Inquiry Oasis Season 3: Jill Castek

Join us for an interview with Dr. Jill Castek and host, Dean Regina Deil-Amen.

Dr. Castek, a former teacher and literacy specialist, is a professor in the department of Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies (TLS) and is the co-director of the Digital Innovation and Learning Lab (DIALL).

More than just a tech-filled room, DIALL is a dynamic community hub where students, educators, and local partners come together to explore, create, and showcase digital learning experiences. 

From welcoming high school students thinking of becoming teachers to supporting graduate students as community leaders, DIALL is a living example of how education can adapt to the digital age while remaining deeply human. Dr. Castek’s research, including her work with community-based maker spaces and the NSF-funded Research Coordinated Network, underscores the importance of inclusive, innovative environments that foster inquiry and connection. 

In this episode, Mia Perry's book Pluriversal Literacies: When Words Are Not Enough is brought up as suggested reading.

Transcript

Jeffrey Anthony:

Welcome to the Inquiry Oasis, the University of Arizona College of Education's podcast, here in the heart of the Sonoran Desert. We bring you conversations with our esteemed faculty members and staff whose research impacts lives from Southern Arizona to the far reaches of the globe. We explore the transformative power of education in this border town where diverse cultures and ideas converge, weaving a tapestry of innovation with compassion and a sense of wonder. So, join us as we journey through the sands of curiosity, unearthing insights that enrich and inspire. Sit back and relax. As we invite you to dive into the inquiry oasis.

Dean Deil-Amen:

I am here today with Dr. Jill Castek, who has been studying literacy for about two decades, but in today's technology, soaked reality, literacy is not what it used to be. Dr. Castek's research is helping us develop just the type of new understandings we need because she explores what literacy looks like and how we can develop it across today's various learning contexts and changing modalities, which is something we need to better capture as we move into the future of teaching and learning in our schools and in our colleges and universities. Not only that, Dr. Castek is working to implement her research expertise into teaching practice in new and exciting ways, which we will talk about during this episode of our Inquiry Oasis podcast. 

Hi Jill. How are you doing today? 

Dr. Jill Castek:

Hi Regina. Thanks for having me today.

Dean Deil-Amen:

I'm going to start our podcast by asking you to share three words that you think represents why you are passionate about what you do. 

Dr. Jill Castek:

I'm really interested in collaborative learning, community building, and creativity in all of its forms, especially inquiry learning. 

Dean Deil-Amen:

And what else would you say? Any other words that you'd use to describe yourself?

Dr. Jill Castek:

Yeah. I'm excited about literacy and learning and intersections with digital tools, networks, and learning environments. 

Dean Deil-Amen:

All right, great. Can you give us a little intro about who you are and what you do here in the College of Education? 

Dr. Jill Castek:

I'm a professor of literacy technology and multicultural STEM learning, and I study how literacy and learning are evolving and being transformed by digital and online resources.

Dean Deil-Amen:

So, one of your projects that I'd love to talk about is DIALL, and that stands for Digital Innovation and Learning Lab. Can you tell us a little bit about that? 

Dr. Jill Castek:

Project DIALL is a space in transition that has been evolving and developing over the last nine or 10 years, and it's recently taken a huge transformation over the summer of 2025, with many new offerings for understanding, developing and having spaces for digital learning. 

Dean Deil-Amen:

Wow. Can you take a step back and tell me exactly what is DIALL. 

Dr. Jill Castek:

DIALL is everyone's space. It's a place to learn and take risks in a supported environment where creation and innovation can blossom. You don't need to know a lot about technology or you don't even have to have an affinity for it.

You could bring an open mind and open heart with you into the space and create something you're passionate about or interested in, and DIALL helps you to take steps to inquire and develop that idea to create something digital. You can be inspired, you will take your creation through a process, and this can be from a class project, from a personal interest, from a community involvement that you may have going on and as you design your outcome, everyone's learning from everyone. And so, you draw inspiration from those around you, from those who know more than you and can help you to evolve your idea into what it will ultimately become in the process, we're creating connections, we're building relationships, and we're coming together to grow and learn together.

Dean Deil-Amen:

Wow. That's fascinating. It sounds like what everyone wants a classroom to be. So, since we are not a video, but we are an audio podcast, let's try to help people envision what does this DIALL space look like? And maybe we can talk about some examples of how it can be used. 

