00;00;03;53 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: Hello, I'm Jackie Pfeffer Merrell director of the Bipartisan Policy Center campus free expression project. I'm delighted to welcome you all today to our conversation, Pandemic Pedagogy: Remote Teaching, and Open Exchange. The first of our two part webinar series Campus Free Expression during COVID-19 the Bipartisan Policy Center is a Washington DC think tank that brings together both parties to find the best ideas to support opportunities as, and security for American families and BPCs campus, free expression, project promotes campus policies and
00;00;37;43 programs that foster a safe and welcoming environment for robust intellectual exchange count colleges and universities have a special role in our democracy in preparing the next generation for citizenship and leadership, introducing them to a broad range of issues and educating them about the values of respectful disagreement and principled exchange. I like briefly to introduce our four distinguished panelists. First Samantha
00;01;03;55 Hedges. She's completing her doctorate in education leadership and policy studies at Indiana university. And is co-moderator of Heterodox Academy's K to 12 education community. Al Montero is Frank B Kellogg, professor of political science and associate Dean of Carlton college. Libby Roderick is a director of the difficult dialogue initiative at university of Alaska Anchorage and vice chair of the national difficult dialogues resource center. We have to say a special
00;01;34;36 thank you to her for being up so early Alaska time. And Charlie Thomas is professor of philosophy and co-director of the McDonald center for America's founding principles at Mercer university. This spring, she was honored with the Joe and Jean Hendrix excellence and teaching award. And just a note for our audience about our run of show. We're going to have a conversation about, for about 40 minutes for strategies, for encouraging conversations about contentious issues and remote classrooms, and hoping to leave, uh, our audience of faculty members and administrators, some
00;02;05;20 actionable strategies that they can take back as they plan for this upcoming very difficult fall.
00;02;10;58 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: And we'll also have 20 minutes for audience Q and a, and you can send in your questions at any time by Twitter using the hashtag BPC live or in a chat function on YouTube and Facebook. So now to our topic, the move to online instruction, this spring was a trial by fire for many professors. And one of the most important challenges was maintaining a culture of open exchange in the remote classrooms. Students who melt might have felt confident, trying a difficult or controversial claim and the
00;02;41;16 femoral setting when in-person classroom, we're more cautious. When a comment could be screenshot at a recorded and faculty had to find new ways to establish a community of trust. That's so important for creating an atmosphere for Frank, a discussion of difficult questions. According to the, of higher education's tracker of college plans, about one third of colleges are planning for a hybrid model that will blend remote and in person instruction about a third are route planning, remote instruction only, and about half are planning to reconvene in person, but even
00;03;16;09 reconvening in-person many instructional components will be remote with deliberate approaches. Faculty can do much to create communities of trust and lively debate in their remote classrooms. And I want to start by hearing about, uh, what our faculty panelists have to save at these topics. And, and Alan gonna start with you when classrooms went remote at Carlton
00;03;37;16 the spring, what was it like and what are your apprehensions for the fall?
00;03;43;06 [Alfred Montero]: Well, for us as a small liberal arts college with 2050 students are our value proposition is the residential piece of it. That's central to the pedagogy of all of our faculty and all of our courses. So, uh, immediately, uh, the reaction was shock and just daily uncertainty, um, but credit to the faculty and to our wonderful learning and teaching center, uh, for guiding us to, uh, remote spring term. Um, but
00;04;14;19 we still felt throughout the term that like a, like a chef that was told to cook without a kitchen, uh, we had to make, do with the, with the resources that we had and their considerable resources, but we were, we were building a plane as we were flying it both at the level of, uh, administration where I'm working in academic planning for the whole college, to the level of the department and individual of faculty, we all had to make great adjustments. Now, the summer has been a bit different because we've had the luxury of
00;04;46;19 time, although not a whole lot of time to plan for the full, uh, trimester. We're one of those institutions, um, that will be a hybrid model using some in-person instruction with mostly online, uh, courses in the curriculum, at least for the fall. Um, so we've had some time to speak with epidemiologists, the state of Minnesota, uh, with other experts, uh, tap
00;05;13;11 the expertise of our own faculty, uh, to figure out how do we do this? How, how do we do something we've never really done before by placing public health concerns first, right. Safety first, uh, and then trying to figure out how we can still enable our faculty to do the considerable work that they do. Um, in this, in this new setting, it's been a, it's an understatement to say that it's been quite a challenge, but we're still, uh, we're still planning. We're still dealing with a lot of this
00;05;43;43 uncertainty.
00;05;46;43 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: Well, we had to request to speak earlier. One of the things that you said was especially important that you're encouraging faculty, you started doing spring and really looking ahead to the fall is class social contracts that, uh, kind of help establish the environment that, that want for Carlton classrooms. Can you tell us a little bit about those?
00;06;08;51 [Alfred Montero]: Yeah. You know, I would say that a big part of the pedagogy of a Carlton classroom is, and I believe this is true for so many of our peer institutions is communication. The ability of faculty, professors, instructors, to communicate with their, with their students. And while we're thankful to have a high tech alternative to the in-person classrooms, so that we can do some measure of what we were doing before, something is lost in that, in that communication, something is lost a body
00;06;39;53 language or the personal contact, um, the sort of tacit ways that human beings communicate. Um, so with, with that considerable challenge, we had to think about how we construct social contracts. We really did this on a course by course level with every faculty member, thinking about the sorts of rules of the road at the very beginning of the term, some of them spell them out explicitly in their syllabus about how information in the course
00;07;10;25 would be used online, outside the course. Um, there were limitations to what could be done on social media, for example, um, in other cases, faculty relied on our larger community standards for the entire college, uh, and those were communicated and reinforced. Um, and, and Carleton students, I think deserve a great deal of credit. They adapt, uh, very quickly. Uh, that's not to say that they weren't challenged, but they adapt very quickly to these significant
00;07;38;51 circumstances. So I think in many ways in the spring we were, we were fortunate to call upon the residual social capital that we have at Carlton and this cultural understanding of tolerance and patience, uh, with the views of others.
