Tacoma Belonging Project: Student Digital Scholarship as Community Praxis

AUTHORS

• Davon Woodard, School of Urban Studies, UW Tacoma
• Erika Bailey, UWT Library, UW Tacoma

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ABSTRACT

This poster will explore The Tacoma Belonging Project (TBP), a central feature in the broader critical pedagogical redesign of the UWT Urban Studies Course Cities and Belonging (TURB 316).The TBP is a student-created digital scholarship project, hosted by the UWT Library, which can be integrated across disciplines to invite learners to engage theory in the creation of various multimedia and creative artifacts.

TURB 316 is an upper-level undergraduate course with the primary goal of learners understanding and articulating the diverse theories and dimensions of belonging, as well as how they are differently, or similarly, present across identities and communities. The collaborative digital scholarship final project goals include engaging in the community-based research methods used to identify and cultivate belonging; exploring the modes and means of communicating knowledge; and creating a job-market portfolio.

The TBP digital scholarship component was designed to connect learners to the wider community via a website using Alan Levine’s open pedagogical SPLOT WordPress theme. The sole parameter of the digital scholarship was that the learner’s contribution needed to be in digital form. In translating critical theory to community praxis, digital portfolios spanned topics and themes, including: a Google map catalog of publicly available kitchen resources in the city of Tacoma; an architectural floor plan and design of an inclusive safe space; an ethnography of anti-Asian Hate in the COVID-19 era; a qualitative interview on the barriers to housing and belonging; and the structures of subaltern communities. We believe that The TBP provides an example of how faculty and librarians can collaborate to provide meaningful learning opportunities in uncertain times.

SUMMARY

RESEARCH QUESTION

Student-created digital scholarship project, hosted by the UWT Library, which can be integrated across disciplines to invite learners to engage theory in the creation of various multimedia and creative artifacts.

RESEARCH METHODS / SCHOLARLY BASIS

The course was redesigned to center learning as a participatory process derived from Freire's critical pedagogy which creates learning environments of “empowering education, education that questions everyday life, identifies contradictions, makes critical connections with the structures of society that discriminate and acts to change things for the better.” The TBP used a SPLOT WordPress theme, designed by Alan Levine specifically for digital pedagogy. The sole parameter of the digital scholarship component was that the learners’ TBP contribution needed to be presented in some digital form, i.e. hosted on the site. In line with the critical pedagogical foundation of the course, the project was explicitly outlined so that learners could bring their own lived-experiences, skills and personal and academic interests into the project.

RESULTS

The benefits of using a SPLOT in the classroom is that it does not require students to learn any web design or coding. Thus, learner learning can focus on the content of the course while still achieving the central goals to engage with the community outside of the classroom and provide a digital portfolio piece. We believe that The TBP provides an example of how faculty and librarians can collaborate to provide meaningful learning opportunities in uncertain times. Learner digital portfolio’s spanned a range of topics and themes, including: “The Tacoma Kitchen Project,” a Google Map catalog of publicly available kitchen resources throughout the city of Tacoma; “Community Space for All,” an architectural floor plan and design of an inclusive safe space accessible for all Tacomans; and “Fatal Flaws of Exclusion,” an ethnographic exploration of anti-Asian Hate at the intersection of identity, locality, equality, local space, power, and place-making in the COVID-19 era.