Jeremy Hunsinger: how to avoid the creepy treehouse of learning design

What metaphors might best describe some of the side-effects of the pandemic on universities, their staff and their teaching?  How can educators and their learners keep up with the increasing rapidity of new knowledge, and what do we mean when we say, ‘beware the creepy treehouse?’

In this episode, our guest is Jeremy Hunsinger, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. Jeremy writes and teaches about many topics including Critical Making, Critical Technical Practice, Internet Studies, Politics of Knowledge, Virtual Worlds, Interpretive Research Methods, and Interpretive Policy Analysis. But when he gave a presentation on the characteristics of the post-pandemic university, his metaphor of the dangers of creating ‘creepy treehouses’ for students meant we just had to invite him onto the podcast to tell us more.

During the conversation, Jeremy produced many lightbulb moments including:

• The idea of ‘professorial zombies’ as a consequence of digital representation and the proliferation of zoom recordings.
• challenging the model of the accelerated university, and courses as ‘career-orientated processing machines’, by moving from pedagogy to andragogy.
• how nostalgia for own educational experiences might be producing ‘creepy treehouses’ for students.
• how the move to online learning is pushing universities to do better around the student experience.
• challenging individualisation of learners through the idea of cohort admissions.

Enjoy the podcast!