(Emma is) Pondering Pedagogy

My microteaching session

I based my object-centred microteaching session on a paper OS map. I wanted my students to reflect on the experience of using maps in both analogue and digital formats, and how each can offer different pros and cons to the end user. I also wanted to look into semiotics, through exploring the use of symbols on an OS map, their clarity, history, and current relevance, and also what symbols might be missing, in the students view.

I started off by offering a very brief history of OS (Ordnance Survey) maps, and asking the students whether they were familiar with these types of maps. There was a nice mixture of students in the room, some who had never seen or handled an OS map before, and others who were very familiar with them.

I then tasked each student with selecting a 2 x 2 square of the map. On a separate piece of paper, with coloured felt pens, I asked them to draw in isolation every graphical element on the map that they could see (e.g. roads of different colours, the outlines of buildings, any symbols, any other route line markers, or any other visual components at all, like contour lines, water, forest etc). I had originally planned to expand on this section by asking students to use these symbolic elements to create an abstract composition — this would have served as a fun, boundary pushing creative activity, taking familiar elements and making them into something new and unfamiliar — but I decided it was too off topic, and there was not enough time.

After this, I offered some brief space for reflection on how difficult or easy it was for them to understand the meaning of all the different elements on the map.

Then, I encouraged them collectively to identify any blue symbols they could see on the map, while I drew them quickly on a shared piece of paper. I had concealed the key, so the meaning of these symbols would remain obscured.

Once we felt we had comprehensively discovered all the symbols on the map, I facilitated a discussion — what do we think these symbols mean? Do they all have obvious meanings? Are there any symbols we would hope or expect to see which are missing from the map?

This took us to the end of the session — given more time, I would have asked the students to each design their own symbol which they felt represented a concept they felt was missing from the map.

My own reflections, and feedback from others

20 minutes certainly goes by fast! There were sections of the activity I would have liked to extend, and additional sections I had ideas for that I did not have time to deliver. I think I managed to carry off the exercise successfully without anything feeling too rushed (having had a teaching experience earlier in the week where things were very rushed, I was mindful of this!)

After the session I spoke with my colleague Ravin Raori (who teaches on BA Graphic Media Design, where I have also previously taught). He reflected that this session would have been a great fit for that course — and could quite easily have been extended and expanded to fill an hour, or even two. This kind of discussion of symbols and semiotics, as well as user experiences rooted in a tangible real world object would offer a rich space for exploration with a wide range of students, particularly those on our courses — Graphic Media Design and User Experience Design. (One other piece of feedback noted that it would have been nice to have time to design their own symbols, which was exactly what I would have done given more time, so I am glad that the exercise felt like it had quite a natural, logical progression on to further tasks).

I worry that the first section of the activity was not quite clear enough in terms of my instructions, as one or two members of the group initially misunderstood it. It may have been clearer if I had an accompanying slide, plus maybe an example or two, to show what I wanted. Some participants also noted that they felt that the purpose of the opening section was a little unclear, whereas the rest was much more obvious, which I would agree with. I could certainly work on slightly altering the opening activity, and offering more explanation of my own about what we were doing and why.

A couple of people also asked whether the ‘learning outcomes’ could have been made more explicit. Again, this is something I try and focus on in my sessions as a summary towards the end. One person highlighted that the slight mystery/ambiguity/’what’s coming next’ of the first activity was fun, and I agree. What I should have done was to leave more time at the end to reflect back what we might take away from the session, and indeed, I do try and do this during my longer class-based teaching, but it is certainly useful to be reminded of its importance. Generally, I like a class to go something like:

“Why are we doing this? It’s fun though…”

“Ohhh, I see, so we’re doing this next, that makes sense”

“Aha, now I understand why we did all of that, and what I have learned!”

I think that this framework keeps intrigue and engagement levels high. One of the other participants led into their microteaching session with a detailed explanation of what we were going to get out of it and what their aims and goals were, and for me that sort of took all the fun out of it.

One person fed back that the ‘end could have been longer’ (the discussion) and that they might have liked space for ‘more student voice’. I agree that there was not enough time for as much discussion as I would have liked. I am also mindful that I can be ‘a bit of a talker’, and need to make sure I make space for student voices. It was interesting to observe the sessions of my peers — one of whom in particular I did not feel included enough of their voice as tutor (I was left wanting more input, more context, more opinion from ‘the expert’) and another of whom included too much of their voice as tutor (not enough space for us to debate and input). I like to hope I struck a balance, but it’s highly possible I also strayed too far into the ‘too much of my voice’ realm!