00;07;52;53 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: Oh, I want to bring Libby in here. Um, so difficult dialogues initiative. One of the things that you've also written about is establishing code of conduct or ground rules, and for this pandemic situation, what are you especially emphasizing as, as important and how do faculty members do that with our students?
00;08;13;58 [Libby Roderick]: Well, we also, as was mentioned, you know, went through the very quick and extraordinarily challenging pivot to move everybody into remote, um, teaching. And we will be doing that in the fall. In our case, we have a profoundly working class state with a profoundly working class campus. Uh, we are in the middle of the, uh, the eye of the storm of the climate crisis. And we, if you've been following the Chronicle of higher education at all, as a public institution up here, we have been the target of massive budget cuts under a governor that has declared that
00;08;47;33 he does not support, um, most public infrastructure. So we were already in a high environment And a lot of crisis prior to COVID. Um, and so my greatest concern in the fall really is the, as in many cases, the mental and physical health and wellbeing of students and, but particularly financial. And in our case, if
00;09;14;39 our students do not come back to our campus, uh, or the university of Alaska, most of them won't go to college at all. Um, and we have a large indigenous population here. So, um, in terms of working with faculty about how to engage in difficult dialogues in this context, we have to be incredibly mindful of the stresses on our students. Um, and that's always true, but even more so now where people are in households, where they have multiple people at the same time, and they're all competing, maybe for the
00;09;46;18 use of the computer, or they have to do childcare, they have to do elder care and they have somebody sick in the home and so on.
00;09;52;27 [Libby Roderick]: And so what I, so I teach faculty across the U S and beyond in terms of a wide range of strategies for how to engage difficult dialogues in classrooms. Um, and when I do anything from a one hour thing to a week long thing, one of the most important things that I teach as a strategy is this idea that it's been mentioned, and it's pretty widely used. I think that we need to establish guidelines for discussion, whether you're talking about, uh, an entire course, which I'm really thrilled to hear if entire campuses establishing this a course, a module, a discussion,
00;10;26;56 whatever it is before we engage with one another, we really do need to set up agreements for how we're going to engage. And, um, I promote the idea that it's wonderful if possible, to cocreate them with your students. If you only have five minutes to do it, uh, you, you do want to bring in your own ideas as a faculty member and say, here's how we're going to do things, which is fabulous. But if you have a little more time and sometimes people take a class to do
00;10;55;18 this, sometimes people take the entire semester. If it happens to be something where you can use it as an assignment for norm building or talking about ethics, or what have you to cocreate with students. And we have a process for doing that. We have a free book. We can offer you if you're interested in this particular one, but you're essentially asking students to brainstorm things that they've seen that really help discussions go well and things that they've seen in their experience that help them not go well. Um, and you, you create a, uh, a code of conduct, so
00;11;23;33 to speak together. And one of the things that, I mean, one of the reasons we encourage you to do it with your students is because they then become invested in it. They become monitors of it. You don't have to become the police person in, um, you know, how things are going. You can encourage them to think about what do we do with people. Don't go along with the code, you know, with the agreements that we've established, what kinds of norms should we have for that, so that it doesn't take anybody by surprise. And it also really lets you tailor the ways you engage with one another to
00;11;53;58 the
00;11;54;05 [Libby Roderick]: Specifics of the culture of that class or that campus. For example, uh, I live in Alaska, born and raised. We have seven major indigenous nations in Alaska. And so when we are engaging in a classroom and there are indigenous folks involved, they may have very different, uh, requests, needs, um, understandings of what kind of communication is .
00;12;21;35 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: I'm going to bring Samantha in here? Samantha, I know that, uh, you have assigned a preread about political conversations. You teach about the politics of, uh, K to 16 higher ed, which is a very fraught topic. And, uh, you know, tell us about bringing in a preread. I think you've used, uh, Paula Moore and, uh, uh, uh, the political classroom, uh, to set up helps help students have something to respond to in thinking about the class.
00;12;51;00 [Samantha Hedges]: Sure. Yeah. Uh, first thank you for having me on, um, I taught a class called the politics of education and it was focused on K through 16 and one of their assignments that they have throughout the class. So they had three times that they had to meet with their group to discuss, um, some questions that I set out for them related to the readings. They had done videos, they had watched podcasts. They had listened to, um, I was not a part of these conversations, so I didn't get on when they were having
00;13;23;09 the discussions, they had to schedule them themselves. Um, so I wanted to set the tone for kind of what was expected out of these types of conversations. Um, as far as, you know, ground rules, things like that. And so I had them read as their first reading for class, uh, the first chapter of the political classroom by Diana Hess and Paula McAvoy. So the goal of that reading was for them to, first of all, think about if they had ever
00;13;51;40 had this experience in their life. And they were, um, asked that in a discussion prompt in response to this reading that they were to do.
00;14;01;11 [Samantha Hedges]: So they had to think about if they had ever been involved, um, or taken a class in college or K through 12 that had them deliberate ideas or discuss ideas. So then they would write that discussion prompt I would respond. And it was a part of the lecture as well, um, to discuss this chapter. So it was really just to get them in the frame of mind that these group discussions were to be, um, deliberations of ideas. Now in deliberation usually come to a conclusion. So they had to answer
00;14;33;34 questions. So they were coming to a consensus on response to these questions, but also just this idea of discussion that you could have back and forth ideas that you could bring in your own personal experiences. Um, as well as specifically relate to the readings, um, that assigned for that week. Um, and that I really stressed that it was about politics, not politicians. That was a big part of it.
00;15;00;57 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: Thanks for that. And Charlie, I want to come to you. So you're a liberal arts professor that perhaps pretty unusually had experienced teaching online before the pandemic. And one of the things that you've talked about to me is having accountability exercise to make sure that the students engage with the essential questions to the core. So what is an accountability exercise and how do you build it into the class?
