues students found interesting and that it would also be something he could continue into future sessions as people chose to navigate, investigate new topics or go more deeply on something, amplify what had been done before. So in this work with Alex and his students and me trying to think about how we do this in an online format, we found ourselves in a web of co-creation, a place to connect to our roots, our past, and envision a future. And in doing that, utilizing develop all talents and abilities, develop excellence not limited just to the few to really dig in with the students who were there. Broad range of students in these classes, much like the ones at Carolyn Shrewsbury, who's quote this is, much like Carolyn encountered when she was my teacher, international students, students of color, domestic diversity, students with learning disabilities with physical and cognitive and emotional disabilities as they are called. And also students who were very deeply connected to their communities, students were athletes, students who were among the student senate elite on the campus. Again, a broad range of students. So how do you bring them all into this web was a key consideration for us. Within that to think of my consulting role, as I noted institutionally, teaching and learning and technology consultant, I was to remain neutral and not to advocate for application, but also to sorry, advocate for application of inclusive research based scholarship. And I was a design lead for our online teaching seminars during that pivotal period of moving to online only. But at the same time, the idea of challenging racism and advocating and teaching skills of social change wasn't considered part of our portfolio. It was a fairly unified role in working together these last this last year, Alex and the four students and I, we took apart my role and realized that it involved these many strands of co designer using a particular frame. I was a curator of resources for the instructor and the students and for a conference that came out of this that was facilitated by faculty presented by students as a learning partner, both in terms of working with individual students and technology. I was a dot dialogue partner as we set up a writing collaboratory. And I've been a mentor and part of that mentoring is about feedback part of it's about accessibility part of it's about technology based learning spaces. But it's also to say, we're not the first to do this. Here's your history and make sure that people understand that they're working with a broad and deep history of education for change. But all of this needs a design base. And in our particular base, we drew on a way that I've pulled together course design, backward course design, Wiggins and McTeague D think and a host of others and call it the four a's where we put atmosphere at the middle how we learn and work together aims, outcomes, objectives, whatever you want to call them. We call them aims to keep the a activities and assessments. So those are our four aims. And the ways are worded here are for a program or department or unit audience where you might be as a teacher talking to your peers and thinking about alignment. Frank Cofield comes into our mix thinking about learning as change and excluding acquisition of factual information when it does not contribute to such change. Part of our looking at the four a's in the design of the courses that were existing around youth studies 3032 the one on the involved research on youth issues was that there was a lot of acquisition of factual information which would not lead to change. So we wanted to use the four a's in a way that helped us to look for change to prompt support seek change. So we drew on Frank Cofield's work and in that also expanded it. The expansions are noted on this slide and getting us to think in this online context about not just the spatial and temporal of the classroom during the semester but during the semester and beyond how to create something that people can use beyond. That became our open educational resource a book that's taking shape and the sessions that students plan. It also became evaluation of learning not based on teacher assignments but on teachers and learners co-creating the learning and feedback and evaluation together. That led us to a four a's that we thought of for a learner audience where we wanted to make sure that we are addressing questions that were about how people would be together and how they might seek change. So part of that then is atmosphere same thing in the middle the heart of it how will we work together aims what will students learn activities how will students practice learning and assessment what will be the evidence of learning and how can we use feedback as part of that not so much grading but assessment. The grading was by contract but the focus was on peer self and teacher assessment in terms of evaluation and feedback. Again the course itself at the heart of it was what we call the OER project where students did the research on a topic of an interest they interviewed and they did interviews they did scholarly research they did some of their own original research in terms of surveys and other data gathering but that was again through the individuals and they were given a template only in terms of guidance and this template was about using the four a's. So to think of how they could do their teaching session their project session in an atmosphere that was guided by the core values that they had developed they had to come up with three to five learning aims they could be cognitive effective or skills based with precise verbs to help them really think about what they were after they were to draft activities that would engage and encompass what their participants would do before during and after the session to support learning and they needed to draft formative assessments things that would help the facilitators and the participants see what they learned and would continue learning. Students worked on this throughout the semester in the first five weeks again Alex modeled those things during the sixth week they really focused in on it and weeks seven through 14 they were the presenters for 90 minutes and in that work also sparked a whole department around them to say we have a conference here more of that at the end. Students supported this work too by keeping class logs where they reflected on the questions they wanted to ask the feedback they were seeking their actions to the class sessions themselves and ideas they were gaining from each other that they could put into practice and the putting into practice was a key thing that we found out as we were working with students Alex and I and our four students doing a set of six writings during our spring semester that just wrapped up that we analyzed over this last summer and came up with what we call five glimpses one of the key things that we learned from the data we've collected qualitative we're doing some checking with other people in the class at the moment was that making a first invitation was vital to setting up an atmosphere in which students would begin to trust that they could take that role of breaching hierarchies of becoming experts and one of the things that's really vital in that is using the first 10 minutes of class any group gathering to establish a group culture and Alex wanted to establish the ethos of invitation and participation for what he did and that's an open part of almost every class session that he offers to say here's a plan I've figured some things out but you can tweak it we can do things with it that you want to do so we're including here a quote from Alex with the first 10 minutes if you were in my position what would you do first and a really lively conversation comes out of that and students learned the idea of invitation inviting each other into their work inviting people in the community like me who might be an expert in a topic area to be a learning partner and help them make connections with people they could talk to curate resources they could investigate and again all of this is guided by Alex's OER project invitation where he walks them through how to do the research and you'll have an example of that with specific prompts and Google searches outlined how to think like a scholar and doing this work as well as some work on thinking through the overt messages and the more hidden messages to really be analytical and looking at the data they gathered and use