Losing the Macro in the Micro

I am sitting here at my computer on Saturday morning typing out the start of this blog post and it feels weird. It feels weird to be at my computer on a Saturday morning when my Saturdays are for rest and reflection but this weekend is a bit different and I am going to flip things around. The main reason for me flipping things is that I have a meeting from 11-1 and it is a meeting that I have never been able to attend because it is in England but now through the powers of Zoom I get to be in attendance for my first ever meeting. This will still be posted on Sunday however, because consistency is one of the first pillars in blogging. 

It also means that instead of just relaxing this morning over coffee my mind has already been racing about the to do’s I would like to accomplish this weekend. One is this blog post, the others are the 5 books I have to read (but that seems like a bit much for one weekend to be honest). I have been having difficulty keeping up the pace of my reading lately and I think this is because of real exhaustion from trying to run the marathon of COVID life like a race. 

 

When I thought of what to write this post about I was contemplating something that came up in the EdX module I did last evening which was how anonymous (or “blind” but I don’t like to use this term because it is ableist) grading can benefit inclusivity. I am very interested in this because I have never done anonymous grading and I wonder how many of you who read this blog have graded this way. In particular, I am curious if anyone has done a reflection or a study on the inclusivity of such an approach- if having the names removed from the assignment has changed the way you grade assignments. I am going to do a bit more research and reflection on this topic because I feel there is certainly more work to be done on this especially in the world of remote teaching and learning.  

What I would also like to discuss or reflect on is the tension between micro and macro in this remote teaching and learning environment. This is also part of the discussion around assessments, assignments, activities, and grading. In this new educational landscape there has been a lot of focus on the micro. This appears in a well intentioned movement away from high-stakes assessments to more scaffolded lower-states assessments and formative activities in course design. This design would ideally help support students towards their larger summative assessments that are usually due at the end of term. However, the downfall of these small assignments and activities is that depending on how many courses the students are taking, as this tweet suggests, students may have anywhere between 10-15 small assignments due each week. Thus, we are actually losing the macro because of the focus of the micro.

There is in general not a lot of big picture thinking going on right now. We are certainly in general, not just in education, in a space where we are being very reactive instead of proactive. In some ways it is in the focusing on the micro that the immensity of the macro can be dealt with. However, we should not forget that the macro exists. We are still in a pandemic, we still need to approach our work with trauma awareness, and that it is in fact seeing a bigger picture to all that is happening that makes all the smaller things we do so important. Micro and macro is the perpetual tension of individualism in our society and world. 

Ruskin coined the term “illth” to be the opposite of wealth basically, “causing various devastation and trouble around them in all directions” (Unto This Last, 17.89). Individualism is illth, thinking about how we can support each other through our actions is wealth. “There is no wealth but life,” (Unto This Last, 17.105) says Ruskin, and we really need to emphasize this every day. Maybe we need a bit more blue sky in our gray days.