Mitten Open Education

Mitten
Open Education
Let’s talk about science, numbers,

and how silly we all are
I like to begin a presentation with a kind of free association about place. And for Michigan, my free association begins…

https://spinoﬀmagazine.com/handspun-mittens-mitten-state/

At Eastern market. It was the first farmer’s market I had been to where there were more people of colour than there were white folks with $1000 strollers and to-go-
artisinal coffee cups in their hands.

It was there that I saw kids from Detroit selling tomatoes and cucumbers from the gardens they tended on empty city lots. I met Yemini farmers (I didn’t know EASTERN
market was that far east!). I bought mushrooms from an infamous compost pile in Leamington, Ontario (which, then, felt VERY exotic), and I learned that the best pickles
come from Detroit, period.

I loved the cultures mixing. I loved that people were there to buy healthy food from each other — to feed their families amongst devastating economic conditions with the
food they were growing themselves.

Plenty of stories in publications have celebrated the innovation and the drive to take care of community that we see in some of the hardest hit places in America. Detroit’s
Eastern Market is no exception — I felt as though I could FEEL the community pride there. The sense of taking care of our own when the government failed us…

https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2018/11/02/PDTN/63e9e5e4-6de7-4e0a-aa27-618210e36ecf-2018-1027-mo-Market324.JPG?
width=534&height=401&fit=bounds&auto=webp

Detroit Institute of Arts
That kind of resilience and resistance, to me, is captured in breathtaking form in the Diego Rivera murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Rivera, a revolutionary Mexican
artist, was perhaps the perfect person to create these pieces. When I walked in to see these murals, they bombarded me with ﬂoor to ceiling depictions of the means of
production; of the impact and the costs of industrialization.

This is motor city; we’re talking about modern advances (the V8 engine, vaccinations, technology, medicine); and these frescos were done during the great depression,

So we have the modern juxtaposed with a multi-coloured working class, some of whom are faceless; their hands reaching up from rubble. And they remind us that there
were strikes and workers shot in the Ford Motor Factory in Deerborn. Light pours into an indoor courtyard from above and from the open doors on either end that extend
into the rest of the DIA. Light, hope, resilience, the future.

At the time these pieces were completed, in the 30s, there was controversy — it was the depression, times were tough. And why was a Mexican artist doing this work in
a city so quintessentially American? Why not an American artist — making America Great Again? It was called foolishly vulgar and unAmerican. The upper classes didn’t
like the working classes invading their museum. See, museums were for a particular KIND of person — just like Farmer’s Markets. It’s uncomfortable when they mix;
some felt that life was so much more “civilized” when they were kept separate.

In the 1950s the museum put a disclaimer on the mural calling Rivera’s politics detestable. Think of that the next time you’re in a museum reading the little note next to
the piece. Who wrote it, what did they include? What did they omit? Why?

The Diego Rivera mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts

- The Detroit News

Mixing indeed. Working TOGETHER. UNITED. This was threatening then. Just as it is now.

https://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/amarsesh/34794083222

And the resistance carries on…

As of the end of 2017 24% of the schools in the district in Detroit had an art class; 27% had a music class. Only 18% had both.

For many years (in the order of decades) the DIA has been the arts education for kids in Detroit.

These are the adults, children and grandchildren of the working class from Motor City — so many of them have no music or arts education. They do, however, have trips
to the DIA — and there they see the story of their families, working to build an industrialized world — and suﬀering the byproducts of that…

And the staﬀ there are doing extraordinary things with very little. Instead of trying to do what other, better funded museums were doing (like creating digital catalogues,
digital archives, iPad tours), the DIA was being innovative and using basic tools (like pencils and paper) to engage with the kids walking through. They were resilient in the
face of the threat made a number of years back to sell the art to lift the city out of bankruptcy. Imagine the Diego Rivera murals being sold… the economics, the ethics,
the impact… the irony.

A museum employee speaks to children at the DIA

https://www.freep.com/story/news/2017/11/30/arts-music-restoring-detroit-schools/853757001/

And what about the economics, the ethics, the impact… of water. Who gets clean water and why?

What is the history that leads to dirty water in Flint — we know it and it is a story of people in power drawing an ethical line in the sand determining the haves and the
have nots.

