Just Jess

  • Are we more divided now than ever?

    We see it in our news feeds, our timelines, our email inboxes. They are all filled with loads of stories suggesting we are really, deeply divided. This comes to mind. Politics feel precarious. Wars, insurrections, and more. Gender, sex, bodies, abilities. Race, class, historical reckonings. Traffic! I yelled at a man driving through my neighbourhood…

  • Can Trust be Built Online? A Journey Toward Creating Brave Spaces

    You bet your boots it can. Early in the pandemic I read an article where someone claimed that trust could not be built online — that it was one of the rich ingredients of life we were missing with our new, quarantined existence. Meaningful connections, where trust is built and shared, the author claimed, weren’t…

  • What is Co-design?

    Maybe you’ve recently made a commitment to Inclusive Design. Maybe you’ve found yourself ‘behind’ in the ‘racial awakening’ — maybe you’ve been asleep and missed the awakening of the last hundreds of years. No matter! Now you’re working toward inclusion — you understand it’s an important piece of moving forward: you simply can’t check your…

  • An Attempt to Disrupt Education (Part 3)

    In those first few moments we had done a lot of behind-the-scenes work. You see, in those first moments there is a special opportunity. That is when we either reconcile ourselves to ‘the ways things are expected to be done’ or we commit to doing it differently: we are either complicit or we insist on…

  • An Attempt to Disrupt Education (part 2)

    All of the details mattered: the door I entered, the hoodie sweatshirt I was wearing, my nervousness, my first time on campus and in this room, that split second first impression — this is the context in which we all began something. There were slightly more than 20 of us. The students weren’t quite sure…

  • An Attempt to Disrupt Education

    Part 1 I was nervous. It was the first day of class. I dutifully got there 15 minutes early and sat outside the classroom — thinking of just how to make a good first impression while feeling my heartbeat hard in my chest. The class was scheduled to start at 7. I slowly entered the…

  • Popularity, Righteousness and Ethics in the time of Coronavirus

    Do we cancel? Should we go anyway? Should we cancel in-person classes? Should we go online? Should we go into the office? Should we encourage remote work? How many people together is too many? Is it time to be deciders? How will we know when it’s the right time to decide? Who will decide?? It’s…

  • Binaries, boxes, the grid and sorting — an exploration through habit, form, function, art, and philosophy

    So, I want to tell a story of a pretty pivotal moment in my life. I went to University in ‘the city that care forgot’. I knew next to nothing about the place, but I knew that in March, when my hometown in Missouri was a mix of mud and snow and filth, the magnolias…

  • ‘Open’ and ‘Inclusive’: what the heck are they?

    (how we misuse both) (Part 1 of 2) Open, open source, open education, open data, open science, open access, open open open. Are you open? How will you know? What is Open? Is there nuance in Open? Inclusive spaces, inclusive conversation, inclusive language, inclusive design, inclusive culture. Are you inclusive? How will you know? What…

  • ‘Open’ and ‘Inclusive’: how we get both wrong

    (and not know it, but kind of sense it, and do it anyway) (Part 2 of 2) We’d be hard-pressed these days to find a company or an organization that isn’t using the words ‘open’ and ‘inclusive’ to describe some aspect of their work, their culture or their approach. Sometimes it’s used without a lot…