One of my favourite pieces of feedback was the specific comment that they enjoyed the ‘gamification’ of the process of collaboratively searching for symbols on the map. Doing this part of the activity collectively (individuals collectively searching for and shouting out new symbols) had a treasure hunt like feel, and bought a little bit of energy to the room, of what was otherwise, as one participant described it ‘A relaxing time looking at a map’ (a piece of feedback I also liked). Trying to come up with these kinds of game-like, collaborative, action moments is an exciting part of developing sessions that maintain engagement throughout, with an ebb and flow of group and solo work, high and low energy activities, discussion, listening, and ‘doing’.

Other microteaching sessions

It was also a real pleasure to experience my fellow participants own microteaching sessions, and I learned a lot from all of them. There were some valuable reminders of the care that is required when dealing with sensitive areas. One session opened up the potential for challenging political conversations, but this was offered with sufficient framework and guard rails as for me to feel that most students would find it a safe and creative space to air their views. Another session asked students to disclose their thoughts and experiences of family from early childhood, in a way which I felt could be challenging for some students with more difficult family relationships. It also forced students to unexpectedly share what might have been quite a personal piece of work — an example of where ‘surprise’ and unexpected plot twists within a session could go awry. It is vital to always be mindful of where any topic could stray into sensitive areas, and allow space for students to explore these things in ways which are safe and guided, and have clear opt-outs.

One participant made use of VR technology in their session, and I very much appreciated their careful handling of this — making clear at the start that students were not obligated to partake, and being extremely explicit about whether it was okay to, for example, touch their heads, to adjust the headset. This kind of courtesy and respect should of course be a standard, but the care with which it was applied here, and the lack of assumption about what would be permitted was very well handled, I thought.

During our first workshop on the PGCert, we also spent some time reflecting on the phrase ‘Social Justice’ — defining it, and considering how it is contextualised within higher education, and specifically, the design school.

The most concise summary of social justice more widely is that it represents justice with regards to how wealth, opportunities and privileges are distributed within society.

In the context of the design school, this means that same equal distribution of wealth, opportunities and privilege, but specifically amongst university students and staff.

However, it is vital to note that it is impossible to look at the higher education context in isolation. To take a clear example — the university might actively implement all kinds of measures to more widely recruit from, for example, different socioeconomic and race backgrounds… But if the people they are looking to recruit are not being adequately supported throughout their entire educational lives (from early childhood and up), they will not be presenting themselves as potential applicants for the university’s consideration!

Of course there can and should be work done by universities to address the issues these groups face outside the academy (from visibility of pathways, to awareness raising, and other even more proactive measures like scholarships, university visits and so on), but there is also a lot that needs to be done that is out of reach of any given university, and needs to be reflected in social justice in wider society as a whole. (And potentially in universities more proactively working together to leverage their joint power).

In ‘Who can afford to be critical’, Alfonso Matos and others discuss the seeming lack of criticality that self-defined ‘critical design’ schools bring to the material circumstances of their students (the book particularly focusses on socioeconomic status):

“When encouraging students to become who they are, the school developed only a partial alertness and sensitivity: it is rarely concerned with class, census or wealth…”

“…All the dimensions of inequality are equally important. Not just important, they’re real and inextricably linked. A school that is explictly racist and non-patriarchal is also, by default, against precarity.”

Matos, A. (ed.) (2022) Who can afford to be critical?: An Inquiry Into What We Can’t Do Alone, as Designers, and Into What We Might Be Able to Do Together, as People. 1st edition. Eindhoven: Set Margins’ publications. P.22

We discussed social justice within the university in our groups, and we all bought our own areas of passion to the table. (The headings below do not even get close to representing the full scope of the subject, they are just what we particularly focussed on)

Neurodiversity and HE

My personal area of interest for the purposes of this discussion was how students’ neurodiversity can affect their experiences and outcomes in a HE context. Some students may have long known they have some form of neurodiversity, while for others it only becomes apparent in a HE context where a lot of the guard rails of routine, familial support and educational support are removed.