If Flint were Gross Point, would there still be water issues? Who decides?

https://www.google.com/imgres?
imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.graytvinc.com%2Fimages%2F810*454%2FFlint%2Bwater%2B5%2Byears%2B1.JPG&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.abc12.com
%2Fcontent%2Fnews%2F5-years-later-Flint-residents-remember-and-demand-action-for-water-crisis-509061431.html&docid=gY_L_eTaXQ3ypM&tbnid=yd-
dFh4ZJaVudM%3A&vet=12ahUKEwjDlajxyYrlAhVOu54KHT9kBWo4yAEQMygbMBt6BAgBEB0..i&w=810&h=454&client=ﬁrefox-b-
d&bih=750&biw=1359&q=ﬂint%20water&ved=2ahUKEwjDlajxyYrlAhVOu54KHT9kBWo4yAEQMygbMBt6BAgBEB0&iact=mrc&uact=8#h=454&imgdii=hL99_wrNtFtG1M:&
vet=12ahUKEwjDlajxyYrlAhVOu54KHT9kBWo4yAEQMygbMBt6BAgBEB0..i&w=810

You see, as MLK tells us

Lack of physical violence does not = peace

Lack of verbal disagreement does not = peace

Order does not = peace

Following the ‘rule of law’ does not = peace

‘True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.’

And in water, in art, in food in Michigan, do we see Justice?

I am grateful to be here on this Anishinabewaki land with you all today. To challenge our assumptions, to tickle our brains, to open our minds (just a little bit)…

Your 2 Things
I ask you do the following: Please remember 2 things — that way, when it’s all over, I can ask you what your 2 things are and you can tell me what they are and what they
mean to you.

We all like certainty, neatness, completion, absolute, fixed, inflexible.

In the quest to be fair, efficient, to scale and to achieve measurable outcomes, we are doing damage.

But why do we do this? Let’s explore some reasons…

sorting, organization, symmetry, + other delicious mind delights
human tendencies
We all would sort diﬀerently:

colour

size

shape

balance

age

smell

texture

feel

And we feel a completeness and satisfaction with the way we choose to “slice” the world. And we feel delight and buy more things when the way people present them to
us delights us. and sometimes we feel compelled to ﬁx a thing - to put the puzzle piece where it ‘should be’ or to yell at our spouse who doesn’t put the knives where
they ‘should be’ — We are all guilty of this!

eggs in cups sorted by colour

Tom Binh bag contents presented in neat, orderly fashion and then photographed

puzzle with one piece out of place

a beautiful bird with wings spread showing symmetry

spice cabinet neatly arranged

utensil drawer in kitchen with things in exact places

And we come by this tendency perhaps biologically and also culturally… We have inherited the grid from early Metaphysics. We order and sort things.

These are our cities; built on ever-so-slight variations on a grid theme:

If you follow the grid back, you see its focus on a point, characterizing the late medieval Christian world… “the point when it all starts — creation”

Then we have the Renaissance and the Cartesian grid — a move from sacred to secular — that grid embodies more of a field where points or axes are marked by
quantitative value. The scatterplot!

This grid, the field of points, was used in global exploration and discovery. It makes neat little boxes. Those boxes demarcate specific spaces, locations. Take a look at
the states in the upper midwest — they were parcelled out in squares — the map tells that history. The highways (either E-W or N-S, but rarely diagonal). Just try driving
from Saginaw to Kalamazoo!

And then with Descartes the grid made an important leap:

From not only the neat little boxes of locations, but also to problem solving and decision-making in later twentieth-century design.

The grid comes to represent not only the structural laws and principles behind physical appearance, but the process of rational thinking and decision-making itself.

This can be seen, manifest, in the great French Geometric Gardens — literally the application of the Cartesian grid to the exterior landscape. And intellectually manifest in
our fondness and arguable over-reliance on data (that is all around us today).

Stop for a moment and consider all the grids in your life — all the grids all around you that structure your life. What impact do they have on you? On your actions? On

your decisions? On the haves and the have nots?

What if instead it was something in-the-middle? Something between? What if the edges were looser, the rules more ﬂexible, the sorting less exact and more messy??

https://www-jstor-org.ocadu.idm.oclc.org/stable/pdf/1511481.pdf?
ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_SYC-4653%2Fcontrol&refreqid=search%3A479adf56d2a7e6e16ecb0cc35ab5b0a3s

Notice the variations on a grid theme

By Isomorphism3000 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23516392

<Data>
And this applies not only to the sorting we do with what we collect, but it permeates earlier in that process — in what we decide is worth measuring at all. What do we
measure now? Well, the measurable of course!

We measure those things that are easily measured… and then we use the “answers” — the results of that measurement to make our disembodied data-driven
decisions…

We’re measuring admissions; we’re measuring retention; we’re measuring graduation; we’re measuring the cost for the year; we’re measuring regurgitation of
information… and we feel comfy because we KNOW (or we think we know) if we make our scope so small, that we are getting TRUE measures.

If it’s hard to measure we often ignore it; because without measures, without data we can’t make claims about it.

Data is not a mountain
stream
We’re ok with this false conﬁdence and this blurry feeling of completion.

We treat data as if it is a pure form of certainty. It is science — it is true — it is exact — it is untainted… We give numbers a primacy — treat them like a pure, objective
truth. Numbers themselves aren’t truth — especially when the numbers concern people and all their uniquenesses.

