EP 13 - With Dr. Enilda Romero-Hall - Why we love and hate discussion boards, feminist pedagogy online, humanizing large classes, and more!

In this episode, John and Jason talk with Dr. Enilda Romero-Hall about applying feminist pedagogies to online classes, humanizing large online classes, ungrading, and why we love and hate discussion boards. 

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Connect with Dr. Romero-Hall:

• Website: https://www.enildaromero.net/ 
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eromerohall/ 
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/eromerohall 

• Susan Blum on Ungrading 
• Flip - Free Video Discussion from Microsoft

Dr. Enilda Romero-Hall, is an award-winning scholar, Associate Professor, and Coordinator of the Learning, Design, and Technology Ph.D. program at The University of Tennessee Knoxville. Dr. Remero-Hall also serves as the Program Chair for the AERA SIG Instructional Technology and Advising Editor to the Feminist Pedagogy for Online Teaching digital guide. In my research, I am interested in the design and development of interactive multimedia, faculty and learners’ digital literacy, and networked learning in online social communities. Other research areas include innovative research methodologies; culture, technology, and education; and feminist pedagogies.

Transcript

(Please note - we rely on computer-generated transcriptions. If quoting, please check the original recording for accuracy) 

[00:00:00] Enilda Romera-Hall: I'm curious to know what the listeners are going to say, what the comments are going to be. Did we say anything too controversial? I think that we need to have more conversations about online learning because there is a lot happening in this space. And yeah, it just keeps changing and evolving and the more conversations we have, the more we can brainstorm and think of ideas to put on the world.

Intro

[00:00:26] John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason Johnston.

[00:00:28] Jason Johnston: Hey, John. Hey everyone. And this is Online Learning in the second half, the Online Learning podcast.

[00:00:34] John Nash: Yeah. We're doing this podcast to let you in on a conversation that we've been having for the last two years about online education. Look, online learning has had its chance to be great, and a lot of it is, but a lot of it isn't.

So how are we gonna get to the next stage?

[00:00:50] Jason Johnston: That is a great question. How about we do a podcast and talk about it?

[00:00:55] John Nash: Yes, that's perfect. What do you want to talk about today?

[00:00:58] Jason Johnston: Today, it's not just what, but it's what with whom. Nice. Today really excited to have Dr. Enilda Romero Hall with us to talk with us.

Welcome Enilda.

[00:01:10] Enilda Romera-Hall: Hi. Thank you for having me here today. I appreciate it.

[00:01:14] Jason Johnston: Yeah. Dr. Romero Hall is a colleague here at the University of Tennessee. She's an associate professor in learning design and technology program. And she also I think one of the things that connected us, obviously the whole instructional design thing.

So right away when Enilda came, we also started around the same time. So it was easy to, easy to make friends when you don't, when you don't know anybody. But also the kind of research that Enilda does is significant and aspects of the things that we've been talking about John, but also from some different perspectives as well that we don't have.

And so I just really appreciate Enilda, you taking the time to talk with us

[00:01:58] Enilda Romera-Hall: today. Yeah, it's great to be here. I love talking about online learning. It's one of my areas of interest. And I was actually talking to a colleague who was visiting University of Tennessee Knoxville recently, and he was asking me, how's it going?

Have you met people here? Have you met any collaborators? And I was telling him that I was coming into my first year and I was really wanting to keep a low profile. And I said, then I started telling people that I was doing research on online learning and that was just impossible. Yes. But it's been great.

I've connected with the online learning group and different departments within the university, I think there is quite a bit of interest on online education and hybrid education, and I think that is something that attracted me to university of Tennessee Knoxville on the first place.

Yeah, so it's be, it's been

[00:02:57] Jason Johnston: great. Yeah.

And for our listeners that don't follow Dr. Romera Hall on social media low profile this year means only only five presentations internationally as well as, only I don't know, another five publications. And so yeah. Really. Anyways, yeah, that's good.

Why don't you tell us just a little bit about yourself and maybe your background and how you got to this place first. And then we'll get into some of your areas of interest in, research and how they apply to online learning.

[00:03:27] Enilda Romera-Hall: Yeah. Yeah, so I started to become interested in e-learning when I was in my master's program.

My master's program was also fully online. But I just happened to be at the location where my school or my institution was located, which was Emporia, Kansas which is a very small town in Kansas. And and that experience of being an online student but also being physically in the location of my institution was just very eye opening.

Because I had a connection to the institution, but I did not know any of my classmates. So there was a lot of interest in getting to know my classmates and making online learning more community oriented. And then I went on to do my doctoral degree at Old Dominion University. And the classroom environment that we had was a high flex learning environment.

So I was there with maybe 10 to 15 classmates, but many of my other classmates were literally all over the world. Italy, Egypt, Morocco, Alaska, so everywhere else. So again, I had another educational experience that was in an online learning format. And when you have those experiences and you are also studying instructional design and technology it just really makes you curious on ways where you can shape online learning and how to improve it.

So it was just a combination of my experiences as a learner and then guiding my research interest and then going into a faculty position and looking at my research agenda, it just it was just like a perfect match. So it's just, again, the connection of already having that experience as a learner, being a faculty member and teaching in those formats, and then doing research.

And in the process of doing that, I've also learned so much from so many different people. Learning about how to teach in an online learning format using a learning management system because that's what's required by your institution. What are birth practices for a learner center approach but also keeping in mind how to humanize the online learning experience.

I'm thinking through different frameworks. For example, I have connected and implemented so much of feminist pedagogy in online learning experiences. To again, keep in mind the learner and how to we make this experiences more social, more connected, more human, so I would say that has been like my journey into this research endeavor.

Yeah.

[00:06:40] John Nash: That's wonderful. as you think about humanizing online education going forward, what sort of aspirations do you have for the future of e-learning?

[00:06:52] Enilda Romera-Hall: Oh my God, there's so much. In a very basic sense I feel that the initial work has to be done with faculty. I think professional development is key to the very basic essence of humanizing online learning because we are still having conversations about the value of online learning.

And I think that comes with professional development and educating faculty members and teaching them this is what you can do. It, It is not easy. Um, I think that online learning presents lots of I, I don't wanna say challenges, but yeah, teaching challenges because in order to do it effectively, you have to invest and do the work.

But I think at the very basic core is yeah, investing in professional development and making sure that faculty are on board and know how to humanize online

learning.

[00:08:07] John Nash: When you think about faculty knowing how to humanize online learning, then it gets a little operational, doesn't it? But could you say a little bit about the way feminist pedagogical tenets might support that learning journey for faculty?

[00:08:21] Enilda Romera-Hall: Yeah, sure. There are no absolute set of tenets that one can follow. But I think at the very core feminist pedagogy focuses on giving the learner agency. I think that that is something that when we think of traditional learning experiences they tend to be very instructor focused.

So feminist pedagogy is about giving the learner agency including learners as part of co-creators of the learning experience. And that could be a multitude of different things. It could be from the very first day looking at the syllabus together, or it could be let's challenge the traditional format of already figuring out what we're gonna teach this semester and let's think about that experience together.

It could also mean thinking of looking at the type of assessments that we're gonna have for the class and including the learner as part of that experience. And it also considers power and authority, so it tries to