It is all too easy for these students to fall between the cracks in a large institutional context, and the work that universities have already begun to address this is vital. Someone close to me has been repeatedly, profoundly failed by HE institutions, and as an educator, I am passionate about trying to truly see my students — and recognise where additional support is needed. I am still learning how good I actually am at this, but I want it to sit firmly at the centre of my practice as an educator.

There is of course a balance to be struck between supporting students and overwhelming hand-holding which actually serves to oppress them, and I am keen to learn more about what the team in disability support do so that I can better understand how to support my students within my role.

Socioeconomic background and HE

A big area of passion for our group was how students socioeconomic background can affect their chances of commencing and succeeding at university.

We all had a lot of opinions on student fees, and having learned about how the Robbins report in the 1960s opened up university education to a wider audience, and then how the Dearing report in 1999 shook up the sector again by asking ‘who should pay?’, these were helpfully contextualised in ways they maybe weren’t before for me.

The shockingly high student fees we see today cut off access to many students, and this was of great concern to all of us. For those who do make it, the costs of materials, excursions and other expenses can end up being severely challenging, and lack of ability to access these things can affect both outcomes and morale (and morale can affect outcomes!)

Addressing the systematic inequality and barriers that lack of financial capital can cause to students should be a big part of any university’s work — and indeed, as student fees grow ever higher, students themselves are becoming more and more willing to critique where they feel they are not receiving ‘value for money’ on what they have invested in their education. Universities should be willing and able to address these concerns.

One personal passion point for me is the importance of offering part time courses. This widens access to those who must work while studying in order to sustain their education. When I completed my MA, I first sought out a part time option, but this had been discontinued just a couple of years prior. Teaching staff acknowledged to me that the diversity of the cohort (in terms of age and socioeconomic status) had drastically decreased since this decision. As a mature student returning to study after a decade in industry, the only reason I was able to undertake my MA was the combination of a small amount of savings, and the pandemic (which meant that learning moved online, so less of a campus presence was required, and my own paid work had diminished). This was very far from an ideal situation in which to undertake study, and had there been part time options, I could have considered an MA at a different, probably much more optimal time, and maybe reached even more of my potential.

And what now?

It may be that ‘Social Justice’ as an all encompassing issue can never be ‘solved’. It is a ‘wicked problem’, which is so widely distributed and has its tendrils in so many complex aspects of our society, that all we can ever hope to do is make movements towards it. Social Justice most likely cannot ever, even theoretically, be fully resolved.

What is important is that we make space for these conversations to be had. I particularly enjoyed reading the chapter “From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces”, taken from The Art of Effective Facilitation: Reflections From Social Justice Educators.

They reflect on the notion of ‘safe’ spaces as often centring the experiences of the oppressor and their discomfort at being confronted, and instead suggest that participants in all social justice conversations need to instead bring ‘bravery’, and readiness to both speak, listen and learn.

“In this manner, we suggest that the language of safety contributes to the replication of dominance and subordination, rather than a dismantling thereof. This assertion does not mean we believe ‘anything goes’ is a better approach; rather, we suggest we do participants a disservice by reinforcing expectations shaped largely by the very forces of privilege and oppression that we seek to challenge through social justice education.”

‘From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces’ (2013) in The Art of Effective Facilitation: Reflections From Social Justice Educators. 1st edition. Sterling, Virginia : Washington, DC: Routledge.

For me, I will continue to reflect on my positionally. I have moved through a lot of spaces where these conversations are forefronted — at the studio I work for part time, Geeks For Social Change, our practice is centred around, as the name implies, social change and social justice. We are a team made up of queer, trans, neurodiverse, disabled, and often socioeconomically disadvantaged people (many of whom experience these issues intersectionally), and I recognise that as pretty much the only cis, neurotypical, non disabled person in our collective, a lot of the structural disadvantages that my colleagues experience are not experienced by me — and I ask how my work can serve to balance out these inequities.

I now need to take what I have learned, both at GFSC and from the wider anarchist/activist communities I have worked adjacent to for many years, and ask how I can transfer these conversations and ideas into my educational work. As was discussed in our session yesterday, while ‘social justice’ is not a solvable issue, we should constantly keep asking ‘how can I do things differently’, and ‘how can I keep moving in the right direction’.