But we know that isn’t true. Microbes, acid rain, pollution, are in that mountain stream. And our data is littered too — with bias, with inaccuracies, with willful ignorance,
with poor analysis…

You don’t have to look too far nowadays to read about the dangers of data collected without ethics or even deep introspection. Have a look at AI and Machine
Learning… When the systems fail, how often will we hear… “They just need more data!” — And why are we so forgiving of these systems?

https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=8038&picture=mountain-stream-2

Take a look at what more than 800 scientists have done — they have called for an end to statistical significance. They show that 51% of the time it is interpreted
incorrectly.

The article asks:

“When was the last time you heard a seminar speaker claim there was ‘no difference’ between two groups because the difference was ‘statistically non-significant’?

How do statistics so often lead scientists to deny differences that those not educated in statistics can plainly see? For several generations, researchers have been
warned that a statistically non-significant result does not ‘prove’ the null hypothesis (the hypothesis that there is no difference between groups or no effect of a treatment
on some measured outcome)1. Nor do statistically significant results ‘prove’ some other hypothesis. Such misconceptions have famously warped the literature with
overstated claims…

Let’s be clear about what must stop: we should never conclude there is ‘no difference’ or ‘no association’ just because a P value is larger than a threshold such as 0.05
or, equivalently, because a confidence interval includes zero.”

BUT P VALUE, CONFIDENCE INTERVALS — those are the things of certainty!!!!

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00857-9

And they explain that the trouble is in us — in our own DICHOTOMANIA — and we must stop this…

The trouble is human and cognitive more than it is statistical: bucketing results into “significantly significant” and “statistically non-significant” makes people think that
the items assigned in that way are categorically different. The same problems are likely to arise under any proposed statistical alternative that involves dichotomization,
whether frequentist, Bayesian or otherwise.” 
This by the way, those 51% of the studies — that’s the data we’re making our disembodied, data-driven decision upon.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00857-9

Data-driven decisions
- disembodied decisions
- ‘bang for your buck’
- numbers win
Many of us attempt to absolve ourselves of hard things (like inclusion) by deferring to a higher power — the higher power we appeal to is often data.

We collect a bunch of data and then we make data-driven decisions. Which sounds really good, right:

And when we do that, we need to ask, ‘how do data-driven decisions do harm?’ First of all, if you’re a member of a marginalized community, a minority, you will never be
represented in BIG DATA if we focus on the majority, the bang-for-your buck. And collectively, the 20% (not the 80%) represent a large, diverse, often forgotten group —
one that is harder to solve for, one that benefits the 80%. Text messaging, curb cuts, electric toothbrushes — all innovations that were created for the 20% (those on the
edges) that benefit us all.

How do you make good decisions without making data-driven decisions?

When information is more important than knowledge, and certainty and measurability are more important than thoughtfulness, risk, wonder, exploration and discovery,
what do we lose? What are we relinquishing? If to value something we have to be able to measure it and vice versa, what are we overlooking and missing?

When measurability is success, it becomes an end in itself. We begin asking questions that lead us to measurable answers. We begin measuring those things that are
easily measured. And those are not neutral acts. We act on our measurements — this dirty data becomes the tea leaves for decision-making, the map for change, the path
toward enlightenment. And we feel a sense of comfort having followed the directions given to us from the disembodied data. And we do harm to real people, to the
environment, to ourselves, and more.

Numbers or People
Numbers Centered Human Centered
Statistical RESULTS Inspirational STORIES
Limited to a set of
questions
Freedom to explore
through dialogue
Reported life Real life
Out of CONTEXT As part of CONTEXT
Hear about issues Experience issues
Validate Explore
The impact of this is deeply embedded in our lives… just like the grid, we accept it without much critique — but often we sense it isn’t quite right, we know there is more.
So, let’s look into our methods too!

We know now, I hope, that we need BOTH AND and we’re no longer at a place where we can either hide behind data or just tell stories.

Quantitative, qualitative, and anecdotal.

Make a place for all AND the data you’ve collected in a well-meaning survey that might be embedded with bias and leading questions and false positives and and and.
Embrace uncertainty, incompletion, and not knowing. Long live wonder and curiosity!

We do damage when we succumb to, without questioning, the naturalized and adopted methods.

Study for the grade
Valuing assessments, not learning
All interactions are amazing
All meetings are great
Failure is bad
Exploration, discovery, epiphany — because
we can’t measure them or “VALIDATE”
them, are too costly, risky, flimsy
We should focus on measurable, rigorous,
data-driven
We’ve questioned — now let’s take a moment to reflect.
Anyone have experience with these phenomena?
Study for the grade
Valuing assessments, not learning
All interactions are amazing
All meetings are great
Failure is bad
Exploration, discovery, epiphany — because we can’t measure them or “VALIDATE” them, are too costly, risky, flimsy
We should focus on measurable, rigorous, data-driven
What experiences have shaped you?