00;15;27;16 [Charlotte C.S. Thomas]: Thanks, Jackie. And, uh, thanks to the Bipartisan Policy Center for setting this up. I've already learned things from my colleagues. So this is a, this is a great conversation. Um, so look, you know, if we were to walk into a face to face classroom that, uh, many people watching this are very familiar with, and we just said, um, you guys talk, you read, right, you're smart, you're committed students. Uh, you're here to do the work, so y'all just talk about it.
00;15;54;41 [Charlotte C.S. Thomas]: Um, we knew it wouldn't go very well, even if, um, even if they had done the reading and even if they wanted to have a good discussion. Um, we just, we know that we have to set up, um, discussions in class, both by setting up the syllabus to set up expectations for discussions and by modeling, um, you know, good discussion behavior and setting up incentive structures within the context of the class that has to happen for online discussions too. If we just create a discussion board or say, we're going to have a live discussion on zoom, but then we just sort
00;16;28;37 of open it up and say, you guys go at it. Um, we can't expect it to go well, we wouldn't expect that face to face and, um, going into a virtual environment, doesn't, doesn't change that. So, um, so we have to think about that. Um, so what I've done is at one accountability exercise is, um, I've, I've given real teeth to the, um, discussion, um, uh, board requirement for the class. I've also linked it to other assignments in the class. And I think
00;16;58;44 this is a powerful tool to, to link assignments to each other. So there's a, there's a scaffolding effect that happens. Um, and that's both good for the students developing, um, comfort with topics and with processes, but it's also good, um, for, uh, being able to have more sophisticated conversations that is if you set up a discussion board and as I do say, you must do one original post. That is your idea, your question, your comment,
00;17;27;56 plus you have to respond to two other students. Um, but that this is going to be a primary way that you process information with your peers. So you should understand those to be minimums, um, and, and continue to use the, uh, the discussion board as to whatever extent it's useful. Um, that sets up expectations and sets up boundaries, but then you are going to do
00;17;50;05 [Charlotte C.S. Thomas]: A live conversation. You can go and mine, the material from the discussion board and say things like, well, Sally, I see that you were interested in X. And could you talk about that a little bit more? Um, and so it both makes the discussion board more meaningful and it seeds the discussions that you can have live with your students, that sort of thing. There are lots of other examples.
00;18;13;54 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: Yeah. I mean, it's, it seems like that helps you spring from the discussion board to the classroom is as a integrated community. Um, Al, I want to come back to, to you to just thinking about this, the special place that a classroom is. So, you know, a classroom isn't, it's not usually it's not completely closed and that people will talk about what goes on in a classroom outside of class. But, you know, normally, uh, you know, the professor starts class, the door is closed and there's a close community that creates trust. And you started talking about
00;18;45;41 that a little bit, but I liked just to hear a little bit more about maybe others will chime in too. How do you create that sense of trust, especially when people may be in settings that are not as conducive to that closed classroom feeling?
00;19;02;55 [Alfred Montero]: Yeah, I think it's most challenging when you're focused on issues that, uh, asked students to reflect on their own experiences and bring in their own sort of personal views. That's, uh, we're teaching generation Z these days, um, at many of our institutions and, uh, having children from that generation, I can say it's symbolic politics, uh, changing names, bringing down statues. A lot of these things matter tremendously. Um, but I teach public policy. I teach political
00;19;34;21 science, uh, value free social science. So how, how do I bridge, how do I bring students that are thinking, uh, in these identity and personal terms, um, into an arena in which they're talking about very difficult subjects, um, that, that, that might, um, create some fear that they're going to be judged, uh, by your peers. And so a couple of, couple of techniques I can share with you.
00;20;00;08 [Alfred Montero]: I focus on trying to displace their identity a little bit, like giving them an excuse to be somebody else. So in two, on two or four on four debates, I create advocacy positions and I give those advocacy positions to, uh, different groups of students. And I say, you're prepared for the debate, which may maybe preparation that is done outside of class and overnight. And then they come into class. I may only judge the arguments in the debate based on the value of those arguments. We never assume that those positions are in some way reflective of the personal
00;20;31;48 views of the people who are engaging in the thing over time, what's being taught is the norm of tolerance for dealing with other arguments that you disagree with, like focusing on the premises of those arguments, rather than the people that are making those arguments a more direct way of doing this would be in a simulation and would be, and the dossier identity that is not the identity of the student or the student, and have that student play out that identity and anything being theoretic, strategic interactive
00;21;01;23 game of saying democratic transition and comparative perspective, or negotiating the tension between public health policy, an individual policy, uh, individual Liberty, uh, and then sort of work on a piece of legislation or have a simulated constitutional convention in which a lot of these, uh, utterly important tensions are, are they, the students have to deal with them, but they're holding positions and identities that are not necessarily
00;21;31;53 positions that they agree with.
00;21;34;13 [Alfred Montero]: Um, and then finally, I sometimes invoke my, you know, my own sort of position as the instructor who channel a voice different arguments that they might not listen to that otherwise. And I'll say for the next 30 minutes, I'm going to take the position of an owner of a coal mine in West Virginia. And we're going to talk about environmental policy, and I want you to ask questions, no ad hominem attacks. Uh, you need to deal with the premise of my argument. And the goal here is to build a bridge to my position and get needed to maybe nudge me a little bit on my
00;22;10;12 positions that I can see the value of what you're saying are those are frustrating exercises.
00;22;17;35 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: Let's bring Samantha in. What about building trust, Samantha? And what are your strategies?
