Teaching across borders: inclusive pedagogy and critical media practice in a global online classroom

This article addresses the teaching practice, pedagogical creativity and tensions of six international graduate teaching assistants and one ranked professor in delivering a large-format, online Introduction to Communication and Media course at York University in Toronto, Canada. The course examines critical approaches to Canadian communication and media studies and unpacks the ways media produce and challenge relations of power and injustice. While the content and structure of the course focus on Canada, students and instructors hail from around the world in a multicultural virtual learning environment. In light of this, we teach students to situate their own uses of media within relevant cultural and historical contexts, both in Canada and globally; how these uses shape and are shaped by their location within systems of power; how to articulate the relationships between everyday uses of communication technologies and the infrastructures and institutions that shape them; and how to analyse the technical, cultural and political dimensions of key communication technologies, both contemporary and historical. Using narrative inquiry as a method and a critical autoethnographical approach, and informed by principles of critical, decolonial and inclusive digital pedagogy, this article reflects on the ways we link critical media theory and critical teaching and learning praxis in a multicultural online classroom. The article also suggests ways to mainstream the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals on quality education and reduced inequalities in courses that do not explicitly relate to development and sustainability education.