<READ + then PAUSE>
So, how do we end up in this conﬂict? How do we let spaces shape us in ways that we know don’t work? Why do we perpetuate experiences that we know oppress and
limit? Why??

Enrolment
Retention
“success” / absence of failure
Completion
“diversity”
What you measure is
what you value
we measure proﬁt, we measure demographic diversity, we measure retention, we measure growth, we measure loyalty

sense of urgency critical thinking
creativity curiosity
teamwork humility
unselﬁsh giving judgement
grace and dignity positivity
optimism bias towards results
active listening INCLUSION
do you measure?
what you measure is what you value:

Strong leaders teach the hard stuﬀ.- Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar

Chief Digital Evangelist @Salesforce

what you measure
is what you value
how you measure it
is your bias
Who determines the questions to ask the data?

How is the question articulated?

We all suﬀer from a fondness for conﬁrmation bias

- How do we confront that?

</Data Will Not
Save Us>
Sorry, but data won’t save us unless we rethink the ways we’re collecting, interpreting, and acting upon its outputs.

So, where does this tendency toward deferring to data come from?

<Scientism>
And I want to suggest, I think, that we’ve misunderstood or at least misrepresented what science is — and we tend toward a scientism — which is an excessive belief in
the power of scientiﬁc knowledge and techniques.

We reduce everything to science and treat it as THE way to describe all reality and knowledge, and the nature of things. It must be measurable, veriﬁable, reproducible,
quantitative. It must be logical, rational, and exact.

And we treat data like pure, untouched mountain streams.

But Richard Feynman, this theoretical physicist, quantum mechanics genius says, “it is our responsibility as scientists… to teach how doubt is not to be feared but
welcomed and discussed.”

What’s this? A hard core scientist saying that uncertainty, doubt are useful?

Rhett Allain from Southeastern Louisiana University has written this pithy, but enormously powerful post on Wired about science. It's called Science Isn’t About ‘the Truth’
-- it’s about building models.

Allain explains,

These are still just models. They aren't The Truth. In fact, the only way to know if a model is absolutely true would be to test every possible case that applies to the model.
This means testing every situation IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE—oh, and for all time beginning with the Big Bang until the end. You can't do that.

Don't worry. All is not unknown. Even though we don't know the truth, we still have great models. For instance, we still don't completely understand the gravitational
interaction, but our models are good enough to design that airplane that gets you across the country safely. Oh, and we still have models that are good enough to know
that there is indeed climate change and it is caused by humans.

We are ﬂying spacecraft around our solar system — based on models. We can have models that are not “correct" or absolutely true, and we can still function,
do things, make decisions, and move forward. And if we fail, we can adapt and try again. And we can discover new things because we are open to them. Open
and somewhere in the middle…
If scientists can't get to truth what do they start with?? And if they are just models, what are they telling us?

https://www.wired.com/story/science-isnt-about-the-truth-its-about-building-models/

Good Science is Good
Discovery & Innovation come from

• failure

• questioning

• curiosity

• speculating and then trying to disprove — a
hypothesis
They start with

Failure

Questioning

Curiosity

And speculating and trying to disprove themselves — lest they have a conﬂict of interest or are invested in the outcome, the proving of the undoing is a nice ethical side
dish…

WAIT JUST A MINUTE, OH SHOOT — ARE WE MEASURING THESE?????

Well, crap…

Even science knows that good science comes from never giving up! Exploring evermore…

This hasn't thrown scientists down the slippery slope to relativism! They are comfy knowing and not knowing. In fact, they probably feel MORE secure when they don't
know — it means there is no ﬁnish line… We have to always explore and explore some more!

Attenborough said, roughly, to great scientists, truth is understood to be truth-right-now — until another ‘truth’ is ‘discovered.’ — this smells to me like humility,
exploration, and a lack of completeness that allows us to wonder.

Let go, be open, settle somewhere in the middle.

And then here we have Leslie Chan from the University of Toronto saying, “when we think about OpenScience, we have to be careful about whether we’re thinking of a
monolithic concept. There should be many Open Sciences. Excluding other ways of knowing is to our detriment.” This is that epistemicide.

People, we have some work to do!

But vaccines work, both for
individuals and for the general
public. They are one of the
great advances of modern
times. And they do not cause
autism. The science on this
point is settled, to the extent
that any science ever is, in the
pursuit of proving a negative.
One need not relitigate the case for vaccines here. There have been more than a dozen large-scale, peer-reviewed studies—the most recent one in Denmark, involving
more than six hundred and fifty thousand children—that have found no connection between the M.M.R. vaccine and autism. Are there side effects to vaccines?
Sometimes.

Anyone who has worked in public health knows that eradicating diseases is not just science. That where science intersects with people you must build trust… scientific
knowledge isn’t enough.

