Marisol Wong-Villacres, Adriana Alvarado Garcia, Juan F. Maestre, Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar, Heloisa Candello, Marilyn Iriarte, and Carl DiSalvo. 2020. Decolonizing Learning Spaces for Sociotechnical Research and Design. In Conference Companion Publication of the 2020 on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW '20 Companion). Association for Computing Machinery, N
As spaces for learning about Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) research and practice (e.g., university classes, academic and industry labs, conferences) become more diverse, there is a pressing need to revise the universal collaborative and pedagogical structures supporting them. Specifically, it has become urgent to explore how to ‘de-center’ dominant assumptions about who learns in these environments. The goal of this workshop is to explore collectively how to craft learning spaces that resist universality by recognizing and valuing other perspectives and realities.We build on the scholarship of decolonial thinkers, which provides useful theoretical scaffolding on how to start working towards inclusivity and ’pluriversality’. That is, learning spaces where all views can co-exist as equally valid, albeit contradicting. Our workshop will be led by researchers and designers who have both guided and participated in academic and industry-based CSCW learning spaces across domains like Social Computing, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD), Critical Data Studies, and Participatory Design (PD). We invite a broad range of participants from research and practice interested in learning about or deepening their understanding of how to make of CSCW a more ‘pluriversal’ site for learning and practicing.