Hi! I’m Melissa McElhill, and I’m excited to take this deep dive into the world of digital education with you and our cohort.
A bit about me—I’ve spent over a decade working in marketing and communications, with a special focus on education. I currently work for Champlain College, promoting their online programs, and I’ve worked at other educational institutions and edtech companies over the years, such as Case Western Reserve University, D2L, and Education First. I hold a BA in History, so I naturally approach digital education with a historian’s curiosity and (what I would consider a healthy amount of) skepticism.
Now, why am I here? I want to understand what we mean when we say “digital education”, and to better understand its surrounding philosophies, debates, and schools of thought. I would like to be able to engage meaningfully in discussions about digital education with my friends and colleagues. On a personal level, I’m also testing the waters to see if a full master’s degree is in my future (for now, I’m enrolled in the certificate program, mostly because I’m moving and traveling quite a lot).
I also have a few questions:
- I’m eager to learn more about the rabbit/hare connection. Were they ever involved in scientific experiments related to education? Maybe they’re a metaphor for how fast-paced the digital world can be?
- Can other students view my blog, or is this blog between me and you, my blog tutor? Am I right in thinking my blog tutor is Michael Gallagher? What does, “Allow only EASE members to view this post/page” mean?
- Is it okay that I changed the blog’s title? I included my name in the subtitle to help make it clear whose blog it is.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
(Pictures from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Alice-in-Wonderland.net)
Hello Melissa,
A pleasure to get to know you a bit and I promise I didn’t assign myself as your blog tutor before I knew you originally hailed from Ohio! So glad you have made this first post and that you have personalised this space here. Well done, a spirited start that I look forward to building on over the coming semester.
A few points in response:
1. You will find many of us come from arts/humanities backgrounds so that historical skepticism will prove invaluable. You will find that despite us being a digital education programme, we at times are quite critical of how technology is being used in education, how it changes the nature of teaching (often in reductive ways). Historical ways of knowing are helpful here in particular as so much of digital education is presented as a break with tradition, with history itself. It neglects the institutional and sector histories that predate the shiny new thing. I just wrote about this recently in Gallagher, M., Nicol, S. & Breines, M. Ghost Hunting in the Broken Archives: Re-Historicizing Digital Education in an Institutional Context. Postdigit Sci Educ 5, 643–664 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00330-3. So keep the historian hat on!
2. Rabbit/hare: this is the mascot of the programme essentially as it is represented mythologically as a shapeshifter, contorting to the conditions it is presented. Of course, it is also fast so an illustration of the field of digital education. The hare predates me and stretches back to the origin of the programme in 2005 (created by Professor Siân Bayne, who also created the Centre for Research in Digital Education: https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/sian-bayne).
3. ‘Can other students view my blog, or is this blog between me and you, my blog tutor? Am I right in thinking my blog tutor is Michael Gallagher? What does, “Allow only EASE members to view this post/page” mean?’ Right now it is just you and I. Rovincer and Ben can see it as well but we only check the ones we are assigned. No other student can see it. The EASE language refers to the single sign on (SSO) for Edinburgh so if you check that, other students can see it if and only if you share the link with them.
4. ‘Is it okay that I changed the blog’s title? I included my name in the subtitle to help make it clear whose blog it is.’ Yes indeed. I know this is you and have noted it accordingly. Make it your own (as you have done!), make it a home.
So I will be here every Monday morning checking your blog Melissa and offering all the feedback I can possibly muster. We think this 1:1 at the onset of the journey is critical so I sincerely hope you find it productive. If you find yourself having follow up questions to my feedback, do ask them and I will offer answers to that as well. My job is to make this as enriching and rewarding an experience as I can. But hopefully you find it fun as well (I certainly do!). Stay well Melissa!
Hello Michael! Thank you for your response. So, you traveled halfway across the world to teach students in NE Ohio!
Based on the nature/requirements of the course, I was thinking of posting in the weekly forum on a Wednesday, and then using the weekend to respond to others’ posts and to write up my CIDE blog post, which I now know you are checking on Mondays! (Can you tell I like routines?)
I am thrilled to be on the course. Thank you for making us feel so welcome. I will attend live online sessions when I can and ask as many questions as I can manage!
You are very welcome Melissa! Happy to have you with us. The timeline you propose for weekly activity sounds perfectly reasonable to me. As I said, I will be here every Monday morning to provide feedback on your posts and any questions you might have. I truly look forward to our exchanges over the next few months!