Creating Community among Faculty O.E.R. Fellows: COVID-19 Edition
Joanna Thompson, Joshua Peach, and Cailean Cooney
Introduction
City Tech has been running its O.E.R. Fellowship since 2015, with multiple and sometimes overlapping cohorts. In a virtual environment, we encountered the new challenge of translating the sessions into an online, synchronous format held over Zoom - while retaining the in-person collegiality that characterizes the program as a whole.
Mood Boards
What’s the Mood/Vibe?
Image Attribution: What’s the Mood? by Joshua Peach is licensed under CC BY-SA. Individual image credits are referenced below.
What & Why?
The mood board gave us a playful starting point to enter the collective space. The intention behind this was to minimize the sometimes abrupt feeling of being on display when participants enter a virtual meeting space, as we waited for attendants to arrive and to begin the session. It drew the group together with a common thread to connect on before diving into an often packed meeting agenda. This activity helped level the space and put us in a focused and thoughtful mindset.
The mood boards were composed of Creative Commons licensed images that Joanna Thompson and Joshua Peach selected from online image collections such as Flickr or Google Images. This seeded a connection with the wider Fellowship curriculum as faculty learned more about copyright, open licensing, and methods to find Creative Commons licensed materials to support teaching.
As Joshua looked for images to populate these collections, he sought out varied, sometimes humorous, sometimes abstract, perhaps even provocative images that could be open to the widest degree of interpretation. With this particular grouping of sculptures, Joshua tried to steer away from human representation as much as possible, to not privilege a particular group over another, so that each Fellowship participant, despite their identity or background, might be able to relate to each image presented depending on how they felt that day.
How?
We started the Zoom meeting with the mood board in center view as participants entered, visible through the stacked gallery view. Our words to the group were: “As we enter the meeting space, please feel free to share your mood in the chat.” The chat would trickle in with responses like “I’m a 3 today,” or “I’m a combination of a 5 & 7,” and some of us would respond verbally. Sometimes we would pose questions about how a person was interpreting the mood or vibe of the image on that day.
Images credits from What’s the Mood?:
- “Sculptures near St. John the Divine NYC” by John Donaghy is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND
- Two Pots – Aesop Fable” by Dushan Hanuska is licensed under CC BY-SA
- “Sculptures from The Mexican Museum” by Danielle Maingot is licensed under CC BY 2.0
- “Omphalos Apollo, detail” by F. Tronchin is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND
- “Metropolitan Museum of Art” by Paulo O is licensed under CC BY 2.0
- “Hand of Emperor Konstantin II, Rome, Italy” by herr_Hartmann is licensed under CC BY-NC
- “Gargoyle” by Antony *** is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND
- “Lion Sculpture” by Eric Dillalogue is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Related Resources
- Find Creative Commons licensed images via Flickr or the advanced Google image search feature.
- Guidelines for creating image descriptions and alt text via the American Anthropological Association.
Icebreakers
Image Attribution: Hello by Cailean Cooney is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0. Photo credit: Ostrich image adopted from Ostrich by Stefan Zier, shared via Pixabay terms.
Image Description: close-up of an ostrich's face, with a text caption, "Hello!”
What and Why?
The mood board, as mentioned above, offered a fresh twist on the classic icebreaker activity. The low stakes nature of the mood board set the stage for a second round icebreaker that gave the whole group a chance to speak and be heard. This activity was a good way for everyone to start learning about and with each other.
How?
The following prompts were shared with the Fellowship cohort:
First Session Icebreaker Prompt:
Do you have a memorable course material from your own time as a student? Share one thought about the significance of that course material, positive or negative!
This question is meant to connect faculty members with themselves as learners, and to get them to think back to their own time as students and reflect on what learning materials were meaningful or memorable to them as they embark on selecting new course materials to incorporate into their zero-cost O.E.R.
Second Session Icebreaker Prompt:
What’s in a name? Share something about your name, for example:
- How did you get your name?
- Who were you named after?
- Origins of your name?
Compulsory group activities like icebreakers have the potential to be stiff and yield little participation, but this particular activity was engaging and rewarding, allowing us to learn more about our City Tech colleagues during the session. People shared aspects of family history, places of origin, as well as humorous anecdotes related to their names. While names can be very personal and tied deeply to our own sense of self, the way the icebreaker prompt was written allowed each participant to answer as broadly or specifically as they were comfortable with.
Related Resources
- Exchanging Stories--Names by Paul C. Gorski, the Critical Multicultural Pavilion EdChange project.
- Small Teaching : Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning by James M. Lang.
- Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes by Flower Darby with James M. Lang.
- Tips And Tools: The Art of Experiential Group Facilitation by Jennifer Stanchfield.
Community Agreement
[Slightly adapted from the Anti-Oppressive Facilitation Guide by AORTA.]
One Mic, One Speaker
Please, one person speak at a time. (It can also be useful to ask people to leave a few moments in between speakers, for those who need more time to process words, or are less comfortable interjecting in a conversation.)