Jimmy Carter’s Carter Center nearly eradicated guinea worm and then a rumour started …

In Tanzania, in Nigeria, in India… In Berkeley California — well-educated, informed, privileged we might say individuals are not vaccinating their children.

Whooping cough.

</We are not
doing real
Science>
Real science wonders, explores, wants to be proven wrong!

And real science is comfortable not knowing AND in not knowing NOT SLIPPING DOWN the SLOPE TOWARD RELATIVISM. THERE IS A MIDDLE…

<Fairness>
So, I want to talk about fairness — what is it?

I think I want to say we’re applying the same rules to everyone in the spirit of fairness

- everyone is assessed the same

- No exceptions

- The assignment is due on this EXACT DATE

And again, I think we do this because we aren’t sure how to do it any other way… and we want to be fair…

Whose rules?
Adherence to the rule is success;
deviation from the rule is failure.
We apply the same rules to everyone, but we fail often to ask, ‘whose rules are they’

Who is making the rules? Are the rules revisited as culture, humans, the economy, health, the environment change? Do the rules ﬂex for edge or special cases that they
don’t ﬁt? What about current events?

This is a pushmi pullyu — it is a mythical beast that is coming and going — neither here nor there. impossible

Conundrum
Rubrics/Syllabi tell us: Adherence to
the rule is success; deviation from the
rule is failure.
So we codify the transaction in structure!

This is the syllabus — this is what you’ll be measured on

Strict adherence with little to no spark will get you a B, full-borne deviation will get you a D — because an F is really brutal.

And that will be how we measure success. We will measure you all by exactly the same criteria — because that makes us feel fair; no exceptions — and there will be no
substitutions to your pizza order.

But we know this does damage… this is NOT A NEUTRAL ACT.

a pushmi pullyu

Achieve
Career/
Success
Opportunities
Whose rules?
Adherence to the rule is success; deviation from
the rule is failure.
Achievement is defined by adherence to the syllabus — because we need to measure to feel fair, validated, and objective. No bias here folks!

<Adherence means achievement>

Opportunities are based on achievement over time. OR PRIVILEGE

Opportunities help build skills, gain experiences, which parlay nicely into a career.

Success!

If you’re disadvantaged or excluded or left out of the measures at the beginning of this game, you never catch up.

a high school student in Detroit and a high school student at phillips exeter in New Hampshire will not have the same chances at any part of this equation. The playing
field is not level.

And we’re all different. Adherence in many cases is merely conformance with the form of the game to give the intended output or (function). If we’re getting the first step
wrong — that is measuring ACHIEVEMENT — how can we use it as a building block for the rest?

Who are we failing??

Who do the rules limit?
Adherence to the rule is success; deviation from the
rule is failure.
No exceptions
You must report on your department’s success using these
measures
Only English speakers can learn from this material
Only graduate students can take this course
Your thoughts must be organized in a 5 paragraph essay
You cannot use Wikipedia as a reference
And why do we create and tolerate these rules? How else can we get good numbers with which to make our data-driven decisions?

Nothing is
neutral
You see, nothing we do or say is neutral. It is embedded in our experiences and our context.

We make choices (and I’ll call them design choices) all the time. And those choices are made in a context at a time and with particular thoughts and expectations, biases
too.

Do you make
decisions?
You’re a designer
Yes
Ok folks, let’s be clear: if you are making decisions, then you are a designer. And your designs have an impact on others…
You are declaring *this* and not anything else. You might have reasons (they might range from ‘that’s the way we always do it’ to ‘because I said so’ to ‘because research
shows it’s good for the majority’ etc)
If you make decisions that affect another, then you are designing. You are a designer…
So, as a designer, where can inclusion fit into your decisions?

we are all part of the
revolution  
…or else the status quo
we are all designers
Nothing is neutral
And here is our call to action -- we are all designers; we are all part of the revolution… or else the status quo.

We are in Conflict
Safe space Out of comfort zone
Mono Culture Diverse + Inclusive
Stable / standardized Adaptive
Be the best / compete Collaborative
Win Cooperative
Us Them
Positive Negative
And we are a bit in conflict.

We want to create safe spaces, but we also know we want to push ourselves and others out of our comfort zones — how do we reconcile this?

We know culture fit isn't often diverse or inclusive, but we hire for fit and sit comfortably in that space, creating mono-cultures

We like stability, but we know to innovate, to grow, we need to change.

We want to be the best, but we also speak about the value of collaboration.

 
We want to win, but we also want to cooperate.

We create an ‘us’ to build a community, but our community also defines a ‘them’ in the negative space.

We want to be positive, inspirational, exciting, but we know that so many of us learn more from the negative experiences if we allow ourselves to have them.

How do we reconcile these? There are no black or white answers here and these binaries are false… we need both, and. I think that’s how we get inclusion —
remember? QUESTION, REFLECT, DISRUPT — evermore, not just once.

