My Thank You for Your Generosity List

I am in the process of writing my annual faculty report and keep thinking over and over that the things I value, that I learned from most and am proudest of are things I don’t know how to write about for a traditional academic audience.

But what the heck, I can write about it here! (I am focusing on just the online stuff here – there is lots more to be thankful for f2f of course, and lots more I can actually include in my annual faculty report).

Virtually Connecting
This one might be the only one I would place as #1 because it means so much to me and I am first grateful to Rebecca for the idea of piloting it at et4buddy, but also to everyone who encouraged and participated in that first run of it when we didn’t know what the heck we were doing. And then to people who kept offering to do onsite buddy before we even knew what the heck we were doing (big shout outs to Whitney, Andrea, Mia, and the Hammershaimb sisters). And to all the folks who work REALLY hard to make this work: people like Autumm and Helen and Wendy who do SO MUCH behind the scenes y’all have no idea. And all our virtual buddies who do last minute stints and save us, like AK (and all the ppl i mentioned already). And a special special shout out to Alan Levine who broke all our stereotypes and expectations about buddies. We weren’t sure a famous/star person in the field could be a buddy, that a man could be a good virtual buddy or onsite buddy and he has done ALL of that and helped a lot with the website and all kinds of back channel work, too!
And thanks to all the people who have joined us virtually and onsite. And the conferences that welcomed us with open arms after #et4online. Particularly #DigPed (our first biggie), #altc (our first one where we were asked to blog on the conf’s blog, thanks Martin Hawksey), #dlrn15 (first conference to offer us space on their Website AND on the premises, and possibly where # of onsite guests was highest EVER) and #OpenEd15 (Chris Lalonde was just super in every way possible and he believed in this even though he had never been on one of these – which is a huge deal because most other conf organizers had a closer view of us before welcoming us in, or were at least friends of ours beforehand).

I also need to recognize how virtually connecting gave me confidence to do more conference virtual presentations than I thought I ever would.

Hybrid Pedagogy
So I think this might be a fixture every year but there is a LOT to be thankful for at HP this year. I am still grateful that this journal exists and that I can read it and write for it.

I am particularly grateful for the opportunity to write a column there for a year. The process of thinking of what to highlight each month and the patient and supportive editing by Adam then Sean then Chris was incredible. I was pretty visible before this column but I think it has definitely made me both more visible and a better writer. It, paradoxically, encouraged me to find alternative writing spaces sometimes because
A. Sometimes you need to NOT preach to your choir (and so my article on Open Peer Review was a perfect example of that – publishing it in a traditional journal made a statement and I got lucky to have it made open access)
B. Sometimes you need to communicate something to a wider audience of a different kind…and Prof Hacker is now my space for that and I am thankful for it (thanks Jason and George for the opportunity and Ana and Lee for ur advice in the early days of that).

We will discontinue the column but I am still deep into Hybrid Ped…deeper than ever I guess. I am thankful for the opportunity to co-facilitate #moocmooc last year and Oh My God I  had never imagined I would one day write something with Jesse Stommel! I am grateful to be part of a wonderful team of editors (Sean did an amazing job of #hpj101 which is a brilliant way of interviewing people while being pedagogical about it and building community; and Chris was amazing with #hpj102 onboarding the editors).

And then of course they trusted me with #DigiWriMo for which I am also grateful. I am so fortunate to have had the wonderful minds and energies of Kevin and Sarah co-facilitating and all the guest contributors and participants who made it what it was.

I am honestly thankful to Jesse, Sean and Chris for a lot more than I could write about publicly. But let’s just say they have been great friends and mentors in ways people in my f2f can’t always be.

Collaborations I am Grateful For
I am grateful for the opportunity to co-host ConnectedLearning.tv in July – thanks for inviting me and thanks Shyam for being my co-host.

I am grateful for the opportunity to work on critical approaches to faculty development and that we have found others who are continuing these convos with us via #FacDevChat with Lee Skallerup Bessette and me

I am grateful that we #rhizo14 managed to publish an article on the Untext 🙂 and that I managed to publish a different collaborative autoethnography about cMOOCs.

I want to refer to some of my favorite blogposts/articles I read this year but I will keep those for a different post.

I did want to say I was particularly thankful for the response some of my posts have had. Note I am focusing on response.

I had been hesitant to write about Islam/hijab but Jesse nudged/asked and it was a hit.

I am thankful that people took the Unbearable Whiteness of #EdTech positively as I was working towards a way of getting heard in my anger without causing unnecessary offense

I am thankful for the responses to my #dlrn15 posts esp the Elites of Marginals one. Made me feel like I was right there in the middle of those conversations I wish I had been at in person.

I am thankful for the positive response
Sad Look at Human Empathy got. I wasn’t sure i had anything of value to contribute to that conversation. I wrote it out of frustration.

I am generally grateful for having regular space on Prof Hacker, and particularly the responses I got to my posts on copyright and open textbooks.
And I am still yearning for praxis… Grateful that the very personal post on this has resonated with people.

I am looking forward to more intersections between my f2f and online life in the coming year inshallah…and I am already grateful in anticipation.