The Spaces of Networked Learning
Symposium Organiser: Siân Bayne, School of Education, The University of Edinburgh.
Symposium Introduction
Education has to date taken surprisingly little account of the so-called 'spatial turn' which has been evident across other areas of the humanities and social sciences in recent decades (Withers, 2009; Guldi, nd). New spatial vocabularies help us shift the assumption that space functions as a ‘static container’ (Fenwick et al, 2011: 129) within which individuals act. Rather, space is increasingly seen as a dynamic entity which is produced by the social and material interactions which take place ‘within’ it. As Fenwick et al (2011) make clear, for forms of education which have to do with media, technology, distance and the online, ‘the ordering of space-time has become a critical influence’. The distancing and networking of education make possible new spatial practices, new patterns of movement and ‘new proximities’ (129).
In discussions of online education and the nature of the digital, there has been an historic tendency to see the apparent ‘fluidity’ of 'networked' spaces as inherently liberatory, as providing an educational topology which is somehow freer, more democratic, more ‘open’ simply by virtue of the otherness of ‘cyberspace’ (Bayne, 2004; Edwards et al, 2011). Such discourses continue, influenced now by the promises of democratisation and accessibility-to-all of the ‘open education’ movement (for example Caswell et al, 2008). However, as Edwards et al (2011) point out, ‘Mobility through cyberspaces is neither inherently emancipatory nor positive and relies upon its own immobilities and moorings’ (226): it is important to maintain a critical and broad perspective on the spatial orientations of online education, not simply to privilege the more obviously networked and fluid spaces of the internet.
Thus our aim in this symposium is to present various perspectives on the constitution of space in networked learning, in order to come at a critical understanding of the various spatial orientations of education conducted within the multiple social topologies of the internet. Papers will weave a pathway through online higher education, distance education, workplace learning and educational governance, working with the consistent themes of mobility and spatial theory. Our session will combine 2 full papers with 3 short pecha kucha sessions in order to dynamically present a range of different perspectives aimed at stimulating and provoking discussion and debate around the notion of educational space beyond the 'network'.
Spatial theory in networked learning
Richard Edwards, School of Education, University of Stirling, UK.
Over the years, there has been much discussion of the impact of the internet and new forms of data sourcing and communication for education and the ways in which networked learning breaks down the bounded the institution, classroom, and curriculum. While much attention has been given to the changing spaces of education introduced by new technologies, and the use of spatial metaphors in the framing of educational practices, the impact of spatial theory on the discussion of such education is less well developed. Space is left unexamined as simply a different context, container or backcloth for curriculum and pedagogy. This paper draws upon aspects of spatial theory to examine the ways in which the mobilities and openings made possible by the introduction of technologies also entail mooring and boundary marking in order to give the technologies specifically educational purposes. The paper outlines a number of spatial theories, in particular, the contemporary uptake of theories of (im)mobilities. Work on (im)mobilities has developed from the interplay of post-structuralist theory with complexity and actor-network theory. The paper explores its implications for researching networked learning and suggests that rather than consider education as focussed on practices of learning and teaching, we could more fruitfully consider it as spatial orderings or (im)mobile assemblings in the enactments of curriculum and pedagogy.
Keywords
Space, mobilities, space-time, code/space, networked learning, actor-network theory
The Global Institution, the Homely, and the Overwhelming: (per)forming three MOOC spaces
Jeremy Knox, Institute of Education, Community and Society, University of Edinburgh,
While being a relatively recent phenomenon in higher education, the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) has attracted significant media attention for offering free participation and attracting unprecedented enrolment numbers, often in the tens of thousands. Coursera, and edX have emerged as the principle MOOC platform providers, entering into partnerships with a significant number of higher education institutions, mostly located in the US, and promoting themselves as global organisations that disrupt geographical barriers to higher education. MOOCs are often marketed in terms of accessibility and egalitarianism by providing unproblematic admittance to university education. However, the space of the MOOC is significantly under-theorised, and like much of education in general it is often ‘left unexamined as simply a different context, container or backcloth for curriculum and pedagogy’ (Fenwick et al. 2011, p220). This paper draws from spatial theory and the mobilities turn to consider what kinds of spaces are being (per)formed in the emerging domains of the MOOC. It will describe three different enactments of space: the ‘global institution’; the ‘homely’; and the ‘overwhelming’, involving from the promotion of particular MOOC platforms and the activities of two specific courses. The paper will draw upon visual, discursive and technological elements in these examples to consider how notions of space can be articulated and enacted through promotion, participation and digital intervention. ‘Global-institutional’ space concerns the ways that MOOC platforms advance an arrangement that maintains the traditional structure of the institution alongside claiming a global reach. ‘Homely’ space involves promotion of a local community building as the locus of course activity during a specific MOOC, privileging a central and authentic site of scholarly occupation. ‘Overwhelming’ space concerns participant responses to an unconventional MOOC utilising distributed social media spaces and encouraging student-created content. Student responses from this course will be used to enact the space of the MOOC, not as the passive scenery external to educational activity, but rather as an active and relational process which emerges within; through relations with the subjects, activities, technologies and objects of online education.
Keywords
MOOC, spatiality, mobilities, sociomaterial.
Mobile work-learning: Spatial re-orderings and digital fluencies
Terrie Lynn Thompson, School of Education, University of Stirling.
