Opening Up Critical Conversations

By: Carrie Diaz Eaton, Associate Professor of Digital and Computational Studies, Bates College, @mathprofcarrie

In a previous post, I asked where conversations about teaching, inclusion, and data science are occurring. Are they at conferences?  In subgroups? Now I want to ask a follow-up question: Who can participate in these conversations?

I’ve been a fan of opening conversations digitally. Conferences are places of rich idea exchange, but only for those with the means to attend. Of the many barriers to full participation, I personally encountered these challenges: nursing children, being a full-time caregiver, lack of travel funds, lack of professional society membership funds, feeling that I was not “mathy enough” to belong at a particular conference, large teaching loads that prevented travel, and the real kicker: interdisciplinary conversations were happening in so many different disciplinary venues that I couldn’t possibly attend them all.  

In the midst of these challenges, Twitter became a huge player in overcoming many of these issues.  It broke down the walls of professional isolation at a small college when I was the only PhD in mathematics. The Open Conference movement helped me virtually attend conferences, hear or read highlighted work, and network with individuals. I chronicle one recent experience in my post about Data for Black Lives.

One benefit of moving to a digital and computational studies department is that I can teach critical digital studies. In my winter term last year, I taught a course called “Community Organizing for a Digital World.” We examined the design of virtual spaces for collaboration, studied the history of hashtag activism, learned about academic Twitter, and organized the social media and open conference presence for #EDSIN2019. Our class confronted a variety of technical accessibility issues such as how to post pictures that can be “read” for screen readers and sociopolitical issues such as understanding why and how native communities and communities color in the US have been historically marginalized in STEM Education.

While I used to think about open conversation as part of a networked counterpublic for conversations STEM education, a new urgency has arisen due to COVID-19.  To what extent can we leverage our digital spaces to give access to new participants? To what extent will these digital experiences go beyond just giving access and give support, implement universal design for participants, and build a foundation for future open conversation beyond the current crisis?

I have to thank my amazing grant teams for thinking about leveraging digital spaces to create new opportunities for participation. QUBES has been recognizing these issues and has been intentionally working for years on virtual professional development, hosting virtual and hybrid conferences, including poster sessions. More importantly, we challenge ourselves to think about more than just technological solutions by centering on community needs. Our leadership and staff from BioQUEST are committed to integrate Universal Design for Learning into all professional development as well as into our site redesign. Partnerships with INCLUDES grants (e.g. EDSIN) and the Hewlett Foundation (e.g. SCORE) remind us to center the conversations of diversity and inclusion/equity and justice in conversations about data science and open education, respectively. 

As we rely more on the digital world, I challenge you to reconceptualize that world as more than a collection of temporary technological bandages and to develop a vision that includes investing in ourselves and our community.