00;22;25;15 [Samantha Hedges]: Yeah, so, um, as I mentioned, I did group discussions. Now I taught this online class, um, pre COVID-19. I taught it for four semesters. So just as a side note, um, so they were able to go on campus and get access to technology they needed, but they, their group discussions were via zoom. They had to have audio and a visual with the people they were in the group with. So I kept my students in the same group for the entire, for the duration of the course now, you know, it would be
00;22;57;00 nice for them to get to know other people in the class, but I felt that this was really important to build trust because they were talking about, you know, topics of political nature. Um, now everyone had gone to school, so they all had their own perspective that they could kind of share and learn from each other. And I would notice that over time, those group discussions, people spoke more freely, you know, towards the end of the class than they did at the beginning. I think that was attributed to, um,
00;23;25;40 having them stay with the same group the whole time. Yeah,
00;23;30;21 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: I think in terms of building the, getting to know one another in his community of trust, uh, Libby, one of the things that I know the difficult dialogues and initiative recommends is a, is a circle of object exercise. Can you just tell us how that, What it is and how it builds trust?
00;23;48;49 [Libby Roderick]: Sure. It's so interesting listening to this because there's so much to say, I barely know where to start. Um, so in terms of building trust, I mean, I think everybody knows online learning or remote learning is more challenging no matter what, whether you're in COVID or, or in regular times. And so all the things we usually would do, which is to have students share profiles about themselves and, uh, do icebreaker kinds of things. So they get to know each other and so forth. Um, let me just back up and say, there is a free resource. I really want to make it
00;24;19;56 available to anybody online, and we can find a way to send out the, um, the link on a chat called start talking a handbook for engaging difficult dialogues in higher education. We put it out as part of our initiative about 12 years ago. And it, it contains just a, uh, a boatload of, um, strategies for all these kinds of things. One of which is the circle of objects. I'll speak to that. Some of which are about trust building and many of which build on what Al was saying, which is, there are such a wide range of strategies that are
00;24;50;39 fun for students that are interesting and engaging for students that are active, that can be transferred into an online context that allows students to articulate their viewpoints on a particular topic, um, without revealing their own personal biases or struggles, or what have you. And he's mentioned a couple of them, there are a whole lot more, um, so we can go into that and the questions that people want to, but in terms of the circle of objects, it's a very basic exercise. Again, many people may have done it in different ways before the way we teach it has to do with inviting
00;25;21;43 students to bring in an object that is meaningful to them in terms of their cultural or class background, you can adapt it as you need to, um, and just simply speak for two or three minutes and it's timed.
00;25;35;36 [Libby Roderick]: And it's the same amount of time for every person, um, to share what is significant about that, uh, to them, I work with faculty, as I mentioned, um, and I have never done this exercise with faculty where somebody doesn't burst into tears, because what it does is it really allows people to bring in their multidimensionality into a learning environment. And as everybody knows, I think, um, it's important to identify one's positionality when we speak in these things, it matters whether or not you are Latin X, it matters whether or not you are first
00;26;06;15 generation. It matters whether or not you are indigenous or whether you are male or whatever your, you know, your background is. And when people bring these things in, uh, people really begin to get a picture of what deeply matters to them and where they're coming from. So that by the time you then engage in a topic on healthcare equity issues or gun control or sexual violence or immigration, or the climate crisis, you have a much deeper empathy for where they are speaking from.
00;26;33;50 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: Yeah. I want to pick up on something that Al mentioned a few minutes ago, we were teaching it in many schools, uh, generation Z students, And, uh, who are, are different in some ways from a past generation, the Pew research center, uh, says that, uh, more people are growing up in, in think alike communities where demographic and politics are more alike. So people grew up knowing a few people who's partisanship whose news sources
00;27;04;13 whose political and social views is. So our socioeconomic background is, is different from their own. And so when freshmen come to campus, they've got a couple of different challenges there they're meeting for the first time, more people who are maybe different from themselves. And also, uh, they're coming into a collegiate classroom environment. That's much less structured, uh, in most cases, the high school classrooms. So it's just, they're there, the level of conversation and challenges and conversation
00;27;34;20 goes up. And I just would like to really ask about are matriculating first year students, and what can we do for them, especially to set them up for success in this, uh, difficult moment when they're, they're not coming on to what's a normal first year, semester, Charlie, maybe I'll start with you.
00;27;57;21 [Charlotte C.S. Thomas]: Oh yeah. I, I, I'm thinking about this a lot. Um, you know, a lot of people, including myself have been more or less isolated for several months now. Um, Mercer's going back to face to face learning. Um, we have a mandate that students that we need to design classes so that students can keep up if they're quarantined, not, not just catch up, but keep up, which means all of our courses have to be somewhat hybridized. Um, but we have to, we're, we're all we're doing face to face primarily. Um,
00;28;28;50 and there is so much anxiety and stress, um, around that. And I think these issues that you're talking about, you know, gen Z or are definitely gonna come out, I think, uh, a lot of I have a 17 year old son. I talked to him about this, his friends, and talk to some of my students and they're anxious to come back most of them. Um, but their, their families are worried for them. I know a lot of faculty members are worried. And so I think we're going to see a lot of rawness. I already to frankly see it from some of my colleagues as we talk about
00;29;00;37 getting back into the school year and negotiate things that are really, um, not usually charged, uh, that, um, that people were raw and anxious. And, um, and so I do think that, um, in the classroom that's going to play out in conversations. I mean, if people are raw, they're more impulsive and people are more impulsive sometimes. Um, the, the, the way that dialogue emerges can be a little bit more, um, difficult. So I think for me, it's
00;29;30;04 actually more important than ever to, to have good structures in place, um, to make sure that I'm on top of these things, that if I do online discussions, that I'm them all
00;29;42;14 [Charlotte C.S. Thomas]: The time that I'm making sure that students introduce themselves. I love these things that Libby's talking about, make sure that, um, that we are human to each other so that these conversations take place in that context. And people are, uh, less, um, willing to, uh, objectified positions and more attuned to the human beings that they're facing, whether it's in class or online. So there, there are a lot of things we could do, but I am I'm. I think this is a really important thing for us to build into our syllabus, to go in with this understanding that,
00;30;13;52 that we're going to be dealing with heightened stress, heightened anxiety, um, and perhaps more difficult dialogues because of that.