Dr. Jill Castek:

When you come into DIALL, it may look like a room with many technologies available, but it's really community space. And so, I think about it as a community hub. There is an opportunity to envision ideas. So, talking about them, thinking about them being able to refine them with peers or with mentors or even myself. And once you have a good idea, then it's the transformation of how do you want to execute that idea? Do you want it to be a soundscape?

Audio? Do you want it to be a video? Do you want it to be a model? Do you want to analyze data? And with the tools that are available in DIALL, you can take your idea from just the beginning generation into a real envisionment. There are, there are steps along the way. Uh, there's an envision space. There's a create space.

So, there's many different opportunities to edit your work down, to be able to make it what you want it to be. And then it's also a showcasing space and uh, it will be used as a space to put up student work, faculty work, community based work, so that there's a chance to see all the digital innovation that has taken place in the lab and around the lab.

Most recently, over the summer of 2025, there's going be a video and audio podcasting station, and this is really exciting for us because podcasting has become a great way of communication in this digital world. So, if you can imagine, uh, video podcasting, bringing outside experts in to have conversations about learning, about inquiry, about topics of the day and audio podcast too, which are the way that we're doing today's podcast, uh, in an audio-based format.

So, this is available to students, faculty, teachers, community members, and as we unroll and unveil the new programming, there'll be steps along the way where we can learn together, have workshops, get to see and become familiar with the technology, and then the support available to make it happen. 

Dean Deil-Amen:

All right. Thank you so much for that explanation. It sounds like the College of Education will greatly benefit from this space. I mean, it will help us become more of, like you said, a hub for demonstrating, learning, and better understanding how to teach and learn how teaching and learning happen. And so, is this space also available for faculty outside the College of Education, across the university?

Dr. Jill Castek:

Yes, I know that there are many spaces around the university where similar things are happening, and I'm thinking, for example, of Catalyst Studios. DIALL differs from those kinds of spaces because it's really intended to support the digital innovation component of it, and we need support with that in the College of Education.

I think around the university we need support with that because technology is constantly changing. There are new innovations happening all the time, and there's many different ways to envision your ideas and to support learning and DIALL evolves as the technologies evolve. Our programming evolves as the technologies evolve, and it's really just dream big, come with what you want to do and we'll make it happen. 

Dean Deil-Amen:

Excellent. So can you give some examples of how you have used this space or intend to use this space as it relates to, I guess, graduate students and undergraduate students learning to be teachers as well as people who are already teachers in our communities and local schools.

Dr. Jill Castek:

We've used the space to welcome in local high school students to think about envisioning themselves coming to the College of Education and being teachers in the future. And, uh, our graduate students have set centers aside to, uh, envision what that might feel like and look like for these high school students.

So, we've had, uh, a digital storytelling station. We've had an envisionment station where you tell your personal story of why you want to become a teacher, uh, and many other things related to robotics and, uh, augmented reality. And that just kind of opens high schoolers eyes to be able to see, well, what, what's the future of learning here and what does it feel like to come to the College of Education at the University of Arizona?

And again, these stations are, uh, designed and implemented by our graduate students so that they get a chance to showcase what they're learning in their program. And many of these are focused on classes that I teach, so it helps them to be able to be community leaders while at the same time showcasing what the College of Education has to offer.

Dean Deil-Amen:

I think it's really impressive how you've been using your past research to take us into that future of learning. Can you talk about maybe what some of the most surprising outcomes have been, uh, of your own research and research projects? 

Dr. Jill Castek:

A couple of the research projects that are most related to dial are actually related to community-based maker spaces, and these maker spaces exist in many places in our communities.

They exist in, of course, K 12 schools, libraries, museums, and, uh, community-based spaces as well. So, we're, we're pairing with people to do research to build community networks. One through NSF called the Research Coordinated Network. And that, uh, is looking at how do you welcome everyone into a space like this?

Um, it is an equity issue. Some people gravitate toward technology because they think it's something that they're really good at. And you think about the 3D printer, or you think about a vinyl cutter, and that's one kind of creation. But there's many other ways to bring, bring in aspects such as digital storytelling or video making, or just thinking about how to create a model or analyze data, uh, and create a visualization. 

And so, um, through the process of collaboration and innovation and sharing and exchanging ideas, we think of this as, uh, sort of everyone learns from everyone model, uh, and it doesn't just have to be one thing. Um, so the, the work through, uh, the support of a couple of grants through NSF has helped to create a network of people who are evolving their making spaces in different ways.