Each of these binaries could be an entire debate.

Good or Bad
Thinking or Feeling
Pragmatist or Principled
Scale or One-off
Pros or Cons
Enemy or Friend
True or Fake
And we hamstring ourselves by thinking that it can be this overly simple.

You do not have to choose — find spaces that understand both

Look at scale and one-off here…

Much damage has been done in education in the spirit of scaling an approach, a standard, a framework. Scale to me is code for do the same thing cheaply for MANY
more people — it is an economic decision. It is ALSO though an ethical decision. It is an ethical decision to say that one-offs aren’t worth it. Ask again, for whom? Why? 
What history got us there?

We think we know what is good and what is bad…

And then we are confronted by something that is both…

If we just explore something (a
person or a problem) from all
possible angles we can
know it, predict it and control it
we can FIX it—we can design
for it
Misconceptions:
thinking & logic

Resist the urge to predict + speculate
• the roadmap can be predicted +
controlled
• We can know the  
problem + create a  
solution
• can be solved in a  
standard, linear manner
• we can control +  
predict requirements
• there is an end point + we know
what success is
• require ongoing
transparent communication
+ recalibration
• complex projects cannot
be predicted
• emergent, complex
systems cannot be
*known* — they evolve
• “Success” continues to
evolve and change
Assumptions Reality
What happens if we let go a little of the urge to predict and speculate?

hammer with a wood screw in front of it

</Control
doesn’t work
or really
exist>
But don’t despair folks — remember, this doesn’t put us on a slippery slope to relativism or to nihilism. We need to dig in more…

Inclusion
Questioning, reflecting, disrupting
How can we do this Inclusion thing then? I think that we need to build skills around three things:
Questioning why are things the way they are? What is the history? Where did this come from? Like we did earlier with data.
Reflecting on the fairness of that? The justice? The ethics… which we spent a tiny bit of time on with the data methods
And disrupting to make changes in the ruts of the ways we do things… Imagine how we might disrupt the way decisions are made in our physical and digital spaces.
Curiosity is one of the core ingredients to this Inclusion soup.
We’re often encouraged to build “empathy.” I find that building empathy is sometimes too big an ask. It still leaves questions — ok, I’ll build empathy, how do I do that?!
I maintain, it all starts with curiosity. And so that doesn’t leave you out in the middle of the ocean of uncertainty, I’m going to talk to you about at least 3 ways to be
curious…
As an aside, I have to admit I have a fondness for things in 3s: yes, no, maybe; black, white, grey. And so you might find it curious that all of my lists are in 3s… I fully
acknowledge there could be some number > 3 but I am fond AND happy with 3s.

Form Function
Inclusion
Questioning, reflecting, disrupting
so, I want to lead us through some practice of this questioning, reﬂecting, and disrupting in the three areas I think have a signiﬁcant impact on teaching learning and
education.

The form impacts the function in these three areas

Form Function
Architectural
Experiential
Interactional
Education, teaching and learning are situated in a space. It is an experience, and it is an interaction among people.

These things make up the context — they are where learning and teaching is situated.

The architectural

The Experiential

The Interactional

Form Function
Architectural
Let’s start here. Ready?

How can we QUESTION this?

Can we say, is this a desirable learning environment? For whom? And why?

Then REFLECT and ask:

Who decided? What is the history of this? How did we get here?

https://unsplash.com/photos/zFSo6bnZJTw

Kids in chair, teacher in the front

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

And then DISRUPT and suggest that this too is a learning environment…
https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2017/08/11/13/37/skate-park-2630925_960_720.jpg


Can we say, is this a desirable studying environment? For whom? And why?



https://unsplash.com/photos/yLpbSjxMpCU

Man sitting with books all around

Photo by Elijah Hail on Unsplash

And then DISRUPT and suggest that this too is a studying environment…
Woman on bench
Photo by Alex Blăjan on Unsplash
https://unsplash.com/photos/KARheprvOUc


Can we say, is this a desirable sharing and learning environment? For whom? And why?



And then DISRUPT and suggest that this too is a sharing and learning environment…
And we can ask in each of these cases of disruption how the change in form effects the outcomes
Indigenous Sharing + Story Telling Circles of the Indigenous Advisory Group At the Thunder Bay Public Library in Thunder Bay Ontario

http://www.tbpl.ca/upload/images/4th-storytelling-circle1-feb-22.jpg

http://www.tbpl.ca/iac

What spaces have
shaped you?
We’ve tried out this questioning, reflecting and disrupting in the architectural space in the last few slides. Now, take a moment to reflect yourself on the spaces that have
shaped you.