Over my years of creative study (many) and creative pedagogy (fewer) I’ve often found myself mulling over how the ‘object’ is centred in arts education.

This can mean the object of creation, i.e. the inherent ‘materiality’ of our practice as creatives.

“The work and its development in art and design is present and central to an exchange of views. The material dimension carries the significance of the work and its meaning to be apprehended by the viewer and/ or the user. This dimension is significant because everything in our manufactured and commercialised world is designed and accessed through experience.”

P.94 Orr, S. (2019) Art and Design Pedagogy in Higher Education: Knowledge, Values and Ambiguity in the Creative Curriculum. 1st edition. New York: Routledge.

This can also mean artificially inserted objects — provocations supplied by the educator, or objects sourced by students at the promptings of their tutor, all of which aim to support, facilitate and focus discussion.

So it was pleasing to me that the subject of ‘object oriented learning’ arose several times during our first workshop on the PG Cert course.

First of all, in our opening round of ‘hellos’, we undertook an activity which I plan to steal for my own students — in our small groups we were supplied with a pile of ‘art postcards’, maybe as many as 10 per person in the group, so that there were plenty to choose from. Each person was prompted to introduce themselves, their pronouns, and where they work, but crucially also to pick a postcard and talk about why they chose it.

This was a great conversation starter and prompted some fascinating discussions spanning our tastes, art history, personal history and personal experience that really warmed us up, and felt surprisingly effortless, when these forced ice breakers can so often be otherwise. I suppose that, as a group of people who all presumably have an interest in visual culture, it was a certainty that we would engage with this exercise, but I like to think that even for those who aren’t, this activity would still work well.

It reminded me of when, around a decade ago, I lived in a particularly idiosyncratic shared house with lots of weird little traditions. Whenever a guest was welcomed into the house they would be pointed to a tattered pin up of a torn out page of a newspaper depicting 16 close up photographs of the faces of different insects, and the visitor would be asked ‘which one are you today’? Even in social situations amongst friends, an ice breaker can often be welcome, and the insects with their beguiling, enigmatic faces, offered a wonderful way in. (I still have it somewhere, and occasionally think about how I should dig it out and frame it).

For the exercise in our PG cert groups, I chose a postcard of “Refractor” by Alex Hanna.

This oil painting depicts an upturned plastic piece of packaging, probably a strawberry punnet, which is simply but realistically depicted. I have always been drawn to paintings that manage to accurately depict transparent manmade objects (mostly because it seems SO HARD in my experience), and was particularly drawn to this postcard from the selection due to the banality of its subject matter.

When I was an undergrad, I remember one of my first big ‘wow’ moments was realising the sheer extent to which design is everywhere. I’d long known this of course — packaging design from my childhood was one of the early prompts which made me want a career in graphic design. But realising that graphic design was even more widespread than I thought, and that wider fields of design like architecture, product design, experience design, and beyond, truly are everywhere (apart from maybe deepest nature, but frankly I am not interested in being there either) — it excited me, and it still does excite me, and learning to appreciate and analyse even the most banal, seemingly mundane designs in our day to day lives is hugely important to me, and something I want to impart to our students. Not least because:

“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”

Graeber, D. (2016) The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy. Reprint edition. Brooklyn, NY London: Melville House Publishing.

I have also centred the banal, mundane of day to day life in my own practice, with my long-running daily visual diary project often reflecting on the ordinary, and on truly seeing the world around you.

I try and encourage this act of ‘seeing’ and reflecting in my students. As I teach predominantly on User Experience Design, this is particularly important, as it is so easy to overlook just what is an ‘experience’ and what has been ‘designed’ — by centring an object (and reflecting on its history, the systems it works with and which bought it into being, its use and its future), it is possible to invite students to a deeper understanding of what kinds of work might fall within their remit, and what kind of changes they might be able to make to the world and its systems in future.

This thinking also ended up tying in with what I learned from fellow Pg Cert-er Campbell Muir, and his assigned reading, which focussed on object-based learning activities. (Willcocks, J. and Mahon, K. (2023) ‘The potential of online object-based learning activities to support the teaching of intersectional environmentalism in art and design higher education’, Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education, 22, pp. 187–207. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1386/adch_00074_1.)

