The link to the episode on the syllabus isn’t working, but here’s the correct link if anyone is interested in doing this particular optional, suggested “reading” this week. (I do recommend listening to the full episode!) Otherwise, my summary is below, and I believe the content of the episode itself makes for interesting discussion regardless.

Summary

This podcast episode is hosted by Alex Goldman and covers Yik Yak, an app that allows users to communicate with and see posts (called “yaks”) from other users within a 10-mile radius.¹ The episode also focuses specifically on Colgate University and a string of racist incidents—that took place on the app—

In the episode, the main subject that Goldman speaks with is Melissa Melendez, who was a senior at Colgate in January 2015 (when the episode aired). Ever since arriving on campus, Melendez knew she was a bit of a “novelty”—as the child of first-generation Puerto Rican parents, she had grown up poor and was attending Colgate on scholarship. As a private college on the East Coast, Colgate stands out as having a predominantly white student body; it has half as many black and Latino students as the average university.

Melendez often found herself needing to address stereotypes when other students asked her questions (“Have you ever been shot before?”, “How many baby daddies does your mom have?”) and sometimes couldn’t distinguish between whether students were genuinely curious or bigoted. Some instances, however, were clearer. In some of her classes, students would talk about welfare and bring up that students like her, who are on scholarship, are “not deserving” of being at Colgate. So, Melendez decided she wanted to do something about it—she found other students at Colgate who were in a similar situation as her, and she and this group of students ended up forming “The Association of Critical Collegians” (ACC).

On September 22, 2014, the ACC staged a sit-in at Colgate’s admissions building that lasted five days. During the sit-in, individual Colgate students would share emotional stories for about six to seven hours. The ACC had a specific list of 21 demands for Colgate administration, such as diversity training for the staff of the financial aid office, hiring more diverse faculty, and building a discussion of privilege and systemic power dynamics into the core curriculum.²

At first, the ACC’s sit-in seemed like a massive success: Goldman stated that there were some estimates that a quarter of the school was there. However, on Yik Yak, the sentiment was quite different—and especially disturbing. Students were posting about the sit-in, and in a way, on Yik Yak were protesting the very existence of it. Below are some of the more disturbing posts that Goldman quoted in the episode:

• “In honor of today, I will only hook up with a minority tonight.”
• “I love black people, my maid was always nice to me.”
• “White people won at life; Africa lost. Sorry we were so much better than you that we were literally able to enslave you to our will.”

After the sit-in, the ACC continued to organize politically on campus, and racist chatter on Yik Yak also continued. It particularly exploded on December 2, 2014, when the ACC coordinated a “die-in” on campus to express solidarity with the Ferguson protests. During the die-in, the ACC hung an American flag upside down and wrote “Black Lives Matter” on it, as well as the names of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

Following the die-in, the racist sentiment on Yik Yak targeted one particular member of the ACC: Melissa Melendez. This was, of course, terrifying for her and the ACC because they were minority students on a predominantly white campus protesting the targeting and murder of minorities, and now they were the ones who were being targeted anonymously. They started traveling groups and felt unsafe, making it difficult to focus on their schoolwork.

That weekend, Melendez and the ACC had a meeting with Colgate’s dean. To address their concerns, the dean presented the ACC with these options:

• The students could stay at her home, or she could stay at the house the ACC members were staying at.
• Campus safety could check up on the students.
• The students could leave and finish the semester off-campus.

Although the college claimed they took the students’ concerns as seriously as possible, Melendez felt the college’s response was inadequate. She was particularly insulted by the college’s option of having the students leave, because she thought that meant someone at the college had brought up that they wanted the ACC gone, and the college was simply obliging. Still, while the school didn’t give Goldman a specific number, he heard from multiple sources that over a dozen students ended up leaving Colgate—after the option was made available—that semester. Melendez herself and some other members of the ACC ended up moving to a different town.

The students’ departures had a significant impact on faculty. Some chose to fight back—specifically on Yik Yak. Associate Professor of Biology Jeff Holm came up with something called the “Yik Yak Takeback,” which was essentially faculty attacking the bigotry by posting on Yik Yak with “relentless utterly mundane cheeriness and civility.” The only requirement Holm had for faculty participating in the “takeback” was for them to sign their names on their posts. (That would send the message: “We’re here, and we see you.” Another biology professor, Eddie Watkins, talked about one of his Yik Yak posts that received a significant amount of “upvotes” (237), which was just him congratulating a student for getting into medical school.

