Guidelines for creating a safe space in the online classroom

Adapted from Dr. Susan Shaw, Oregon State University

Make a personal commitment to learning about, understanding, and supporting your peers.
Assume the best of others in the class and expect the best from them.
Acknowledge the impact of sexism, racism, ethnocentrism, classism, heterosexism, ageism, and ableism on the lives of class members.
Recognize and value the experiences, abilities, and knowledge each person brings to class. Value the diversity of the class.
Participate actively in the discussions, having completed the readings and thought about the issues.
Pay close attention to what your classmates write in their online comments. Ask clarifying questions, when appropriate. These questions are meant to probe and shed new light, not to minimize or devalue comments.
Think through and re-read your comments before you post them.
Never make derogatory comments toward another person in the class.
Do not make sexist, racist, homophobic, or victim-blaming comments at all.
Disagree with ideas, but do not make personal attacks.
Be open to be challenged or confronted on your ideas or prejudices.
Challenge others with the intent of facilitating growth. Do not demean or embarrass others.
Encourage others to develop and share their ideas.
Be willing to change.

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Discuss Readings Forums

Learning outcomes

As a result of the following activities, students will be able to:

Discuss feminist theory, women's choices, race and cultural issues, and barriers related to gender and technology
Summarize the major issues, statistics, and historical significance of technology developed and/or used by women and men
Research and present history and current trends of women and men and technology of different cultures/ countries
Interpret, compare, and draw conclusions of trends and analyze technologies from feminist perspectives.

Scoring Criteria

This activity will is worth 10 points per week (total 60 points). Scores are awarded based on these criteria:

Original Q&A posts are a minimum of 500 words.
Sources are cited as per APA or MLA.
- Links to the articles/books/sites are embedded in the title of each if it is online.
Replies to others' posts are a minium of 300 words.
Replies to at least 3 others' posts are completed.

Activity Instructions

In these readings you'll find the most intriguing questions and answers/solutions and offer them in the forum for others to respond to:

Sometime Wednesday, post a question from the weeks' readings that you found most intriguing.

Make a new thread titled with your question.
Start with the question in the first line of the post.
- Note which article/page you found the question.
Follow up with several new paragraphs that answer the question and/or provide solutions.
- Cite the required reading where it helps answer the question.
  - Embed links to each site/article.
  - This task earns the first point.
- Research and cite other sources that support your opinions and experiences.
  - Refer to books, statistics, scholarly articles, interviews, personal anecdotes, surveys, etc.
  - This task earns the second point.

Before the following Monday 9:00am:
- Read all the posts.
- Respond to at least three others' posts (but not more than 5).
  - Challenge the opinions of others but back it up with research.
    - Cite these sources.
    - This task earns the third point.

Tips

If you need to modify something in your original post, please click on your post then click the Modify button. Make changes, then Save/Submit again.
- This will keep others from having to respond in two places.
- I've set the Bb forums to allow modification. If you find you are unable to modify a thread, please let me know and I'll try to fix the problem.
Click Subscribe if you want to add a bookmark to your Bb threads.
- This allows you to see a list of responses right from your browser. No need to login unless you see others have responded with questions and more information.
- Try it and let me know what you think in a blog post.

Schedule

Week 1 Social issues

The Fire this Time, Young Activists and the New Feminism: Vivien Labaton and Dawn Lundy Martin. Anchor Books. 2004. Read the introduction, pages xi to xxxvii.
Techno Feminism: Judy Wajcman. Polity. 2004. Read the Introduction and Parts 1 and 2, pages 1-55.
Women, Technology, and the Myth of Progress: Eileen B. Leonard. 2003. Prentice-Hall. Chapter 1. Excellent overview of major issues.
Why Systers?: Dr. Anita Borg, Founder and President, The Institute for Women and Technology. 2001.

Week 2 Activism

Gender and ICTs for Development: A Global Sourcebook: Critical Reviews and Annotated Bibliographies Series. Edited by Minke Valk, Sarah Cummings, and Henk van Dam. KIT Publishers, Oxfam GB, and CTA, 2005. Download the book; this link leads to a .PDF file. Save the file to your hard drive: ShowFile2.aspx and change the file extension to .pdf so the file name looks like ShowFile2.pdf. (This worked for me on a Mac from FireFox browser v. 2.); PDF and Video. 2010. Expert Panel Discussion about why there are so few women in technology fields. .
The Gender Chip Project (.rm file): Movie viewing (54 minues) and review of supporting materials. De Michiel. Ecampus is unable to provide this movie online. Please order it from the OSU Valley Library or view it at the library. Thank you.
Fair Play: Achieving Gender Equity in the Digital Age: Movie Viewing.Ecampus is unable to provide this movie online. Please order it from the OSU Valley Library or view it at the library. Thank you.
Virtual Gender: Performing Gender/Technology as Freedom: Judy Wajcman. Polity. 2004. Read Techno Feminism, Part 3, pages 56-77.

Week 4 Women who've succeeded against the odds

Women in the History of Technology -- Women Inventors: Susan Davis Herring. Presented to the Society of Women Engineers, Huntsville chapter, on March 4, 1999, for Women's History Month.
Video Interviews: A growing list of online interviews.
The PDK Poster Project: Encourage scientific literacy, promotes the public's awareness and appreciation of science and technology by humanizing the image of research science and female scientists.
Discovering Women: High Energy Physicist Melissa Franklin: WGHB 1995 60 minutes. Ecampus is unable to provide this movie online. Please order it from the OSU Valley Library or view it at the library. Thank you.
Interview with Carolyn Leighton on Founding WITI: Movie viewing: Women in Technology International founder tells how and why she founded the group.

