{"id":283,"date":"2021-04-26T11:25:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T11:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/hybridteaching\/?p=283"},"modified":"2021-04-26T11:27:29","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T11:27:29","slug":"why-i-find-it-helps-to-remember-you-have-a-bum-and-a-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/hybridteaching\/why-i-find-it-helps-to-remember-you-have-a-bum-and-a-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Find It Helps To Remember You Have A Bum And A Back"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Nikki Moran, Reid School of Music
N.Moran@ed.ac.uk<\/a>\u00a0
14 04 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The demands of remote teaching have given urgent rise to so many needs during the past 12 months.\u00a0\u00a0We need screen breaks, we need good spec tech, we need more space at home than most of us have got, we need our children to go away, we need to move and stretch, and (I think, more than anything), we\u2019ve needed to upgrade the quality and efficiency of our professional relationships, with colleagues and with students.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I mean by better quality relationships is, the sort of relationships that can really tolerate confusion, and impatience, and misunderstandings, and occasional mute button swearing.  We\u2019ve had to share and create new knowledge under exceptionally limiting circumstances and with broken connections, poor sync, terrible sound quality, patchy wifi.  Good communication fundamentally requires a basis of some common ground, but when this began we were all in a new place, each of us confined to our own pieces in a square jigsaw of icons and initials and – now and then, if you\u2019re lucky – floating faces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The digital reduction of our physical selves and our communicative intentions into 2D space is as crummy as it\u2019s miraculous, when we have no alternative way to check that we\u2019ve been heard and understood. It\u2019s far too easy to dissolve into a puddley, formless state of gaze and scroll, gaze and scroll, all our precious connections to other people mindlessly constrained to a loop between gritty eyes, aching ears, fingers on the keyboard\u2026  This is why I find it really helps to remember you have a bum and a back, and I have enjoyed reminding my students of this, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This semester I have systematically integrated such reminders into my online teaching, making space for the class to act<\/em> (not think) in a playful and creative manner in response to a variety of prompts, some as warm-up activities, others as core teaching devices. I\u2019ve used my experience of improvisation and mindfulness practices, and it\u2019s been serious fun – as in, the results have induced both laughter and deep reflection. Devising the exercises for online groups required a little bit of thinking, mostly in reshaping group facilitation strategies that I have used informally for a number of years.  Making these work online has felt like a game-changer, for the way that they can transform a shallow, disconnected virtual space into an engaged and quite courageous cohort of students.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

– Playful grounding exercises as standard welcome\/warm-up <\/p>\n\n\n\n

– ‘Busy hands’ tasks, to help students navigate online discussions with one another <\/p>\n\n\n\n

– Structured peer-to-peer listening sessions, timetabled alongside academic seminars<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– Deliberate integration of freeform creative journalling exercises (doodling, painting, colour, collage) into academic topic-based discussions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n