Leah Barlow, professor in the Liberal Studies at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, willing to give her introduction to Afro -American Studies class this semester as she always does: she put together a syllabus, charged assignments and created one Tiktok account to make the material to be made as accessible as possible.
She posted a video on January 20 and welcomed her 35 students on the course. The next morning it appeared in the algorithm of enough Tiktok users who had subscribed to 250,000 people on her channel.
Within a few days, the videos of Dr. Barlow unintentionally inspired a loosely connected network of black educators, experts and content makers that is known as Hillmantok University, a free – and not – accredited and unofficial – online Take on the Country's HBCUs or historic black universities and universities.
In lectures given in Tiktok-length Bursts, and in longer sessions above TIKTOK Live, give instructors lessons in gardening, organic chemistry, culinary art and other subjects. On the receiving side, the organizers are an audience of around 16,000 registered users.
“I think this has been in the making,” said Dr. Barlow last week in an interview from her office in Greensboro, NC “You have accessibility, not only because of Tiktok, but you also have people who don't have to be in the ivory tower to speak. That is something that I am beautiful find it necessary.
The hunger for information also comes before the start of a second Trump administration. Dr. Barlow posted her video hours after President Trump was sworn in and was quickly about dismantling federal programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. Many academics fear a drop of effect in education.
“I certainly think that the political time and the environment are fighting a lot,” said Dr. Barlow, adding that Mr. Trump's attack had given diversity programs “fresh urgency” to a project that gives priority to black voices.
Cierra Hinton, a former math teacher in Augusta, Ga., And a founder of Hillmantok, watched the original post of Dr. Barlow and some of the early videos inspired by it. “Am I woke up in Hillman?” She remembered that she thought, referring to Hillman College, the fictional HBCU in “The Cosby Show” and his spin -off, “A Different World”. A name for the movement was born.
Kennddrick Pringley, a publicist and DJ in Tampa, Fla., Was also one of the thousands of tap users who are the original post of Dr. Barlow met. Now he is Hillmantok's student Union President and part of a group of about 40 content makers who have become volunteers who saw an opportunity to organize themselves.
In the light of the uncertainty about the future of education policy under a second Trump administration, Mr. Pringley said that a 'social media university' could offer a space to combat the online information that circulates online.
“Education is limited, covered, damped and silent,” he said. “This is a moment and a movement that can teach the mass everything they really should know.”
The organizers of Hillmantok built a website, complete with a course catalog and registration page, and started supplying regular updates on the Hillmantok Tiktok account. There is a board of directors and the student's board; Many members of both bodies spent long nights on Zoom creating a formal structure for Hillmantok.
“We march together to ensure that everyone has a chance for a free and honest education,” said Mr. Pringley.
When Brandi Smith the page of Dr. Barlow met, she was disappointed that the class was not really open to the public. Yet Mrs Smith, who went to the Spelman College before graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design, the syllabus Dr. Barlow posted and started holding studies sessions on her Tiktok page, including topics such as the documentary “13th” of the filmmaker Ava Duvernay; The songs “This is America” by Childish Gambino and “The Revolution Will Not Televised” by Gil Scott-Heron; An episode of the TV program “Atlanta”; And the essay “Why I won't vote” by Web du Bois.
“It was an opportunity to communicate with black women at a level that really spoke to my mind,” said Mrs. Smith.
For André Isaacs, a professor in organic chemistry at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, Hillmantok offered an opportunity that he had long dreamed of: using his growing social media to share his passion for chemistry and education.
“We need science literacy in our country,” said Dr. Isaacs. “I want to contribute to the fact that people understand the molecules that are in the skin care products that they use, and what does that mean if we say the word acid, what does that mean at a molecular level?”
Dr. Isaacs said that around 1,000 people have registered via Zoom or Tiktok Live to hear his first Hillmantok lecture. Since then, around 3,000 people have registered on his website to receive course material, including recorded lectures, lesson plans, homework assignments and even quizzes, together with an open-source textbook and a discussion channel on Discord, the Message app.
Dr. Isaacs was very enthusiastic about helping to demystify a subject that is often considered inaccessible.
“Tuition fees are nowadays priceless expensive, so many people do not have access to, especially a lot of black and brown children,” he said. “If they just had insight into what it looks like or perhaps a leg up in terms of the materials, that would help build their resilience and their enthusiasm on the subject.”
Dominique Kinsler from Orlando, Fla., Uses Hillmantok to change the perception of another topic that many see as a high entry threshold: gardening.
“Every time I learn something, I want to teach other people,” she said. “It's a lot to do while I work,” referring to her career as a pharmacist, “but it's a passion. It doesn't feel like a chore.”
Mrs. Kinsler has taught himself to garden during the pandemic and attracted hundreds of thousands of followers with the instructional videos she places under her social media handle, Pharmunique. So when Hillmantok came up, a gardening 101 class seemed like a natural fit.
Her first Hillmantok video received around 1,000 views the next day within 30 minutes and more than 1 million. She has received such an enthusiastic response to her Hillmantok class, she said, that she is working on a textbook. Her approach is simple: people learn to garden in the space they have available to them.
Hillmantok came to a 'crucial turning point', said Mrs. Kinsler, especially when it comes to the influence of politics and disinformation.
“People have a little fear of what education will look like in the future – will we be able to learn these things?” She said and added that the recent federal tap ban increased that fear. (The app stopped working briefly this month before he flickered back to life after Mr Trump said that he would sign an executive order that the enforcement of the ban postponed.) “It felt like someone was taking a piece of power from us,” said them.
Now, with Hillmantok, people follow a different approach, Mrs. Kinsler said: “Let me get a notebook. I want to learn. “
Or in the case of Mrs. Kinsler, fresh plants instead of a pen and paper.
For their last project, followers of the Hillmantok course by Mrs. Kinsler will be asked to show the fruits of their work: a video of their completed garden.