Form Function
Experiential
Now let’s give this a whirl with the experiential

And don’t forget, form inﬂuences function and outcomes…

An interesting thing happened during a co-design workshop I facilitated. We were brainstorming the information architecture for a new website. It was a messy activity, so
as a group we decided to each individually sketch out the relationships before coming together to work on reﬁning it…

One participant had a notebook like this one and she started the activity and then got frustrated. She said the notebook was too small and it was making it hard for her to
capture all the inter-connectedness. She asked if she could use the board instead. A couple of interesting things happened…

http://www.hobbycraft.co.uk/supplyimages/614647_1000_1_800.jpg

As soon as she went to the board what happened?

Everyone else put down their pens and looked at what she was doing. In taxonomies of importance in a classroom or workshop setting, the board takes ﬁrst prize. It was
ok, because the others had at least begun some of their sketching individually.

So, her writing is in white. Then we grabbed diﬀerent colours to fold in others’ ideas.

We created in an open, exploratory, intersectional, messy, collaborative, creative way to interrelate the information. Then, the next day there was a meeting with the
stakeholders to present our ideas to them…

a. Definitions (C. Blake / CCDI)
i. Defining Diversity
ii. Defining Inclusion
iii. Defining Equity vs. Equality
iv. …
b. What is the Business Case for Diversity and Inclusion? (C. Blake / CCDI)
c. Guiding Principles (C. Blake)
i. How to Engage Collaboratively / Respectful Relationships
ii. Accountability
iii. Shared Authority
iv. Making Time for Mindful Reflection
d. Self-Assessments (C. Blake / R. Myers / CCDI)
a. Core Questions (C. Blake)
i. What are my lenses?
ii. Am I just confirming my assumptions, or am I challenging them?
iii. What details here are unfair? Unverified? Unused?
iv. What’s here that I designed for me? What’s here that I designed for other
people?
v. Who might be impact by what I’m developing?
vi. Is my audience open to change?
vii. What am I challenging as I create this?
viii. Whose voice is here? Whose voice is missing?
b. Case Studies (Catalyst / Advocate Teams) – as museums use the guide, opportunities to
add case studies / stories to site
i. *see Toronto Ward Museum mock-up for example
(R. Myers / T. Pinkofsky)
a. General Resources
b. Training
c. Consultants
d. Community Organizations
e. Employer Tools
a. Blog / Forum
i. Ask Questions
ii. Create space for reflection and discussion
iii. Address failures and access support
(R. Myers)
a. Webinars
We ﬂattened those ideas, formalized them, and were seeking validation! This is what was presented as the outcome from the collaborative info architecture session.

We dressed up that creativity, combed its hair, gave it a starched button up, and some serious shoes. And put it into outline form.

And in doing that we lost all the great work we had done. The people who weren’t at the design session began questioning the taxonomy of what we’d done and got
bogged down in form and function we’d created.

We all do this…

And so much was lost. Our lens matters. We all were doing this activity on a piece of paper… and the paper, the space, the way we had to send it to a group who would
then have a meeting over the phone… that was our context. Those were our constraints.

Edward Tufte calls this the problem of the ﬂatlands and it motivated him to create his own press so he could publish his books the way he wanted: with spans across
pages, with marginalia, with 3D design, with popups, with designs for information that challenged the straightjacket or “ﬂatlands” of the ‘typical’ published page — the
grid, if you will…

The world is complex, dynamic,
multidimensional; the paper is
static, flat. How are we to represent
the rich visual world of experience
and measurement on mere flatland?
- Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information
Tufte says, “The world is complex, dynamic, multidimensional; the paper is static, flat. How are we to represent the rich visual world of experience and measurement on
mere flatland?”

- Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information

Form Function
Interactional
Ok one more to go — the Interactional

I was looking online for an image that would capture the moment — the touching moment, where something happens to you that changes you. As you can imagine, finding an image of that
moment is difficult. Many of the images involve animals as does this one — Here Jane Goodall reaches out as does a chimp to touch. In moments like these, both beings change — they
both are impacted by this touching interaction.
And we all had that one person — we remember their name, the moment — when they reached out to us. They changed us forever in that moment. They believed in us, the encouraged
our love of reading, they said they liked the way we thought about things, they said they believed in us.
Those moments don’t scale. Those moments aren’t scripted. They are authentic human (and animal) connections.
And no wonder these moments are hard to find online…
How do you capture this in metadata?