the class logs to start thinking like scholars and social workers and youth workers analyzing what people were saying the second glimpse I can offer is the idea that we as a group they were able to build in us they could trust that tension between a teacher providing structure from the start and that invitation for the class to do it that actually formed the first basis for trust and part of it was because students saw that Alex had a rudder he was ready to provide direction he was ready to support them in the direction that they would point out and that was their spark for starting to facilitate team building as they talked to each other in those maybe early seven minutes of class session to figure out how they wanted to work from the plan that Alex presented or even the student presented for a class session and who would be doing what work and how would things work it sounds like it could be overwhelming and yet it ended up not being that partly because of Alex's guidance and partly because students really began to work with for his plan and think about how they could structure learning for an interactive session that would take new directions but would still have that rudder and in all of that part of the trust was there was time to sit with each other and listen this isn't driven by content coverage it's driven by engagement and looking at key questions where less is more our third glimpse was of unlearning and Angela who wrote this particular blurb that I'm including here spoke deeply when we were working and in our writing about ignoring what her elders had taught her and yet that was the lesson from Highlander folk school and citizenship schools in summer of freedom summer what do people are ready now and again it was part of my work with them of historicizing that we weren't the first ones to learn and teach like this and as you start to build that perspective about who's learning with you there's so much richness that you can bring together for perspective shifting for taking on difficult thorny topics and they did those complex questions that we might be afraid to talk about and that are getting debated in unhealthy unhelpful ways in public they took on because they decided to unlearn the norms of communication in the public at large and think about how they learned best with the people they loved and how they could share their learning in a ethical or responsible way and in a loving caring way with people to challenge them and they did that by owning knowledge and thinking about who was worthy of learning and who was worthy of holding that knowledge and it transformed their way of thinking through learning glimpse four is in the realm of imposter syndrome which they came to understand as an imposed construct if we can call women and people of color who were thinking this is hard this is new I haven't been taught to do this I haven't been okayed for claiming this if we can call them imposters they might not push us is how that conversation took shape when we were working together and as Morgan explains it she even as that child of two parents with college degrees the advantaged person that she was had that imposter feeling deep stirring stirring deeply inside of her if she showed up as herself especially and that's what we were asking them to do is Alex and I were talking and continuing our conversation as students continue to participate and build the course in that course Morgan faced the most intense version of those fears she had experienced but again as she learned from her peers and from her own work she began to understand that she had important things to say and one of the resources you will find are two class sessions that Morgan has designed first one that she did in Alice's class revision she did for the conference called amplify that we did in April of 2021 and you'll see how she changes her thinking and it's off from feedback from her peers and how she was able to own her knowledge and her experience our fifth glimpse is of learning as a public public act not thinking of as something that happens behind a closed door that a teacher's in charge of but something that's out in the open I don't know we are and while we can't do canvas and zoom in those ways there can be a book that is created in this case a journal that will share what they're doing and by making a conference they did indeed make their learning a public act public act as bemnet says in this particular note we're taught never to see that work is useful to our community that's another part of the public act to use it now it's not just preparation for the future they're not frozen now for some later activation in fact the question is how can I work alongside the people I'm already engaged with and in Bemmet's case with a neurodivergent family and friends as part of her work with people on the autism spectrum and in the general category of neurodivergent and that clear understanding that we are part of the present and our learning is vital to that so let me wind it down here by noting that there are resources and Christina share them with you in the chat and I put them in discord that address the specifics of youth studies 3032 some supporting publications that highlight Highlander Folk School September Clark Miles Horton and others and also some design and pedagogy resources that we shared throughout the semesters that I designed or developed and shared with Alex and shared with the students and also a bit about the things we did beyond the course which was the amplify workshops and conference 300 people attended in that April 2021 one day event we've written and created one session we have a book chapter we're about to do something with hybrid pedagogy and we're expanding the co-creating in a social justice activism orientation for the curriculum design for the masters in youth studies program at the University of Minnesota so that's the formal part of the presentation and perfect timing to hear some of your questions thanks I mean it was really interesting and we currently don't have any questions in the chat at the moment so I believe that you may have already answered them but if anybody wants to drop anything in there quickly before we end the live stream feel free to you've got a minute or so left yes it's a very interesting session you've already had a couple of people shout you out on twitter so definitely the interest has been there you know one of the things that's come up in other sessions that I've been watching is how did you get people to turn on your cameras and that's something that I haven't quite put I haven't put in here we thought about it I talked to Alex last night and one of the things both he and I have had a like nearly 100% rate with our students of cameras on and when they're not on they have they use the avatar and zoom to tell us that they're there and that their cameras are off for a reason that they don't have to disclose to us the avatar is the indication that I got a good reason don't even ask me but when it comes down to it it was that piece for us about talking about who we were authentically so on my opening slide I know that I use name only what my pronouns are and other pronouns are and then I'm just praxic that I have a learning disability those kinds of things have actually had an impact when I talked to my students and Alex talks to him about their willingness to turn cameras on because we're not perfect human beings either we're flawed and we talk also about how difficult it is sometimes for us to concentrate we also do an open invitation so that people can stim or knit or do whatever they pet their cat whatever they need to do in order to be present they can leave the camera on facing a blank wall if they're laying down to take a rest because they need to lay down to participate in class that day and also using tone in the documents so that we're talking in our syllabus or whatever we're doing to our students as the audience and not to some abstract audience of you know peers so we use the forays there too those things have really helped us with the cameras being on it's really interesting yeah we've got some lovely comments coming through from people saying it's been a very thought-provoking session and what the Trogmuff has said I think the glimpses was a lovely term that captured the feelings wonderfully I think that wraps us up very well so thank you for joining us Aileen and hopefully we'll see you again at another conference definitely well thanks all bye