Digital Universities Europe: Caring Transcends Time and Place

THE (Times Higher Education) Digital Universities Europe 2023 conference took place in Barcelona, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, on 23-25 October 2023. The programme included a wide range of pedagogical, digital support, e-learning support and pedagogical leadership perspectives. The conference had a pleasant balance between keynotes, presentations, and panel discussions, with good breaks and time for networking, booth visits and discussions.

Above all, the experience of place and time on campus and the programme’s arts and culture immersion felt invigoratingly holistic, taking into account the embodied nature of the human being. There was also room for multiple voices and views to be expressed. The humanistic and human-centred perspectives and the atmosphere conducive to critical and creative thinking was noticeable, as if flowing through the spaces, lights and sounds of Gaudí’s nature-inspired architecture into our digital reflections.

Leading pioneers in the field of digital pedagogy advised that if we as higher education communities are to be in any way prepared for the challenges of the future and the present, such as harnessing AI in teaching and learning, we need to give teaching staff the time and opportunity to engage in facilitated, open dialogue. They recommended that such facilitation should be systematically resourced and organised.

”Get your people ready”, stressed Vijay Kumar (Senior Adviser to the Vice President, Open Learning, MIT, USA) and Prof. Albert Sangrà (UNESCO Chair in Education and Technology for Social Change, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain).

It must be possible, at least occasionally, to allocate teaching staff work hours from full-time teaching to professional development and teaching development.

This aspect of well-being at work and an organised Communities of Practice peer support approach was strongly supported, among others, by the President, Prof. Oliver Günther (Universität Potsdam, Germany), Director Nanda Dimitrov (Centre for Educational Excellence, Simon Fraser University, Canada) and Managing Director George Ubachs (European Association for Distance Teaching Universities, The Netherlands).

What they stressed was also seamlessly integrated in my own invited presentation, in which I overviewed the University of Eastern Finland’s online and blended learning pedagogy facilitation activities as part of our university’s strategic teaching development process.

I argued that one of the main challenges for all of us in the field of online learning and teaching still remains the experience of isolation of both students and teaching staff. I suggested that as one response to this challenge, we must also reflect on our own teaching, communication, community-building and work practices in the broader context of critical digital pedagogy.

Otherwise, we risk falling into the trap of reinforcing digital hegemonies or even digital colonialism. Humaneness, mutual respect, caring for each other and ourselves must be the guiding principles of our actions. Each one of us is able to do this.

Photo by Susanna Kohonen. The Sagrada Familia, nave, towards the Passion façade.

I hadn’t thought of booking a ticket for the Sagrada Familia in time myself – it probably should have been booked about a month in advance. I tried to hunt online for the last overpriced tickets, but they were all sold out. I was gutted. The conference programme didn’t include the Sagrada Familia, but luckily, we did get a guided night-time tour of the Casa Milà, or La Pedrera, designed and built by Gaudí. The tour ended with a light show projected onto the roof structures, paying homage to Gaudí’s source of inspiration, nature.

On the last evening of the conference, I decided to visit a gluten-free pizzeria, not far from the Sagrada Familia. After dinner, I walked around the massive, illuminated church with even more massive cranes erected next to it. The project is still in progress. It was expected to be completed in 2026, but then the Covid19 struck the world.

Photo by Susanna Kohonen. The Sagrada Familia, the Passion façade, in the evening light.

The church had closed its tourist section hours earlier. Surprisingly, however, I noticed that people were getting in through the gate and security checkpoint to an area marked “Crypt”. My Spanish is pretty rusty, and all I knew in Catalan was “Bon dia”. I tried to ask the security guard in English what was going on, what was happening in the crypt, whether I could get in. He didn’t speak English. I thought that was that.

Fortunately, a local teenage boy was on his way the crypt and he interpreted my question to the security guard. I was allowed in. So, the crypt is a church, and the evening Mass of the local Catholic parish was still taking place.

Photo by Susanna Kohonen. The Sagrada Familia crypt church in the evening after Mass.

The crypt church was as big as any average church and packed with people. I found a seat in the back. The Mass in Catalan still continued for a while, at the end of which the priest invited everyone to stay on as next there was going to be a free concert by a visiting Dutch choir.

“Wow”, I thought, “This is great.” The ladies sitting next to me were speaking Dutch and I asked them if they knew anything about the concert.

“Yes, we are members of this large choir, this is our music group trip. But not everyone will be able to sing here in the crypt today, there is not enough space for us all. We are going to perform Handel’s Messiah.”

I couldn’t believe my ears – my jaw dropped, literally.

Handel’s Messiah is important to me, though I can’t really explain why. I listened to it on a tape player already as a teenager. Then, as I lived in England from 2000 to 2003, I got to go twice to a performance of Handel’s Messiah in London in the Christmas season, once at St Paul’s Cathedral and once at the Royal Albert Hall. In Finland, for some reason, Handel’s Messiah is not part of the Christmas or Easter traditions, unlike in Britain.

When the choir’s soloist started the part “The trumpet shall sound”, there was no point in trying to hold back the tears.

“The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality.” (1 Corinthians 15:51-53.)

It was only after the Barcelona conference trip that my Mom reminded me of the fact that my Dad had really liked Barcelona too; he had been there at a training event for IB upper secondary school teachers. I had been walking around Barcelona without remembering that my late Dad had been there too and had perhaps visited the same places I had.

It is exactly one year since my Dad’s sudden death. I haven’t written my blog in a year, and I haven’t done much else except what has been necessary. My Dad’s death was a shock, it was completely unexpected. One second he was there and the next he was gone.

We don’t know the time or the moment that will be our last. The death of my Dad certainly brought that ancient wisdom home. “Remember death but despair not”, exhorted the Desert Fathers, too. Remembering death is not about getting depressed or giving up – it isn’t about cynicism or selfishness, either. To me, it means keeping my eyes fixed on the unseen. In other words, it’s about contemplation, and how that contemplation would maybe have a chance to flow into my daily routines in the present reality, too.

So, on the last morning of the trip, I made my way to the Sagrada Familia at 8 AM to beg for a place on the guided tours. I felt like a real beggar. But I wasn’t going to give up. At the tourist information booth, a friendly guide decided to call her friend for me. It turned out that this friend’s tour had one more place for the same afternoon.

I was therefore able to marvel at the indescribable space and the light with which the setting sun of the late October afternoon coloured the unfathomably tall columns of the nave of the Sagrada Familia, called “the forest”. The open space scintillated in the orange-, red-, and yellow-glowing light of the stained-glass windows. What a treasure it is for us present day generations that Gaudí had held firm to his own vision, despite the disdain of many of his contemporaries.

This conference trip to Barcelona became a source of still waters for me, in many ways; both in terms of digital pedagogy and in my life as a whole.

Photo: Susanna Kohonen. The Sagrada Familia, nave, towards the Passion façade.