00;30;24;27 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: I want to remind our audience that in just about 10 minutes, we'll be moving to questions and you can send them in by tweeting with hashtag BPC live or on the YouTube or Facebook chat function. And I want to keep up this conversation of really more difficult dialogue. So we're looking ahead to the 2020 election season, you know, for generations, these are voters. Many of them will be the first time voters. And one of the things that we do at BPC is to bring liberals and
00;30;55;08 conservatives, Republicans, and Democrats together to find pragmatic compromises, um, even in spite of principal disagreements. And so I want to think about bringing liberals and conservatives, uh, together and in college classrooms. Uh, someone like to, to have an idea about how you bring liberals and conservatives together to talk about things in a, in an election semester.
00;31;22;15 [Libby Roderick]: Well, can I just say a show To a group of younger people? I mean, a group of students who contacted me on the basis of the fact that they'd seen this flyer here today, I believe it's called bridge USA. Maybe you all know about it have worked with them. Yeah. Wonderful. And they're working on bringing liberals and conservatives together in the student from a student driven context, which I really support. I think that's a fantastic model. There's one at the university of Michigan as well called. We listened to the student driven, um, more, they
00;31;56;10 make agreements beforehand where they agree on the facts beforehand and so forth. And so I think reaching to some of these student organizations that is, is, are intending to do exactly that for their own generation is really interesting.
00;32;10;50 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: I think it's really important to give students that chance to create the buzz around the election, whether it's, uh, uh, debate, uh, listening parties or watching parties or a other kind of BridgeUSA have wonderful leadership. Their CEO Manu Meel spoke at our constitution day event at BBC last year in his that, uh, linked that event is available on our website as I saw someone else. Yeah.
00;32;36;45 [Charlotte C.S. Thomas]: Can I jump in on this really quickly? And, and I, and I see that we have a question That's come in from someone who's watching too about. And I think it's related to the question you just asked, and that is about how to respond to a student who refuses to engage because they think, um, something is fundamentally dangerous or harmful. Um, and, and this I think is related, um, to this question about how you foster, um, bipartisan or partisan debates when you have students coming in self-identifying, um, with one of those ideologies or, or political affiliations. Um, and I just have two,
00;33;09;58 two thoughts on this. I'm sure my colleagues in this discussion have many more, but, um, one is, um, is, is that the more content driven those conversations are, um, the more that you can begin to push through some of the, the surface rhetoric, um, the partisan rhetoric on the surface. So I would say that, um, returning, you know, requiring research on, on certain
00;33;38;03 things, when a student says, I won't engage this because I'm afraid it's harmful to really, whether it's in private, probably in private, but say you really want some more information about why that's your position and where your information is coming from and if possible, to move it into the classroom.
00;33;55;18 [Charlotte C.S. Thomas]: And then the second idea, it's very simple, and that is to keep moving. You know, if a student digs in, on, on one particular issue, obviously you need to play that out in class and make sure that, that you're not running away from controversy. We want to do the opposite of that, but also I think having several different topics and moving ahead, so that you're looking at things from different angles, give students a chance to get out of any corners that they might've painted themselves into. And a lot of the times students would like to get out of that corner
00;34;26;08 if you, um, if you give them a chance. And so finding ways to, to change the subject to related topics so that the important stuff is still on the table, but they're not quite as pin down, I think could be very, very helpful.
00;34;40;38 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: Yeah. Al, I want to come to you about another topic that's going to be important this fall, that the George Floyd murder, um, Carlton is only 40 miles from, from Minneapolis and the, the site of the murder. And how are you and other Carlton faculty getting ready to talk about that in, in classrooms or outside of classrooms this fall?
00;35;05;19 [Alfred Montero]: Well, we barely had a chance to catch our breath, um, with everything that's happened, um, in our area, um, the murder occurred at the tail end of our spring trimester and students had to go home and I know that many students wanted to stay and wanted to go up to the cities and join the protest. Um, so there is a sense of a conversation that we've never had at the appropriate time. There is a building sense
00;35;38;01 over
00;35;38;17 [Alfred Montero]: The summer that, uh, our students are going to want to engage in that conversation extensively. Um, and at the same time, we're worried about public health, uh, implications and orange gatherings on a, on a campus that is relatively small, uh, in a rural area with a small community in Northfield of only 20,000 people. So we have to balance the public health concerns with the real, um, sort of intellectual and
00;36;12;16 personal, uh, concerns of our students who badly want to engage in these sorts of conversations. So over the summer, we have been working, uh, various groups on campus have been working on anti-racism, uh, not only training staff and faculty and preparing for an institution wide anti-racist program. Um, but one that, that contains pedagogical aspects that we can maybe fit into, uh, theories courses and departments, and make
00;36;41;37 them a more permanent aspect of the curriculum at Carlton. So it's a conversation that's here to stay. Um, the, the real question of course in my mind is it's always sustainability. Can we sustain that conversation, um, once, uh, sort of the memory, unfortunately, the memory of George boy's murder will weaken over time, just as the memory of Rodney King's beating a week and over time and didn't need to in the long term, the
00;37;10;48 kind of, uh, uh, discussion that we're having right now. Um, so the hope is that we can carry it forward.
00;37;20;28 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: And, uh, you know, others thinking, looking ahead to the, uh, election, eh, conversations in the classroom that the George Floyd protests, you know, what are ways that we can talk about this, uh, fruitfully in, uh, in our classrooms with students
00;37;43;37 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: Libby, maybe what are the, I mean, one of the things that you had shared, uh, in your was the, the five minute rule, um, having people take on a particular perspective, can you tell us about that?