No one knows everything; together we know a lot
In any conversation, especially ones about systemic power (race, class, gender, etc), we know that each person is coming to the conversation with different levels of lived experience and embodied expertise. We also believe that each person has something to contribute to the conversation. This agreement asks that we all practice being humble, and look for what we have to learn from each person in the room. It asks us to share what we know, as well as our questions, so that others may learn from us.
“Move up” to listen & speak
If you’re someone who tends to not speak a lot, please move up into a role of speaking more. If you tend to speak a lot, please move up into a role of listening more. This is a twist on the more commonly heard “step up, step back.” The “up/up” confirms that in both experiences, growth is happening. (You don’t go “back” by learning to be a better listener. In fact, listening is a frequently feminized skill that is often seen as a lack of something. On the contrary, choosing to learn how to listen moves both you and the group up.) Saying “move” instead of “step” recognizes that not everyone can take steps, while we can all move in body or spirit.
We can’t be articulate all the time
People can feel hesitant to participate in a program or meeting for fear of “messing up” or stumbling over their words. We want everyone to feel comfortable participating, even if you don’t feel you have the perfect words to express your thoughts.
Be aware of time
This is helpful for your facilitators, and helps to respect everyone’s time and commitment. Please come back on time from breaks, and refrain from speaking in long monologues.
Embrace curiosity
We make better decisions when we approach our problems and challenges with questions (“What if we...?”) and curiosity. Allow space for play, curiosity, and creative thinking.
Acknowledge the difference between intent and impact
The ask here is that we each do the work to acknowledge that our intent and the impact of our actions are two different things, and to take responsibility for any negative impact we have. (This can be as simple as apologizing.)
Why & How?
Our goal for adopting the community agreement was to be transparent about our intention to cultivate a respectful learning community through guidelines for engagement that prioritize equitable and inclusive interaction, and to work to hold ourselves and participants accountable with the help of this framework. We also felt the underlying principles in these guidelines could help us encourage reflection and curiosity across the group, facilitators and participants alike. It was important for us to convey that our approach to the Fellowship program - in its design and facilitation - is foremost approached as a teaching and learning experience. For everyone to take on the dual role of learner and teacher, respect and accountability must be present, as well as a sense of connection to the group and the goals of the Fellowship. Thus we encouraged ourselves and the group not to adhere to a unidirectional teaching style, to resist passive and dominant participation, and to ultimately align the experience with a critical eye toward our own teaching practices.
The O.E.R. team, Cailean, Joanna, and Joshua, shared a draft of the community agreement with the Fellowship cohort for their review in advance of the first meeting. Once in the meeting, we also included review and discussion of the draft following an icebreaker activity. As instructors / facilitators, we remarked on our intention behind adopting the community agreement, then opened it up for discussion to address questions and consider potential additions or modifications all together. We punctuated the discussion by coming to a collective decision about adopting the community agreement. We have introduced the community agreement in two Fellowship cohorts thus far, and to date both have adopted the agreement without edits.
We have continued to use these simple activities to gain a sense of belonging and shared curiosity with faculty in professional development programs. These practices have been an effective framing tool to get us to delve into more expansive conversations about access and equity in learning, stimulating more reflection and brainstorming about student agency and collectively engaging in active meaning making during course studies.
Related Resources
- Anti-Oppressive Facilitation Guide by AORTA.
- Group Agreements for workshops and meetings by Seeds for Change.
- Safer Space Policy / Community Agreements by the Anti-oppression Network.
Cailean Cooney (she/her) is Assistant Professor and O.E.R. Librarian at New York City College of Technology, CUNY, where she coordinates the Library’s Open Educational Resources (O.E.R.) initiative. She has published about the impact of O.E.R. on the student experience in Open Praxis and the International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning. Her interests include foregrounding student-centered approaches and equitable design principles in faculty professional development programs.
Joanna Thompson (she/they) is an Adjunct Open Educational Resources Librarian at the New York City College of Technology and the Borough of Manhattan Community College and an Educational Technologist at the Center for Teaching and Learning at Baruch College. She is interested in open knowledge, critical pedagogy, and ethnographic research in libraries. They earned a BA in Cultural Anthropology and Art from the University of Louisville, an MA in Visual and Media Anthropology from the Freie Universitaet Berlin, and an MS in Library and Information Science from Pratt Institute.
Joshua Peach (he/him) is an Adjunct Open Educational Resources Librarian at the New York City College of Technology and Reference and Instruction Librarian at York College. He holds a BFA in Photography from Tyler School of Art / Temple University, and an MS in Library and Information Science from Pratt Institute.
Additional Resources
About open educational resources, open teaching, and the OpenLab at City Tech.
- O.E.R. at City Tech
- Browse O.E.R. on the City Tech OpenLab
- Browse City Tech O.E.R. in CUNY Academic Works
- Open Pedagogy on the OpenLab
- City Tech OpenLab
- Commons in a Box OpenLab