I wanted to begin with a note of gratitude. I am very grateful for the opportunity to discuss the future of the program, and I hope they know we really appreciate their time to listen to us. It is never easy to hear constructive feedback about a program that takes so much collaborative work to put together, but I hope they know we want to help make this program the best it can be for future students!
I thought the mad tea activity was fun, but I do wonder how accessible it is, personally, I could not hear well and most people were also having a hard time hearing each other speak.
I think online learning is amazing. I know people harp on zoom but the atmosphere of online learning has opened up the world of education to people who are disabled and chronically ill and have them be able to participate equally and equitably. I certainly learned that most people do not consider those people, and the desire to return to in-person learning is incredibly disheartening because we made steps forward in regards to accessibility but we then took 2 steps back after 3 steps forward. In fact, I had an in-person class from January- April 2021 and if someone was sick and could not be there by Uvics own rules, the professor would not give the option to record the lecture or have them zoom in, which I found frustrating and disheartening. We proved we can be accessible for everyone and then immediately ditched it as soon as possible. As someone with hearing loss, I have a horrible time hearing people wearing masks, it was amazing to be able to turn the volume up when I needed to and enabled me to participate in class, which there are definitely situations now that I cant fully participate in because I can’t hear who is speaking.
This shift showed me that ableism does exist today, even in a pandemic. Universities and schools were more interested in bringing students back to in-person education before the consideration of safety. Though, I do not blame individual institutions, but rather the systems they are built on. In-person education is great and you cant replicate the in-person experience, but also educators need to consider that some folks cant always experience in-person education and the glorification of in-person education above all else is exclusionary in nature. If the system isn’t designed to have people connect online, they won’t.
Giving students an option to participate can be a great idea, though it will not work in most of my classes when I am a teacher, music is a team activity normally and zoom and music do not collaborate together. But I support that it should be an option for students to be able to participate if they are unable to be in class. In fact, I had a classmate last year who showed up to class on zoom from the dentist, and the professor was able to teach us and be a vice principal, and she taught us from her car when her school lost power! One more story, my professor had to go to Vienna and Hungary to conduct orchestras this past school year, and we were able to have classes and he taught us while he was there, and he made a video for us showing us different locations we had talked about in class. When he was flying home, we were supposed to write a midterm and we were waiting for marks from him because he said if he didn’t mark these assignments by a certain day we didn’t have to write the test that next day, and then we were trying to contact him, and we got admin involved, and we had the midterm delayed because no one could find him. Well, anyway that’s the story of how we lost our professor in online learning.
It is nice to be on reading break officially, and it’s hard to believe we are only a few weeks away from being done one semester!