He shared how the authors of the article got around 250 students from across a number of creative disciplines. During the pandemic, they were teaching online, and aimed to use ‘object based learning’, to educate students about the ‘intersectional environmentalism’ mentioned in the title of the article. They used a series of 18th and 19th century botanical paintings as their ‘objects’. They used these to start a discussion about how colonialism has affected the environment and contribute to climate change. The white/cream background of botanical prints is devoid of context — these paintings show things like tea, cotton, rubber — colonial products. The public just see the plant, but they don’t see the surrounding context — exploitation of indigenous populations, environmental degradation, etc.

The authors of the report reflected that centring these online sessions around a visual point of focus (aka the ‘object’) worked so well. Sometimes having an object is a good way of pulling quiet people into the conversation, and a good way more generally of getting people to actually respond and participate. By using an object, you are getting them to actively think about various facets of the object like how it was created and in what context, what it represents, and what hidden meanings might lie beneath its obvious surface form.

They also discussed the challenges of screen fatigue, and how effective it was to get students to go out find their own object in their own local area that related to the theme — a tangible, non screen based, real world experience, and a great opportunity for participation and sharing.

Overall it felt very connected to the thoughts I’d been having earlier about objects, and related to my own reading (Orr and Shreeve) around materiality, and also reminded me that an object, in an online learning context, need not necessarily be physical. (Our postcards at the start of the session were physical but they need not have been!)

During my MA in Graphic Media Design at UAL I experienced a couple of very clearly object oriented learning sessions, and both were hugely enjoyable in their own way.

In the first, which was delivered online during the pandemic, we were asked to identify a small object on our desk, and write on it in great detail — describe its physical form, how it feels to hold, how it may have been made, what it symbolises and so on. The goal of the exercise, if I remember correctly, was to warm up our writing skills and foster greater reflection on design in day to day life (which as mentioned, I love).

The second session was delivered by an Associate Lecturer on my MA, and it was made clear that it was a test session for his own research (it may even have been part of his PG Cert!) He bought in an unusual object which we could not identify (and I still don’t know what it was!) – once again, we reflected on the object’s potential purpose, meaning, construction as a group, taking it in turns to handle the object and share our thoughts. Once again, this was a really rewarding experience, based on a provided object rather than one of our own choosing.

I am excited to reflect further on how I can bring more object focus and materiality into my pedagogy. I now learn that our first micro-teaching session should be focussed on object based learning, so I look forwards to thinking more about this soon!

I first started teaching in September 2022. I’d always thought it might be something I’d enj0y, even from as early as high school. However, my perceptions of why I might enjoy it have changed over the years, and indeed, since I started doing it.

As a somewhat bullied, tormented teenager, the idea of being in (what I perceived as) a position of power was appealing. The knower of facts. The person who gets to issue the commands. Being a teacher is a softer way of doing this than some other careers that provide opportunities to showcase power and/or knowledge. However, I also knew (ever since I was a child), that I cannot abide spending time around children — so primary teaching was out. Due to aforementioned high school torment, the thought of having to attempt to control teenage students also filled me with stress, so that was out too, which only really left higher education — simultaneously the most appealing, and the most professionally daunting.

I graduated in 2010 with a 2:2 graphic design degree, which (as far as I was concerned at the time) ruled out any possibility of either a masters or a HE teaching career. I figured I was destined for a career of mediocrity, and somehow, leaning into the knowledge that I would probably never be ‘great’, freed me up a lot. I studied at the university of Brighton, where a lot of my cohort went straight into very prestigious careers at places like Pentagram, or high profile in-house positions like the V&A, or Moo, or Facebook. I was jealous at the time, but retrospectively I can see that the pressure would have crushed me. Mediocrity gave me a safe space to expand and experiment, and explore, and sometimes fail, but then pick myself up and try again.

I stumbled into an in-house position with a group of international colleges, and I stayed there for 10 years! I loved the work, and I loved what we did as a company, which was education. Our education primarily focussed on international students aged 14 – 25ish learning English. But we also offered A-levels and GCSEs at our colleges (with tailored support for international students), and this was where, through designing educational resources (alongside the more mercenary promotional campaigns for the colleges), I continued to foster a wider love for education as a concept. I came to understand teaching less as a position of power or dominance (though perhaps still a certain smugness of knowing things others don’t), but of genuinely enhancing our students lives.

