Slides from my talk at Domains 17: "If bell hooks Made a Learning Management System: a Praxis of Liberation and Domain of One's Own"

1. If bell hooks Made a Learning
Management System
S E A N M I C H A E L M O R R I S
I N S T R U C T I O N A L D E S I G N E R ,
M I D D L E B U RY C O L L E G E
D I R E C T O R , D I G I TA L P E D A G O G Y L A B
T W I T T E R : @ S L A M T E A C H E R
D O M A I N : S E A N M I C H A E L M O R R I S . C O M
J E S S E S T O M M E L
E X E C U T I V E D I R E C T O R , D I V I S I O N O F T E A C H I N G
A N D L E A R N I N G T E C H N O L O G I E S
U N I V E R S I T Y O F M A RY WA S H I N G T O N
T W I T T E R : @ J E S S I F E R
D O M A I N : J E S S E S T O M M E L . C O M

2. If bell hooks Made an LMS
A Praxis of Liberation and Domain of
One’s Own

3. “—Here I was actually at the door which leads into the library itself. I
must have opened it, for instantly there issued, like a guardian angel
barring the way with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings, a
deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as
he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if
accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of
introduction.”
V I R G I N I A W O O L F, “ A R O O M O F O N E ’ S O W N ”

4. We maintain an ethos of restricting access to those for whom
what we offer we believe would go in one ear and out the other.

5. “Hear this loud and clear: that’s boring for us.”
A C T U A L T E A C H E R S

6. “I might be faced again and again with situations where I would be
‘tried,’ made to feel as though a central requirement of my being
accepted would mean participation in this system of exchange to
ensure my success, my ‘making it.’”
B E L L H O O K S , “ C H O O S I N G T H E M A R G I N A S A S PA C E O F
R A D I C A L O P E N N E S S ”

7. The LMS, the assumptions upon which it is based, the pedagogies
it has baked into it, the way that it reinforces patriarchal, capitalist
values will never be worth a critical feminist remodel.

8. The ground upon which we are accustomed to building is the ground
of the institution, of everything we know about institutionality. And no
matter how hard we try to escape it, if we are starting from the same
clay, we will end up within the same walls.

9. The effect of the LMS on teaching and learning: “Standardized
features. Standardized courses. Standard students.”
M A RT H A B U RT I S , “ M A K I N G A N D B R E A K I N G D O M A I N O F O N E ’ S
O W N : R E T H I N K I N G T H E W E B I N H I G H E R E D ”

10. Despite our best efforts at creating other platforms, we still think through
our own internal LMS. The problem is that whether we are using
Blackboard or teaching in Canvas or building a Domains project, we are
most likely not doing thinking that is liberative enough.

11. “To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our
students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions
where learning can most deeply and intimately begin.”
B E L L H O O K S , T E A C H I N G T O T R A N S G R E S S

12. “‘No need to hear your voice. Only tell me about your pain. I want to
know your story. And then I will tell it back to you in a new way. Tell it
back to you in such a way that it has become mine, my own. Re-writing
you, I write myself anew.’”
B E L L H O O K S , “ C H O O S I N G T H E M A R G I N A S A S PA C E O F
R A D I C A L O P E N N E S S ”

13. Like it or not, the LMS is in our blood as a product of our privilege
and our educations. It is a learning space, and a space of
enculturation into an oppressive educative model which each of us
has born the weight of, and into which we each believe, to varying
degrees, students should be baptized.

14. We blur the line between doing good and building credibility.

15. If we teach to reproduce ourselves, or the academy or the idea of
the “academic”, what good is a room or a domain of one’s own?

16. D O M A I N S !
Gardens! Parties! Open doors! Road trips! Jazz!

17. Have we changed our practices enough to know how to make
Domains a space of liberation? Do we know what a praxis of
liberation looks like?

18. We greet you as liberators. This ‘we’ is that ‘us’ in the margins, that ‘we’ who
inhabit marginal space that is not a site of domination but a place of
resistance. Enter that space. This is an intervention. I am writing to you. I am
speaking from a place in the margins where I am different, where I see
things differently. I am talking about what I see.”
B E L L H O O K S , “ C H O O S I N G T H E M A R G I N A S A S PA C E O F
R A D I C A L O P E N N E S S ”

19. What room would we give Virginia Woolf? How would we
advise she furnish it? What features would we point out?
And would she take the room we offered her?

20. Does Domain of One’s Own do work toward creating an open
channel between what students are saying—what’s important to
them, what comes deliberately from their lived experiences—and
what school asks them to say?

21. Instead of talking about using Domains in our classrooms, we need
to start thinking about how to abdicate any authority and abandon
any expectations for how students use their space. We need to
design learning where there is no option for oppression.

22. “And it turns out that we have a lot of work to do.”
~ Martha Burtis, “Messy & chaotic learning”