This short paper (and Pecha Kucha presentation) explores new mobilities and spatial re-orderings of adult work-learning practices. Attention is given to the more sophisticated digital fluencies that seem to be demanded of adult work-learners and the pedagogical implications for educators. Sociomaterial perspectives encourage thinking about how “thingly gatherings” serve in the performance of practice. The unbounded blurry nature of the web and its artefacts can perhaps be described as fluid spaces enfolding with other fluid spaces. Thus, web-based spaces are not containers in which online learning activities take place but rather sociomaterial assemblages that take on particular energies as people and things—both online and offline—negotiate how they move, mix, and mobilize in their correspondences. Analysis draws on empirical data from a research project that explored the effects of the infusion of web and mobile technologies in the enactment of the global work and everyday learning practices of the contingent workforce (the self-employed or micro-small business entrepreneurs). An array of mobilities became evident in these practices, including interactions that slide in, through, and between different cyberspaces; the persistent infusion of the digital and physical into the other; and often capricious and vacillating patterns of presence and absence. However, alongside the mobilities that become evident in these practices, immobilities were also prominent. Using the sociality of practices around mobile devices as an entry point to explore this contradiction, it seems that forces and flows of mobilities are also tied to specificities of place. Although the physical becomes entangled with the digital to enact a specific work-learning space, such spatial re-orderings are not always easily accomplished. Moreover, the often overlooked and invisible spatial negotiations evoked to enact mobility unfold in multiple work-learning places: at home, on the move, in third spaces, at the office, field-based temporary work sites, and innumerable online spaces. This multiplicity adds complexity to how work-learning spaces are conceptualized. Several digital fluencies (a mix of expertise, responsibility, criticality, and innovation) emerge, urging pedagogical and policy response. Four will be highlighted: navigating scale, negotiating openness, wayfinding (Siemens, 2011), and fragmenting-tethering. How to work through the challenges of addressing these fluencies and how best to interrupt current practices are questions facing both educators and adult worker-learners and I hope this paper prompts such discussion.
Keywords
Actor Network Theory, mobilities, mobile devices, adult work-learning practices, space
Policy networks, database pedagogies, and the new spaces of algorithmic governance in education
Ben Williamson, School of Education, University of Stirling.
Educational governance in the UK is increasingly being performed through cross-sectoral ‘policy networks’ and emerging forms of ‘network governance’ that signify a shift in political practices from centralized state government to a wider system of public, private and third sector interdependencies. This involves two shifts in the ‘governable spaces’ of educational policy: 1) a shift in the space of governance from central government to decentralized delivery based on a model or a ‘diagram’ of governance through networking and database architectures; and 2) a related shift in the space of educational governing practices from a focus on the national space of the education system to the mind and body of the individual as a ‘lifelong learner’ and a potential future person-in-the-making. This respatialization of educational governance entails moving from a focus on the ‘governable space’ of the education system, part of the public sector, to ‘governing through pedagogy’ in order to sculpt and mould the individual learner. The paper examines the participation of a particular policy network of third sector organizations in educational governance. Its approach to both educational governance and governing through pedagogy has as its objective the formation of ‘lifelong learners’ for a ‘pedagogized future’ which is to be interwoven with the algorithmic forms of the network and the database. In outline, the paper examines how third sector organizations aim to make education thinkable and intelligible through discourses and images that are based on the algorithmic forms of the network and database architectures. This is continuous with what has been termed in political science as ‘digital governance’ or ‘algorithmic governance.’ Digital governance operates through an ‘intelligent centre/decentralized delivery’ model which depends on the mobilization of a combination of networked communication technologies and database-driven information processing technologies. Then the paper examines how related new governing practices have been mobilized which seek to act directly through network and database technologies upon the thoughts, feelings, conduct and action of individuals. In particular these include social networking sites and other social media applications, and database-led ‘learning analytics’ and ‘adaptive software,’ which depend on complex algorithmic data analysis processes, as new forms of governing through pedagogy. Through these tactics, third sector organizations are seeking to reconfigure educational governance through decentralized networks and database architectures, and to reactivate individuals as ‘lifelong learners’, ‘mobile bodies’ and potential future persons-in-the-making through network-based and database-driven pedagogies.
Keywords
algorithms, analytics, databases, governance, governing, governable space, policy networks
Disrupting the illusion of sameness: the importance of making place visible in online learning
Philippa Sheail, Jen Ross, Digital Cultures and Education group, School of Education, University of Edinburgh.
This article challenges what the authors consider to be the potential for ‘illusions of sameness’ in online learning in higher education. Drawing on the work of Dall’Alba and Barnacle (2005) and Sidhu and Dall’Alba (2012) on disembodied education, and on work by Ross et al (2013) on ‘making distance visible’, the authors consider strategies for ‘bringing the outside in’ in digital education. If we accept that the local context of the student is important, and recognise the significance of bodies and embodied knowing, particularly in relation to professional practice, in online learning environments, the authors ask what strategies educators might adopt in terms of recognising and communicating bodies and locales in digital spaces. How might the illusion of sameness be disrupted? Two examples of disruption from the MSc in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh are outlined: the participant map, and the digital postcard.
Keywords
Place, space, cosmopolitanism, online learning, distance, visibility, difference, embodiment.
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