Week 6 Financing education, business, and technology development

Gender and the new economy: regulation or deregulation?: Sylvia Walby. Presented to ESRC seminar ‘Work, life and time in the new economy’. LSE October 2002.
Microlending: An Anti-Poverty Success Story: Helen K. Chang, Stanford Graduate School of Business. May 2004.
InfoExchange MicroCredit: Women’s empowerment, or a debt trap?: By Laxmi Murthy.
Tactics of Global Abusers: Debt as a Tool for Establishing Dependency: Katheryn Temple. The Fire this Time, Your Activists and the New Feminism. By Vivien Labaton and Dawn Lundy Martin. Anchor Books. 2004. Read the Part 3, pages 120 to 149.
Seven Experts on Funding Strategies to Increase Science and Technology Opportunities for Girls: By Shireen Lee. Three Guineas Fund; Viewpoint. San Francisco, CA. January 2001. Three Guineas Fund creates social change by investing in economic opportunity for women and girls.
Women and Profits: Search string at Google.com. Read other articles here as needed.

Week 8 Feminist Pedagogy

Choose articles pertinent to your Activism Project.

Quick introduction

How can feminist pedagogy promote the empowerment of women?: By Shehna Jabbar, Janice Jones, Anu Kashyap and Magdalena Rydzy (OISE/UT). Edited by Daniel Schugurensky 2002.
Gender Differences in Learning Style Specific to Science, Math, Engineering and Technology (SMET): Donna Milgram, National Institute for Women in Trades, Technology & Science (IWTTS). Introductory Unit, Reading 1.
Articles are provided in downloadable Acrobat (.pdf) files after you login to the OSU library.
The Interests of Full Disclosure: Agenda-Setting and the Practical Initiation of the Feminist Classroom (DIRECT PDF): Nicole Seymour
Making the Connection: Extending Culturally Responsive Teaching through Home(land) Pedagogies (DIRECT PDF): by Nadjwa E.L. Norton and Courtney C. Bentley
"It's the Supreme Court, Stupid": A Simulation Approach to Feminist Teaching (DIRECT PDF): by Laura Van Assendelft
A Room of Our Own: Girls, Feminism, and Schooling (DIRECT PDF): by Marnina Gonick, Laura Shannon, and Amy Allison
A Portrait of a Feminist Mathematics Classroom: What Adolescent Girls Say About Mathematics, Themselves, and Their Experiences in a "Unique" Learning Environment (DIRECT PDF): by Dawn Leigh Anderson. Ignore the incorrect title of the referring page.
Awakening Teacher Voice and Student Voice: The Development of a Feminist Pedagogy (DIRECT PDF): by Jill Weisner

More articles

Find additional articles related to gender and pedagogy

Optional Activities and Readings

Field Trip to Toy Store: The new girrls play with smart phones, wave boards, DS, Wii, laptops. Visit a toy department's "pink/girls" section and the "blue/dark boys" section. Compare the types of toys, number of electronic toys, and variations on a theme regarding electronic toys.
The Gendered Advertising Remixer: A Media Literacy Web Application, 2012. Designed by video remix artist Jonathan McIntosh and built in collaboration with coders and developers during the Open Video Conference in 2010 and 2011.
Field Trip to Electronics Store: Now visit an electronics department for adults. Compare the types of gadgets available. Are there gendered variations? How do they operate and how are they being marketed?
Unlocking the Clubhouse; Women in Computing: Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher. MIT Press. 2003. Optional, quick read that shows us why women are not partaking in computing education and related employment.
A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century: Donna Haraway. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181.
The Cyborg Solution: Judy Wajcman. Polity. 2004. Read, Techno Feminism, part 4, pages 78-101.

Week 9 Promotion

An Independent Media Center of One's Own: A Feminist Alternative to Corporate Media: Joshua Breitbart and Ana Nogueira. The Fire this Time; Young Activists and the New Feminism. Viviein Labaton and Dawn Lundy Martin. Anchor Books. 2004. Read pages 19–41.
The New Girls Network: Women, Technology, and Feminism: Shireen Lee. The Fire this Time; Young Activists and the New Feminism. Viviein Labaton and Dawn Lundy Martin. Anchor Books. 2004. Read pages 84-106.

Peer Review Forums

Learning outcomes

As a result of the following activities, students will be able to:

Interpret, compare, and draw conclusions of modern activism projects and analyze technologies from feminist perspectives.

Scoring Criteria

This activity will is worth 10 points each week (total 40 points). Scores are awarded based on these criteria:

Reviews of at least three student's projects are completed.
Each review is a minium of 500 words.
Each project criterion is scored or commented on (see project description).

Activity Instructions

Students will review students' subprojects in the Forum to see how well they meet the scoring criteria and to provide constructive feedback.

Post a thread to the Review Peers forum named/titled with your lastname, firstname. In the Description box, paste in the address of your blog's home page. Also paste addresses to supporting database project materials if you have them online.

Schedule by week

Week 3

Peer review of Blog/Research and Database Development project:

Review the instructor's two examples and I'll review yours.
- Delicious/GenderTechnology/interviews
  - Pam Van Londen and students. 2007-2010. Four-hundred plus resources hosted by Delicious, related to gender and technology. View the list as a cloud or alphabetically.
- Database Report for Role Models ~ video interviews of women technologists
  - Pam Van Londen. 2007. Database development report summarizing the tools, process of research for the Activism Project.
Learn a new skill: Embed links to each site/article used in the discussion.
- Note that linking within Wordpress is different from linking within the Bb discussion forum.

Week 5

Peer Review of Activism Plans

Week 7

Peer Review of Financial Analysis projects

Week 10

Peer review of Completed Activism Projects