Sometimes it's craft, sometimes it's actually physical, um, making of things. But sometimes it could be a community event where you bring in high schoolers who want to do a soundscape or a rap and it can showcase poetry or the connection between poetry and video making, uh, digital beats, music, uh, there's many different connections to the arts as well.

And all those are great learning opportunities to see what the digital world has to offer and how it can support, um, putting your ideas out there and, and seeing the envisionment of what they can become. 

Dean Deil-Amen:

Wow. A lot of what you're talking about is making me think about, you know, what the future of learning online will look like.

You know, when I say learning online, I think about people who are now engaging in online coursework, virtual classes, and how it almost sometimes is more of a solitary experience. And what you're talking about is creating collaboration, creating connection, bringing back the exciting and inspiring parts of learning into those spaces.

Is that relevant you think to the future of what it will be like learning? Digitally, remotely, those kinds of things?

Dr. Jill Castek:

We're all connecting in many digital ways across our learning and our personal lives, and, uh, what's exciting about this is the audience for coming together and learning, sharing expertise, and then having an audience to showcase what it is you've made, created and want to share with the world is widening because of digital technologies like remote learning.

And so, uh, we can't bring every single expert in the world into the College of Education. But through some of the portals that we've set up in the DIALL labs, such as the large scale Zoom screens, we can do some collaboration with experts that lie outside the College of education. Widen the audience to be able to have in-person and uh, online events happening simultaneously, both in classes and in showcase community-based events.

Dean Deil-Amen:

Alright, well, I want to know really what has inspired you? So, can you talk about a book or a paper that's meaningful to you that you might recommend to our audience, um, and talk about its impact?

Dr. Jill Castek:

Well, currently the work that I'm doing is focusing a lot on decolonization and so I've been reading this summer and writing a few things about pluriversal literacies.

This is a concept that has been created by, uh, Mia Perry and her colleagues in Edinburgh. Um, but it's very wide approach, uh, that looks at pluriversal design, pluriversal literacies, and it's an examination of diverse ways of knowing and knowledge making. Understanding that this isn't just a single knowledge base, there isn't a single universal truth, but it brings into coordination multiple valid ways of meaning making, engaging with the world, and grounding in specific cultural, historical, and relational context. So, you could see how this very related to dial from a theoretical standpoint.

Dean Deil-Amen:

It's, it is quite philosophical. Um, can you help us understand how does that concept of pluriversal literacies compare to what maybe old concepts of literacy?

Dr. Jill Castek:

I think every one of these concepts is related and so many people think about multimodality in this way as well, where when we learn, we think about the multiple touchpoint of ways that we gather information and also create ideas.

And that is, uh, you know, audio, video, gestural. In many different other modalities, uh, what this idea has done, uh, more contemporarily is to think about the global connections that we make around the world. So how can you take an experience of taking a nature walk and Columbia and think about the envisionment of how you can make that, uh, understandable to somebody who lives in another country or another culture who may speak a different language?

And it, it showcases that we are not educators who come to this with, uh, privileged way of thinking and knowing. Our global ways of thinking and knowing, our collaborations with community members enrich our perspectives to be able to share ideas in meaningful and multiple ways, and that's the pluriversal part.

Dean Deil-Amen:

That's a wonderful way to end our podcast. And I'd like to ask you at this point, um, if you were going to give some words of welcome to those who want to be part of this space, uh, what might you say to them? 

Dr. Jill Castek:

I'll say, uh, welcome, DIALL is everyone's space. We're undergoing a huge transformation in Summer 2025 and in Fall 2025 we're kicking off a lot of new events. You'll be welcomed into the space in multiple ways, through some workshops, some lunch and learns, some connections to all the departments across the College of Education, and also to come in and just see what's happening. Bring your class, come yourself. We'll have opportunities for fishbowl. We'll have community-based events, and if you don't know what DIALL is by the end of the Fall 2025, we want to make multiple touch points so everybody can be involved and connected to the space, and hopefully it will make its way into your own teaching and learning.

Dean Deil-Amen:

Well, Dr. Castek, it's been such a pleasure speaking with you today, and this is such an incredible example of churning your research and your expertise into concrete practice that we all can see, that we all can participate in. And um, thank you very much for joining us.

Dr. Jill Castek:

I really appreciate the opportunity and uh, thanks so much.