Intentionally Equitable Hospitality in Hybrid Video Dialogue: The context of Virtually Connecting

Abstract

What special considerations do practitioners need in order to host equitable, hospitable, synchronous hybrid video conversations, where some participants are together in a room while others join remotely? Presented are intentionally equitable hospitality practices of onsite and virtual facilitators (buddies) that have emerged from experiences in Virtually Connecting, a grassroots movement that holds conversations at education conferences that include remote participants who cannot attend due to financial, social, logistical, health, or other reasons.

Framing Open Educational Practices from a Social Justice Perspective

“…VC creates a parallel mode of developing social capital, one that is not only accessible to people previously marginalized, but where those marginalized individuals became the designers of the experience. It has had transformative political impact for some, such as graduate students (see Bali, Caines, Hogue, DeWaard & Friedrich 2019) who note that VC has allowed them to "have equitable conversations with high-profile conference participants" (see quotes in Bali et al 2019) in an informal manner and to see these people "unplugged", while the graduate students "become heard, gain confidence, and develop reciprocal relationships with them over time, which empowers them as scholars" (see Bali et al 2019). Others have spoken of how it reminds the more privileged who are at conferences of who is not present and gives them an opportunity to listen to different views, thus having a cultural social justice impact (Bali et al 2019).…”

“…IEH suggests that in order for a practice to be equitable, "we [must] intend our practice to challenge power structures that contribute to unfair access and opportunities, in favor of emulating different power structures that promote greater equity" and "continually assess whether our processes and outcomes actually do this" (Bali et al 2019, para 1). IEH recognizes that VC conversations can reproduce power and exacerbate inequality if, for example, most participants are from dominant groups, or if conversations themselves are dominated by the more privileged participants (Bali et al 2019). IEH purposefully centers marginalized groups in the decision-making of which conferences to participate in, which onsite guests to invite, and whose voices to amplify during the session, both virtually and onsite.…”

“…VC, like Twitter, creates academic hierarchies outside traditional ones (Stewart 2015). Volunteers and participants develop social and cultural capital within the community (Bali et al 2019) which also sometimes translates into more traditional hierarchies, such as keynote invitations and job offers. VC's existence still valorizes the importance of conferences, as sessions are centered around them, thus it may be considered to be ameliorative rather than transformative.…”

“…However, VC challenges the importance of the formal scheduled sections of conferences and elevates an alternative element of informal hallway conversations. While VC can, for some participants and conversations, challenge academic gatekeeping and redress epistemic injustice, this is not always the case (Bali et al 2019) and a long-term transformative effect cannot be predicted, but is aspirational (Bali & Caines 2018).…”

Equity Unbound as Critical Intercultural Praxis

“…The website offers demos and materials educators replicate or adapt in their own settings. This work builds on our previous experience with Intentionally Equitable Hospitality (IEH) derived from our work with Virtually Connecting (Bali et al, 2019b). IEH is an approach for ensuring hybrid video conversations pay close attention to power dynamics in order to ensure spaces are welcoming and hospitable to the most marginalized of participants, not just in terms of intention and design, but in terms of the embodied and enacted experience.…”