00;37;57;14 [Libby Roderick]: Sure. I also want to, you know, I am on the board for the difficult dialogues national resource center, which we founded a number of years ago to keep these things going. And so I want to also mention something many of you have heard about called intergroup relations work. Um, it is, it is again, an ongoing dialogue process that teaches students to keep dialogues going, how to facilitate dialogues, uh, particularly between groups that have been historically at odds with one another. And certainly systemic racism is, uh, at the heart of a lot of that work. So if you're not familiar with that model, they can be
00;38;28;52 supportive of you. The five minute rule is very much along the lines of what Al was talking about earlier. A lot of the, that come from the Work that I do with faculty have to do with recognizing that faculty's time is very pressured and that many faculty won't engage in a lot of difficult dialogues. If they think it's going to sort of take over their class or derail those syllabus that they had planned for the 16 weeks, that they have students and so forth. And so the five minute rule is a very condensed strategy, um, that essentially creates a debate in a classroom without
00;38;58;37 having to have a vast amount of time involved and a works like this, where you're in any group of people, you can teach your students that they can do this with you, or you can reserve the right to yourself. If there is, it's essentially what you're doing. If there is a viewpoint that is being dismissed or is ignored or doesn't show up at all, um, somebody is able to call for anybody is able to call for the five minute rule on for five minutes, everyone in the class, um, engages with that position from a
00;39;24;51 standpoint of being affirmative of it, whether they agree with it or not.
00;39;28;41 [Libby Roderick]: And so, you know, if the, if the position is something to do with Confederate monuments, you know, and that they should all be torn down for five minutes, you might entertain the viewpoint that they should remain in place because they remind us of our history and so forth and so on. And so there's a series of questions that students are invited to engage with or faculty as it happens in my case. Um, and for five minutes, people speak supportively about that viewpoint. If they cannot speak supportively, they're invited to witness. And I always make the joke that after five minutes, you're invited to return to your previous biases. So don't worry. Um, but, uh, but it has the effect of really
00;40;02;15 surfacing these positions and viewpoints, um, or that exist in our world, whether they exist in our classroom or not. Um, and letting people really begin to wrestle with the legitimacy of viewpoints that they have never even considered because they're so certain all of us have our own truth, right? And throw in a fairly short period of time, you can bust open the conversation. As Al mentioned, you don't have to identify it's your viewpoint, but if it happened to be your viewpoint and you were in the
00;40;28;49 minority of viewpoint in that classroom, suddenly it's gotten some airtime. So it's, it's a really, really helpful kind of a way of engaging.
00;40;37;11 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: Well, thank you. Hey, now we're going to turn to a questions from our audience. We're gonna start with a question from, uh, from Maggie King here. Um, and, and this one is, is to you Libby first, you know, it will bring in others. I know a Al is in a more rural campus. How do we ensure that rural students and students without consistent access to the internet are not left behind during a period of online education?
00;41;01;46 [Libby Roderick]: Yeah, thanks for that. Uh, as you may know, in Alaska almost everybody's a rural student, except for, you know, we have one urban center really, of any note. Um, so we've been putting a lot of attention on this. Um, there's no quick answer because economic inequities are pretty profound. Um, but we did get some cares money. We've been funneling all the money we've gotten from the fed into, um, helping students in those kinds of situations. And, um, trying to figure out assignments that we can give to people that don't
00;41;31;56 require a lot of, or that they, that they can access. Of course, at any point, doing asynchronous online, um, assignments and so forth. Um, but it is an ongoing challenge that we haven't completely solved. Um, and I guess I'm not being particularly helpful with that, except that I I'm with you in that we're in that struggle as we speak at our campus and an inordinate amount of resources being given to trying to help those students.
00;42;02;32 [Alfred Montero]: One other response to that. And this is an ongoing question also with our hybrid model in the fall is that we had students on campus in the spring. We, we, there were some students that petition to stay. So putting aside international students that could not go home because home was not safe for them. Uh, and, and they were not going to be productive students at home. So we've identified, um, the vast majority of those students for the fall. And those students will be in the group of
00;42;32;36 students that we will have on campus. We can, we can have up to 85% of our normal student body on campus in the fall.
00;42;41;14 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: Yeah,
00;42;42;13 [Charlotte C.S. Thomas]: I think we're going to have to be extraordinarily flexible.
00;42;45;58 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: Go ahead, Charlie.
00;42;48;22 [Charlotte C.S. Thomas]: I just think we're going to have to be extraordinarily flexible. I think we can, that, that all kinds of students, whether it's rural students or students who are, um, uh, you know, coming from low income situations or students who just don't have a quiet place at home to work, um, because, uh, perhaps there's just a complicated family situation. Um, I think we're going to have to Telegraph to students early on that we want to work with them. And if they find themselves in those
00;43;21;21 difficult circumstances that we're going to find accommodations. Um, and, and so I'm, I love all of these ideas and I think they're really important. Um, I think that the, the problems and the challenges that students are going to be bringing, um, are, are probably as particular as, as they are. And it's every teacher, every instructor is going to have to decide how flexible they're willing to be. Um, I think we're probably going to have to
00;43;48;42 be extraordinarily flexible.
00;43;51;17 [Libby Roderick]: Yeah, can I just jump in and say my, my campus, we did establish and, and many campuses are, I think, uh, some kind of a institutional position that is dedicated to student success specifically recognizing the inequities in our student bodies, right. In that certain groups of people, certain groups of students tend to do better than others because they have the cultural capital that, um, coming in. And so we did also reach out literally with surveys, with texts, with all kinds of mechanisms, to every single student, um, to get information about their
00;44;23;46 circumstances. We had a survey that asks, do you have access to the internet? What is your computer situation? Do you have a laptop? Can you make it to our if necessary?
00;44;32;30 [Libby Roderick]: And so actually making that kind of, um, contact and with the, with the parallel, with difficult dialogues, you know, one of the things I suggest if you're going to be engaging in difficult dialogues and you probably are, whether you plan to or not right, is to have some kind of, um, formative, formative feedback cycle going on at all times, right. Where students can give you feedback, whether it's anonymous or whether it's not anonymous on how they're doing, how they're doing with the dialogue. You know, you could have structured questions that you have them fill out. So you keep your hand on the pulse of what's going on for them,
00;45;04;10 particularly now that it's remote. And particularly if you're in a difficult dialogue, but particularly with these issues, like finding out before things get going, as you mentioned, Charlie, you know, um, do you have difficulties accessing the internet before we even start this class? So I know who I need to reach for.