Interactions…
What do we do when no one is watching? Someone snapped this man giving his shoes to a homeless man and then walking off barefoot down the sidewalk.
We see plenty of examples of this — people who have an impact on another — people who touch someone else.
The Toronto Public Library has a program where you can check out a person — literally, you can check out a person and hear their stories. Imagine spending the day with
an elder who can give you lived-experience of history? That program understands the power of interactions…
https://metro.co.uk/2019/08/19/jogger-gives-shoes-homeless-man-walks-off-barefoot-10593185/

And those interactions that live with us, historically aren’t always good ones. Here on the left we have Emmett Till - in aug 28, 1955 lynched for apparently whistling at a
white woman in her family’s store in Mississippi.
And on the right we have Devin Myers August 14, 2019 in Royal Oak, Michigan — a white woman called the cops because Myers “looked at her “suspiciously”"
Interactions like love patches or painful scars live in us for a long, long time.
By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3981740
https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2019/08/14/royal-oak-police-stop-black-man-for-looking-suspiciously-at-white-woman

Love patches
+
Painful scars
Spend just a moment thinking about interactions that have shaped you — positive and negative alike, those love patches or painful scars

I think it starts with self-awareness…
All of this awareness requires that you are tuned into how you’re thinking, feeling, and doing things…
And where you’ve been, why you were there, why you think the way you do… it’s a LOT of self-reflection
Do you listen more or talk more?
Are you a contrarian?
Are you sure someone with an open container near a computer is going to spill it?
Do you fetishize data? And make no decisions without it?
Do you bend your data to justify your purchase of just-one-more bicycle?
Do you consider the unintended consequences of your choices? Of your actions?
Do you stop to think about how your choices impact others? Not just your family? Maybe your neighbour? The next generation? Where do you scope your sphere of concern? How far
do you reach? How deep do your ethics, your faith, your integrity, your self-perception require you go? When are you comfortable stopping?

https://flic.kr/p/645D1o

Photo by Pierre-Olivier Carles

Resist the
urge to
generalize
What happens when we resist the urge to generalize

And instead understand the individual in her context, with the tools available to her to achieve the goals she has — that is all we are. And we can either experience match
or mismatch in this scenario.

Mismatch is disability, it is design solvable.

Resist the urge to know an individual
We can create persona
categories that represent
the possible end  
users - they have  
similar + static  
needs
• one-size-ﬁts-one
• empower users!
agency!
• Be curious!
And what happens if we acknowledge we don’t know?

white table with brightly coloured stick ﬁgures sitting around it

Resist the urge to design for
An assumption we make:

We can engineer a fix—technology can solve it all and we are smart people who know what is best

Remember: Engineers are not the only ones building—we all adapt and grow design; we’re all designers

A good portion of Pinterest is dedicated to the thoughtful design of everyday things in innovative and surprising ways. We learn from how someone else imagined using
something and we riff off of it.

children’s rain boots nailed to a fence and used as flower pots

a basic lamp that someone builds a lego structure around with holes to let the light through and shine colours

We need to shift our focus to the 20% and the 80 will solve for itself.

The 80 is easy.

Innovation hides in the 20% — the edge cases — look for failures, not success. And ask why?


how we design matters;
and every decision is a
design decision
For change to happen within any institution, the thing you want to change has to be a value; something you practice and continue to challenge and nurture. Inclusion is
not a checklist item. It’s like breathing and bathing — you got to keep at it evermore.

Nothing is neutral.

every decision is a design decision that either contributes to or challenges existing structures of privilege, power, and presence. Each decision is an opportunity and a
responsibility we have as leaders in these public spaces

beware the taxonomy
beware the binary
beware certainty
beware of completion

- it isn’t ever complete

- it’s like bathing, you gotta keep doing it

- it’s a value, never a checklist

- measure it by seeing how inextricable
it is in everything you do
Inclusive
Florence Kennedy’s, “Freedom is like taking a bath: You got to keep doing it
every day.”
- it isn’t ever complete

- it’s like bathing, you gotta keep doing it — derived from Florence Kennedy’s, “Freedom is like taking a bath: You got to keep doing it every day.”

- it’s a value, never a checklist

- measure it by seeing how inextricable it is in everything you do

Your work begins now
...and it never
ends...

Places to Question
●What decisions do I make?
Let’s start by considering this

Places to Question
● Classroom setup / Tools

● Admissions decisions

● Cost

● Books

● Pedagogy
● Syllabus

● Access/Availability

● Assessment

● “Equivalents”

● Language
Do any of you make decisions about these?

The
un-syllabus
For example: What would it look like?

Could it be co-creation?

Could it ﬂex?

What method could we use to develop it diﬀerently>

What if adherence to the rules
is failure and
deviation is success?!
What failure should be:
• adherence to a rule
• knowing without
thinking
(memorization)
Ask of your students that they understand the rule and then go beyond it. That they undo it from the inside. That they express something in the following of the rule. This
is a place for a critical mind. For discover, wonder, curiosity, creativity, love of learning.

And above all else, question everything. AND DON’T EVER STOP.

https://flic.kr/p/iVLZt
Photo by @Dunk

@jesshmitchell
I hope some of this made sense. Thank you so much for going on this journey with me.

Your 2 Things
Let’s talk about them...

Mitten Open Education

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Mitten Open Education

Similar to Mitten Open Education (10)

More from Jess Mitchell

More from Jess Mitchell (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Mitten Open Education