This might’ve seemed like a silly way to counteract racism, but it had a rather positive effect on students’ spirits and morale. Melendez was especially excited when reflecting on the “takeback”:

“I love it! I love it. I thought it was so cute. ‘Cause I knew why they were doing it. like, they were making a statement. and I liked how a lot of them sign their names. I thought that was powerful.”

Of course, while it helped, the simple “Yik Yak Takeback” didn’t make the problem go away. Goldman himself traveled to Colgate on the last day of the semester and tried out Yik Yak. He saw how some users were posting about how they hoped the ACC would dissolve and how happy they were that the ACC was driven off campus.

Notes

1. Prior to listening to this episode, I’ve vaguely heard of Yik Yak before but didn’t know much about the app. Obviously, the idea of communicating “anonymously” on the internet isn’t new, as we constantly see on discussion boards and social media platforms. What I found particularly notable about Yik Yak, however, is the ability for users to communicate with people within a 10-mile radius. That’s the specific characteristic that makes Yik Yak unique, in my view, and probably why it’d be so popular for very tight-knit communities like students on college campuses.

2. These were only 3 of the 21 demands that Goldman described in the episode. Goldman also doesn’t expand or dwell on it for too long in his episode, but Colgate administration actually published a response to the ACC’s 21 demands on Colgate’s website. The administration addresses the demands, point-by-point, in this response, so you’re also able to see each individual demand there.

Discussion Questions

1. As instructors teaching classes right now, how would you handle racist incidents and remarks that you see and hear happening in your own classroom?
2. In the time of coronavirus, racist sentiment is now especially aimed at East Asian Americans—and some racist incidents have already occurred on college campuses in the United States. What can college faculty and administration be doing to support East Asian American students during this time?
3. Was the dean’s response to the ACC students’ concerns adequate, and why or why not? If not, what more could she have done? How should universities respond when racist incidents occur on campus?
4. Read through Colgate administration’s response to the ACC’s 21 demands, (which actually notes the status of meeting each demand as “complete”). Are the ACC’s demands a good model for other colleges to establish a more diverse and inclusive community on campus, and should other colleges also establish plans to meet the same or similar demands?
5. Through the “Yik Yak Takeback,” Colgate faculty had some (but limited) success at countering the bigotry that persisted on Yik Yak. What else could they have paired with their “positive approach” to be more successful?
6. In the episode, Goldman talks about how Colgate contacted both the local and state police and asked the Madison district attorney’s office to determine whether a grand jury subpoena can be used to force Yik Yak to disclose information about some of its worst posts. Independent of the police investigation, the school and its lawyers sent separate requests for identifying information to Yik Yak, but both the request to the district attorney and Yik Yak were denied. Should Yik Yak and other platforms be obligated to disclose this information when these kinds of incidents arise, and where do we draw the line for how these platforms (and the users on them) are protected under the First Amendment?
7. In the episode, Goldman briefly mentions how some high schools have worked with Yik Yak to establish “geofences,” where the app just won’t function within a certain radius of the school. However, Yik Yak doesn’t honor these requests from colleges. Some colleges have even tried banning Yik Yak, in terms of banning usage of the app under the college’s network, but students could then simply switch to their wireless provider and continue to use the app. Is limiting usage of the app—assuming there’s a more successful approach that can ban usage of the app entirely for college students in particular—an actual solution for colleges, and why or why not? I’m also interested to hear your thoughts on whether this “more successful approach” could raise especially alarming concerns for surveillance of students on college campuses.

https://voicethread.com/share/14060222/

For this week’s readings and discussion, I selected to explore “Learning Online” in An Urgency of Teachers: The Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy by Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel, and “Takedown of Online Education” in Inside Higher Ed by Paul Fain. Both works seem particularly resonant as educators across the world work to navigate this unprecedented moment.

Fain’s article follows the debate surrounding a 2019 report that attempts to document the failures of online education. Written by Spiros Protopsaltis of George Mason University and Sandy Baum of Skidmore College, the report states that “online education has failed to reduce costs and improve outcomes for students.” Fain’s article highlights five major takeaways from the Protopsaltis/Baum report including the finding that “students in online education, particularly underprepared and disadvantaged students, underperform and on average experience poor outcomes.” Questioning the findings of the report is Fiona Hollands of Columbia University’s Teachers College who argues that the report uses old data and is biased against online education. The article concludes by stating that more research is needed to determine best practices and next steps for online learning. Experientially, I would say that that research is being done right now by educators everywhere.