00;45;23;45 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: Yeah. I mean, I think that those are the kinds of things that let faculty not just feel like they're ready for when difficult dialogues come up, but they can actually proactively introduce topics that are very important for, for the country, for their, for their subject area and feel like, um, they're, they're reaching out to their students to have those really important conversations. Uh, our next question is from, uh, Florida Atlantic, Bret Danilowicz um, some faculty steer class
00;45;56;16 conversations to certain ideological outcomes, to an extreme, as faculty are encouraged to have difficult dialogues. How can we spot or correct in remote teaching? That's a tough one. Uh, Al you're the, you're the Dean. I'll direct that one to you
00;46;16;42 [Alfred Montero]: Well part of my job, a little part of my job is I, I am the person in the Dean's office that precedes student complaints about faculty. And there are a few, you know, over the year, uh, over the course of any academic year, there were a few, and sometimes it's of this nature, uh, the, the, the student and the professor disagree, and the student believes that the professor is imposing, uh, their worldview in the class, um, that usually leads to a conversation between me and the students to get
00;46;47;57 a better sense of what's going on. Sometimes it's the student's view that, that, that, that also needs a little bit of massaging and debate. Um, but, um, it, it sometimes will lead to a conversation between me and the chair, um, and how cannot at departmental level respecting academic freedom of the, of the faculty. There might be a broader discussion among colleagues about the importance of tolerance and diversification of worldviews in the
00;47;13;37 class. So it's a very indirect and respectful approach,
00;47;20;20 [Libby Roderick]: And I really encourage, Oh, I'm sorry.
00;47;23;00 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: Yeah, please. Libby, please.
00;47;25;04 [Libby Roderick]: Okay. I think, um, I really encourage, um, faculty to have these conversations amongst themselves. I mean, again, that's my that's my constituency, right. Is working with faculty and there are definitely faculty who have the opinion that you should keep your, your own viewpoint out of the classroom entirely and foster, you know, the independent thinking of your students, which is a totally legitimate view. Um, in, in the book that I mentioned, there is our faculty who argue the opposite, that they should actually put their viewpoint out very strongly. And if they do that, though, they are required then to bolster massively
00;47;57;34 the confidence of their students to challenge them right. To make it really, really clear. Your grade has nothing to do with whether you disagree with me or not. It's going to be based on the following rubric.
00;48;08;22 [Libby Roderick]: So it's really clear what that basis is. So there won't be a grade dispute, right. You know, they have to work extra hard to ensure that the students who already sometimes are struggling with their voice, right. Don't feel silenced.
00;48;21;43 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: And it is wonderful. I think most faculty do that most of the time, UNC chapel Hill research has released a study early this spring that show that, uh, even a majority of liberals, Democrats and moderate said that their faculty members welcomed a range of viewpoints, even, even when students had a sense of what the faculty member's viewpoint was. But it's, it's something that can be a, not every once in a while, not
00;48;50;08 uniformly the case. Charlie went and jumped in here. Uh, I think Samantha wanted to jump in first if that's okay. Jackie and I can.
00;49;01;52 [Samantha Hedges]: Okay. Thank you. Um, I guess I fall in the former camp, I guess, of keeping viewpoint out of the classroom, as far as the instructors concerned. Although I do like to play devil's advocate occasionally. Um, but I think this is a really good opportunity to kind of push for more student driven, um, uh, courses, um, being online. I mean, I loved having group discussions with my students where I was absent. So I really got to hear how they, um, kind of were
00;49;33;06 grappling with ideas and also got to watch them do that without having to worry about an instructor, um, being in the room and they did it really well. There was never any controversy, um, that was observable at least in the video. So I think, like trying to get faculty to embrace the idea that this is a great opportunity for more, um, student led courses and dialogues, while also keeping their present their presence, very visible, um, you know, making sure students know that they are around if they need
00;50;05;58 them, that they are, you know, they're online, they're engaging. You just may not always see them all the time. So maybe even posting videos occasionally with something I did to give like feedback via video instead of just typing. So they knew I was there for them, but that they,
00;50;21;01 [Samantha Hedges]: In a lot of ways we're in control of the class.
00;50;24;17 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: Yeah. I want to come back to how this is a moment of opportunity too, but Charlie First, please chime in. Yeah.
00;50;31;17 [Charlotte C.S. Thomas]: Very quickly. But I think that, um, this issue of, of, um, how to, uh, in involved get involved if, uh, if somebody is kind of, it's a class is going off the rails, or if a faculty member is doing something that you'd like to get feedback on. I think another topic that this opens up is this is a, the question of classroom observation during, um, during the pandemic, um, because, uh, at Mercer and many other places, uh, classroom observations are very important part of, of the system, both
00;51;01;59 of faculty development, but also of just programmatic consistency and community. You know, it's not all retributive, it's developmental to how do we support each other? Um, what can we learn from each other as teachers? And that's going to be much more difficult, um, while we're doing social distancing, um, for face to face. And I think we have to be creative about how we're going to do it online. Um, and so, uh, I, I, I'm thinking about that right now as a part of the programs that I'm a part of, um, does this mean that we sign into each
00;51;33;12 other's courses, the online courses that we become parts of the conversation, can we on discussion boards, et cetera? Can we do that without shifting the dynamic in, in difficult ways? Um, this is a set of questions that I haven't, I don't have a clear sense of, but I have, I do have a clear sense that that it's important for us to face, um, right away, you know, how can we be engaged with each other? How can our, our hybrid courses in our online courses not be isolating, um, for lots of reasons,
00;52;04;52 quality control is just one actually small one. Um, but, but that's a danger that I think we have to face is, is how not to be isolated, how to continue to be a community of learning, um, even if we're hybridized or online.
