Digital Learning Book Club: Home

Humanizing Distance Learning: Centering Equity and Humanity in Times of Crisis — by Paul Emerich France

Register for sessions through UTK Workshop Registration

Sign up to participate through UTK Workshop Registration — participation includes emails to Zoom links prior to meetings as well as access to the Book Club's Inscribe community. 

Contact Jason Johnston (Digital Learning) or Grace Therrell (UT Libraries) with questions or for more info!

This semester, the Digital Learning Book Club will read and explore themes from the book Humanizing Distance Learning: Centering Equity and Humanity in Times of Crisis. Participants can access the book freely online through UT Libraries or can purchase a copy. 

About this book (from the publisher):

"In some ways, shouldn′t we always be teaching from a distance?"

Paul France asks this not as pitch for distance learning. But because part of the reason distance learning has been so challenging, Paul asserts, is that we’re replicating long-standing practices that promote dependent learning in our students. Why not use this unique moment of time to reconnect with the true purpose of teaching: to help our students become liberated learners and free thinkers?

The next logical step in teachers’ months-long distance learning "journey," Humanizing Distance Learning describes how to center humanity and equity in our process of reimagining learning. Even while teaching and learning miles apart through screens, you’ll discover how to:

• Build independence within your students so they’re better equipped to tackle challenges with persistence and learn how to learn
• Make collaboration and human connection essential components of your pedagogy, offering students the chance to socialize and learn from one another
• Center and unpack stu­dents’ identities, helping them develop a conscious knowledge of themselves, all the while using their self-identified strengths to overcome any obstacles
• Plan, prepare, and implement humanized instruction while teaching for student liberation―both digitally and in person.
• Investigate technol­ogy integration, including the Digital Divide, as well as ways to minimize EdTech integration so that our collective sense of humanity can continue to be front and center

"The future," Paul writes, "may be unclear, the road may be rocky, and the story may continue to be long and winding as we push forward through this global crisis. But the answer will always be simple: We must teach and learn in pursuit of a deeper sense of collective humanity―and for no other reason."

All synchronous meetings will take place 12-1pm EDT on Zoom. Asynchronous discussion will take place on Inscribe. 

Meeting 1: Foundations for Liberatory Online Teaching

Thursday, Feb. 6th – Zoom

• Chapter 1: Teaching for Liberation
• Chapter 2: Intensifying Socioemotional Learning

Meeting 2: Inclusive and Equitable Learning Environments

Thursday, Feb. 27th – Zoom

• Chapter 3: Building a Resilient Classroom Culture
• Chapter 4: Making Planning Sustainable
• Chapter 5: Unpacking Identity

Meeting 3: Rethinking Digital Learning and Success

Thursday, Mar. 27th – Zoom

• Chapter 6: Redefining Student Success
• Chapter 7: Leveraging Complex Instruction
• Chapter 8: Becoming an EdTech Minimalist

Meeting 4: Building the University of the Future

Thursday, Apr. 24th – Zoom

• Chapter 9: Dismantling Structural Inequities
• Chapter 10: Centering Humanity