Stommel and Morris, on the other hand, present a more critical view of online teaching. Across several essays, the authors recognize that online learning is here for the long-haul but administrators and educators need to be more rigorous in their analysis and design of online learning and its pedagogical practices. Of particular note for this current moment is Stommel’s statement regarding live student-teacher interaction, “I’ve argued that ‘all learning is necessarily hybrid.’ The best online learning should engage us in an immediate and physical way. Learning shouldn’t happen entirely at a desk (italics mine). The best online courses — the best courses of all types — ask students to do work in the world (outside their houses and/or outside the online course portal).” This statement in particular struck me, as this “best practice” feels essentially impossible at this moment so how should educators proceed?

I highlight these points as an entry point for a conversation regarding online learning. I have always been skeptical of online education, in part because I teach an artform rooted in liveness, an educational component that I personally believe is central to effective pedagogy. These last two weeks have taught me a great deal about online learning, more than I wanted to know and under frightening circumstances. I have many thoughts regarding my experience teaching online thus far, but I will save those for another time. Instead, as you hopefully comment below, please share some of your experiences of the past two to three weeks. Although this moment is intensely challenging in countless ways, I am consistently inspired, to the point of tears, by what educators and students are doing across the world to meet the demands of this moment. So, with that in mind:

• Is there an event, assignment, interaction with students/teachers during the last two weeks that you feel demonstrates the validity or effectiveness of online education?
• How are students responding to this moment? How is access to technology, as discussed earlier this semester, affecting the learning environment? How has peer-education been affected?
• If you are teaching this semester, what has this process of conversion to distance-learning taught you about your own teaching? What discoveries have you made about yourself as an educator and how do you see them informing your pedagogical practice moving forward?
• Lastly, what challenges are arising as we all adjust to online learning? Since we cannot always adhere to Stommel’s advise to engage students outside of the online portal, where are the challenges associated with such a limitation emerging in your teaching and/or learning?

https://voicethread.com/share/14033587/

In their article, Wineburg and McGrew (2017) report on differences between the fact-checking practices of expert fact-checkers and college professors and students. When verifying information, expert fact-checkers took their bearings (i.e., contextualized the information) using a practice called “lateral reading” in which they quickly left the original content to check claims and learn more about the source of the information. This includes visiting sites like Wikipedia. In contrast, college professors and students read vertically, meaning that they inspected the original content for clues about its credibility, rather than leaving the content. Wineburg and McGrew argue that lateral reading is a heuristic that we should be teaching students to help them quickly and effectively assess the quality of online information. But, they point out: “lateral reading doesn’t take place in a vacuum. It requires knowledge of sources, knowledge of how the Internet and searches are structured, and knowledge of strategies to make searching and navigating effective.”

Given students’ existing reliance on the Internet for information and the transition to online courses, consider the following questions:

1. What have you observed about how your students find and evaluating online information? What about your own practices? How often do you read laterally and under what circumstances?
2. Since so many of us rely on Google and Google Scholar, to what extent are you and your students aware of how Google and Google Scholar structure their search results? Do you practice “click restraint” (i.e., not clicking on the first or second search result)?
3. Whose responsibility is it to teach students how to assess the quality of the online information? Should this a be a skill taught as part of general education courses? What might be some challenges to integrating this instruction?
4. The article (and a lot of fact-checking research) are concerned about students as consumers of online information – what are the implications for students as producers of online content?

The ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (2015) identifies six frames (i.e., concepts) and associated knowledge practices (i.e., information literate students should be able to…) and dispositions (i.e., attitudes) that students need in order to participate online as both information consumers and producers.

-Authority Is Constructed and Contextual
-Information Creation as a Process
-Information Has Value
-Research as Inquiry
-Scholarship as Conversation
-Searching as Strategic Exploration

The authors also provide guidance for faculty on how to help students understand these concepts and develop knowledge practice and dispositions. Strategies include developing exercises, activities, and assignments that students can complete to both assess and foster their competence in each of the six frames.

Consider the questions below that the authors provide for instructors to help guide them in integrating information literacy instruction into their courses. Are any of these questions more pressing or more challenging now that instruction is taking place online? Should any of these questions be rephrased or edited to be better suited for distance learning?

— What are the specialized information skills in your discipline that students should develop, such as using primary sources (history) or accessing and managing large data sets (science)?

— What information and research assignments can students do outside of class to arrive prepared to apply concepts and conduct collaborative projects?

— What kinds of workshops and other services should be available for students involved in multimedia design and production?

— In your program, how do students interact with, evaluate, produce, and share information in various formats and modes?

— How might you and a librarian design learning experiences and assignments that will encourage students to assess their own attitudes, strengths/weaknesses, and knowledge gaps related to information?

https://voicethread.com/share/13999906/