00;52;20;04 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: Yeah. Cause there's a, there's like a campus wide community, a student community in a, and a faculty community too. And that faculty community is so important to supporting, uh, those, those other communities. I want to come back to something Samantha said about, you know, opportunities, you know, we're, we've all had this, uh, this learning occasion forced on us about online instruction and different ways of teaching. And I've heard from some faculty about how it's creating new opportunities from them or things that they're gonna keep doing in the
00;52;51;23 future. Uh, when one opportunity a faculty member whose campus is two hours from a major report, um, tell me about how wonderful it was that when normally it was so hard to get some money to come as a guest, uh, to bring a different viewpoint to the classroom or via guest expert or public figure, um, getting somebody to zoom in for four 45 minutes or an hour, uh, was creating new opportunities, uh, for, you know, all kinds of
00;53;20;51 conversations across difference. But what, what are the opportunities from this moment And what are the, what are the things that we're learning about teaching and about student learning, um, that we're going to take, uh, you know, whenever it is, uh, that we return to, uh, some, some kind of new Normal,
00;53;44;51 [Alfred Montero]: Just very quickly, I think, and not, it's not too obvious the point, I think we're a lot more aware of the material differences among our students. There are some students that feel a sense of alienation because they are not part of the majority culture in a predominantly white institution. And the shift to online and hybrid has really accentuated that even more so we're, we're more aware of that. We're more aware of class differences, first generation students, and how we use
00;54;15;59 that awareness going forward to make our pedagogies more sensitive to those, to those differences, to create more equitable ways of accessing our course content. I think that is a very positive development, uh, coming out of all of this,
00;54;34;11 [Libby Roderick]: I would agree, I think flexibility in assignments and so forth has been part of creating inclusive learning environments for a long time, letting people demonstrate mastery in a whole range of ways, giving them opportunities to work in their community and then come back and report in the classroom, tying in what they already know to what we're already doing. We have more opportunities to do that as you, as you just mentioned, maybe another one is that, you know, we have, I think generally agreed that, um, sort of a flipped classroom has some real advantages where
00;55;06;49 people look at, you know, a lecture for a little while, but then when they're actually with the faculty member with all that expertise, they spend the time in actively applying, uh, what they learned in the lecture or the outside readings to real life problems. Um, I mean, as we go forward, we have a lot of problems. I mean, I think we're starting to realize, realize that the nation's, uh, not at its best, you know, peak state right now. So turn around and you find a problem, a pretty gnarly problem. And we really need to be training
00;55;35;59 students to take our expertise that we bring in a higher ed context and apply it to some very wicked problems. And so if we use that opportunity to, you know, give the information online, um, you know, in an asynchronous kind of way, and then spend our time with them really coaching them and helping them and mentoring them and having them lead as, uh, as was mentioned earlier, uh, we might be training a more robust set of leaders. I don't.
00;56;03;42 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: Yeah. And I think that goes back to one of the, The comments Charlie made earlier, but This design, you know, normally, uh, when, when is teaching over say 14 weeks Class meets every Tuesday and Thursday, you just have a list most of the 28 readings that you're going to do. And now, um, uh, we, the opportunity to be really intentional about thinking about what goes into in the synchronous face to face and what has to be face to face as much as we can. And w what is fruitfully discussed in, in a asynchronous discussion format? And I know,
00;56;38;32 uh, both Charlie and Samantha, you've really thought about that. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about that, that element of the syllabus design, that faculty are really engaged with that, you know, as we're about five weeks or six weeks out from the start of the semester, Charlie, what do you think with your syllabus?
00;56;59;35 [Charlotte C.S. Thomas]: Well, one thing we, I mean this just this hour that we've had together, we've had dozens of good ideas about what could go into syllabus. I do think being explicit in the syllabus is more important now than ever and incentivizing. Um, students, you know, we sometimes are frustrated that our students are our grade driven, but we know they are. And once you know that you can work with that knowledge. And so if you incentivize the kind of activities in your course that you think are going to be important to their learning, um, you're, you're running with the
00;57;30;24 river instead of, instead of against it. So building into the syllabus incentives for the kinds of activities that you think are most important, um, and doing that perhaps more explicitly than if you were teaching face to face, I think is important that the one other thing I would add is I really think that faculty members, teachers need to be very in touch with the power. They have to, um, put together either a completely unsustainable plan for their class in their syllabus, or to be kind to themselves and
00;58;02;37 their students. We're going into a semester where all of us are probably more stressed than usual, where our students are likely to be more stressed than usual and where we're being asked to do a lot of things that we haven't done before.
00;58;14;06 [Charlotte C.S. Thomas]: If, if we just tack on the new things to the syllabus but retain all of the things that we've all we've already done. We're, we're, it's not going to work out well, then bad things will happen. We're going to crash and burn. Uh, and so, uh, we need to build syllabus that acknowledged that if you're adding new things, those things need to be offset. Um, and if you're going to err in the direction, I would say err in the direction of caution and conservatism rather than ambition in, in your syllabus this semester.
00;58;45;26 [Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill]: Well, I think a call for kindness is a, is a perfect note on which for us to end. And so I do want to thank you for, uh, uh, Libby, Samantha, Charlie, and Al so much for sharing your expertise with us today and our, our audience for joining us today and your questions and comments and our sincere best wishes from the Bipartisan Policy Center for everyone who's on a college or university campus, uh, getting ready for what is sure to be a most challenging fall semester. So our, our very best.
00;59;20;04 Would like to ask you to please join us next Friday at noon Eastern for the second, and this webinar series Beyond the Classroom: Campus Life during COVID-19, we'll be talking about student life, registered student organizations and getting students ready to discuss issues of national importance as we get ready for the election. And we'd like you to ask you please, to subscribe to our BPC YouTube channel, and to get to know more about our work with the campus free
00;59;46;01 expression project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, by looking at our website bipartisanpolicy.org and subscribing to our newsletters. So want to say thanks very much to all and good day. Good weekend. Bye now. Thanks.