When I would visit our colleges, I saw happy, smart, savvy kids from all over the world getting to know each other through their shared learning of the English language, and that is SO MUCH FUN. And it was us (well, the teachers, whom I occasionally facilitated with nicely designed resources) who were making that happen! That’s a good time.

After a few years working there, I expanded my practice to freelance work, and again, was lucky to fall into working with an educational consultancy who help big brands, charities and other organisations translate their messages into useful educational resources for teachers across primary and secondary age groups. This further expanded my understanding of what works and what doesn’t when it comes to design for education — so predominantly slides, worksheets, workbooks and so on. As I was doing this work I liked to imagine the teachers using my designs in sessions — how would they work? Would the kids love them?! Would the kids think they were some corny dumb shit like me and my friends would have done when we were in high school!? If the latter, what can I do to make this cooler, more convincing?

Fast forward a few more years, a bunch more clients along similar lines, and then the pandemic hits. I was furloughed and ultimately made redundant from the group of colleges I worked at, and for a solid 9 – 12 months, most freelance work dried up. Luckily I had some money in savings, so the greatest risk during this period was my own sanity.

Having previously dismissed the idea of doing a Masters as being beyond my abilities, I reconsidered. A few inspiring friends who all worked at LCC at the time convinced me, directly or indirectly, that I could manage it. And actually, after 10+ years in industry, lots of time for reflection, and greater growth as a person to understand my passions, I DID manage it, and graduated from MA Graphic Media Design at LCC in 2021 with a nearly-distinction 🙂 (merit)

As many other Associate Lecturers at LCC will be familiar with, completing a Masters, if you continue to be motivated, can be a promising path to the beginnings of a career in actual teaching, and so it was for me.

I was enormously lucky to be paired with Sîan Cook, an incredibly experienced lecturer whose values and ideas aligned perfectly with my own. We delivered a unit to second year BA Graphic Media Design students on activism within design (another area of practice that had grown for me over the previous decade), and I never looked back.

That said, I continue to be slightly shocked that they just let you teach without a qualification, though obviously there is a lot of oversight and support, so the model does work. I was still keen to feel a bit less like I was just winging it, and so looked into pursuing the PGCert as soon as I possibly could.

Since applying for a place on the course, I have switched to teaching on the BA UX Design Course, which has been another big and exciting learning curve for me, and due to the course being in something of a period of flux staffing wise, I have been offered a lot of opportunities to take on responsibilities and grow. I can’t wait to use the PG Cert as an opportunity to do this in a more informed way.

And my motivation now? My understanding of why I do, in fact, love teaching? Yes, there is a certain satisfaction in having knowledge and imparting it. Yes, it is fun to plan a lesson, tell everyone what to do, and have it go well. And yes, absolutely there is a great joy in seeing students lives get richer for — not just the experience of learning — but also the experience of just being in a higher education environment with their peers. But the greatest joy of all is the joy of knowing what you love (design!) and getting to share that with other people. There’s this super cool thing, and I get to tell you about it! And if I do it well, you will love it as much, or more than, I do! AND, you might go on to accomplish more with these skills and ideas than I ever could have done. It’s sowing seeds for a better future, of which I firmly believe design is a vital part.

Now I am just excited to learn to do it ‘right’…

My name is Emma Charleston, I’m a graphic designer, illustrator and researcher — I work part time at Geeks For Social Change, have a freelance practice with clients predominantly in the charity, culture and education sectors, and I make and sell silly zines and prints and stuff for fun. In 2020/21 I completed MA Graphic Media Design at LCC, with a particular focus on public transit infrastructure and its connection with surrounding communities in a COVID and post-COVID landscape.

I also lecture at UAL. I have taught on causes across the design and media schools, including Graphic Media Design, and professional practices. As of 2023, I predominantly teach on BA UX Design, acting as Year 1 lead.

I love teaching, and so far have had a reasonable amount of success with it, but often can’t escape from the vague astonishment that they just let me do it. So in 2024 I am undertaking the PG Cert qualification so that I can actually understand HOW I do what I do, and WHY I do it. I am particularly interested in the experiences of non-first-language-English students, introducing analogue processes into predominantly digital subject matter, the design of course materials, and why and how students remain engaged throughout sessions (or not)