Anna and Emilie co-hosted a well-attended online workshop on Friday 7 May as part of the Uncommon Senses III conference, hosted by the Sensory Studies group at Concordia University in Canada.
Titled “Experiments in Digital-Sensory Education“, the goal of the 90-minute workshop (incl. lesson and brainstorm) was to open up possibilities for including the senses more in online teaching. The session has led to many new collaborations and ideas.
Workshop abstract:
Experiments in Digital-Sensory Education
As the pandemic gained pace, higher education institutions were suddenly catapulted into (often partially, sometimes fully) digital teaching. While bodies are always present in digital learning spaces, there was a real threat that education was nonetheless becoming largely disembodied, with less curriculum space dedicated to cultivating ways of knowing that extend beyond cognition. In this 90 minute workshop we want to open up the possibilities for including the senses more in online teaching. We will first run a hands-on sensory “lesson” in which workshop participants perform being undergraduate medical and museum students in our class. This digital-sensory educational experiment will try to bring together lessons in bodily and material examinations relevant to students from both disciplines. We then switch roles, and participants will become colleagues, critically engaging with the conditions and possibilities for the lesson, and sharing ideas for further digital-sensory experiments and interventions in teaching. Lastly we lead and try out together some additional digital-sensory exercises which we hope will inspire participants in regards to what might be possible in online formats. The workshop will be conducted online, or for those in person in the conference, in corona-proof classroom spaces in Montreal, with the instructors.
