Power, Voice and Democratization: Feminist Pedagogy and Assessment in CMC

Academic Technologies for Learning at the University of Alberta regularly conducts a faculty survey related to the use of, and attitudes towards, the use of learning technologies in both face-to-face and distributed learning environments. The 1999-2000 survey revealed some significant differences in the ways that female and male faculty approached the use of technology in teaching. Subsequently, the authors pursued these trends through a project of action research in which over 40 female faculty participated. The literature on critical feminist teaching in academia provided a context for this study. Learning design preferences revealed by the female faculty who participated tended to reflect relational values common to the design of learner-centred approaches that place a high value on interactions with students, such as computer-mediated communications (CMC). While many faculty who used CMC grieved the reduction, or loss, of face-to-face contact they also appreciated the increased intimacy of, and democratization inherent in, online conversation. However, this attribute highlighted conflictual feelings about the assessment of these conversations, as the culture of the institution is based on an uneven “power balance” in the classroom. This raised the question of how a feminist teacher understands and accommodates the requirements of learner assessment in environments like CMC, that encourage the construction of knowledge through collaborative conversation. This paper attempts to address this “problem of practice” for female faculty by reviewing and synthesizing the literature on critical pedagogy, feminist teaching, and the assessment of student learning in feminist classrooms. We discuss the assessment approaches used in CMC that are reflected in the stories of seven female faculty. Six issues are identified: necessary coercion, relocating authority, taken-for-granted assumptions, safety, and process as product, and addressing equity.