Hybrid Teaching

Book excerpt: How can education survive in a post-truth era full of alternative facts and a reality-TV star armed with nuclear codes and a Twitter account? We must recognize that teaching is political. Schools need to help students counter the social erosion of trust in knowledge. Preserving that trust, we have seen, can help preserve democracy.Trust, like politics, involves people. In their classes, people learn to see themselves as members of communities and also to engage the world around them. Schools have a responsibility to support students as they learn. With the rise of anger-fueled nationalism around the world, it is clear that caring for others has never been so vital.It is also clear that technology and capitalism will not solve education's problems. Social media companies promise connection but create echo chambers and conspiracy-mongering. Ed-tech companies promise insights and solutions while delivering surveillance and suspicion. Education must connect the personal to the technological-it can no longer afford to work offline. All teaching is necessarily hybrid.Pedagogy, people, and politics influence each other, and educators of all stripes have an opportunity-a responsibility-to build human connections with ethical technology.Gathering the voices of over two dozen progressive educators, this volume combines perspectives from across academia and around the globe. The authors in this book use critical digital pedagogy as a guide for navigating today's turbulent global political climate. Timely and accessible, Hybrid Teaching challenges higher education faculty and administrators to consider the political implications-and the political power-of teaching.