Digital Difference. Perspectives on Online Learning

Digital Difference

EDUCATIONAL FUTURES RETHINKING THEORY AND PRACTICE Volume 50 Series Editors Michael A. Peters University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA Editorial Board Michael Apple, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA Miriam David, Institute of Education, London University, UK Cushla Kapitzke, Queensland University of Technology, Australia Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Australia Mark Olssen, University of Surrey, UK Fazal Rizvi, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA Linda Tuahwai Smith, University of Waikato, New Zealand Susan Robertson, University of Bristol, UK Scope This series maps the emergent field of educational futures. It will commission books on the futures of education in relation to the question of globalisation and knowledge economy. It seeks authors who can demonstrate their understanding of discourses of the knowledge and learning economies. It aspires to build a consistent approach to educational futures in terms of traditional methods, including scenario planning and foresight, as well as imaginative narratives, and it will examine examples of futures research in education, pedagogical experiments, new utopian thinking, and educational policy futures with a strong accent on actual policies and examples.

Digital Difference Perspectives on Online Learning Edited by

Ray Land University of Strathclyde, UK

Siân Bayne University of Edinburgh, UK

SENSE PUBLISHERS ROTTERDAM/BOSTON/TAIPEI

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-94-6091-578-9 (paperback) ISBN: 978-94-6091-579-6 (hardback) ISBN: 978-94-6091-580-2 (e-book)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editors’ Preface ....................................................................................................... vii Ray Land and Siân Bayne DIGITAL SELFHOOD 1. The Purloined Email: Death, Desire and Academic Subjectivity in the Haunted University ......................................................................................3 Cate Thomas 2. Structure, Authority and Other Noncepts: Teaching in Fool-ish Spaces ............15 Hamish Macleod and Jen Ross 3. Lurking on the Threshold: Being Learners in Silent Spaces ...............................29 Maggi Savin-Baden, Christine Sinclair, Christine Sanders and Second Wind TRANSFORMATIONS 4. Difference and Discontinuity – Making Meaning Through Hypertexts .............45 Colleen McKenna and Claire McAvinia 5. Speed and the Unsettling of Knowledge in the Digital University .....................61 Ray Land POLITICS OF THE DIGITAL 6. Logos and Mythos: The Political Dilemmas of Web 2.0 in an Accreditation-Driven Educational Environment .................................................73 Michael Begg, Rachel Ellaway, David Dewhurst and Hamish Macleod 7. How the Earth Moved: ‘Difference’ and Transformative Learning in an Online Course on Global Citizenship ..................................................................83 Leah P. Macfadyen and Anne Hewling 8. Negotiating the Digital Divide: Narratives from the Have and the Have-Nots .............................................................................................101 Debbie Holley and Martin Oliver 9. E-learning, Constructivism, and the Disappearance of Difference: Pedagogies of Productivity in the Modern Workplace .....................................115 Karim A. Remtulla

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A DIFFERENT GENERATION? 10. Beyond Difference: Reconfiguring Education for the User-Led Age ............133 Axel Bruns 11. Appropriation of Mobile Phones in and Across Formal and Informal Learning .....................................................................................145 John Cook and Norbert Pachler 12. ‘Digital Native’ and ‘Digital Immigrant’ Discourses: A Critique ..................159 Siân Bayne and Jen Ross List of Contributors ................................................................................................171 Index .......................................................................................................................177

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EDITORS’ PREFACE

DIGITAL DISQUIETUDE

Discussing the manner in which digital culture within education might differ from its ‘analogue’ predecessors incurs the risk of resorting to increasingly roadworn metaphors of new frontiers, ‘cyber’ domains, inter-generational conflicts and, inevitably, the futurist utopias and dystopias characteristic of western media throughout the twentieth century. These imaginings now seem to belong to an earlier era of internet thinking, and we are perhaps freer, over two decades on, to re-evaluate digital difference from new perspectives. ‘That can only be a good thing;’ suggests Gunther Kress: ‘it frees us up to think a bit more slowly, with a bit more deliberateness, about which things move at what pace’ (Kress 2007). We have moved on from over-simplistic analyses of ‘difference’ based on generational determinisms, with a significant literature now available which reveals a far more complex picture of student attitudes to technology. This is one which resists homogenising claims for the existence of a ‘net generation’ while emphasising the cultural embedding of technology – and in particular social media – within the lifeworlds of students. It also demonstrates a general scepticism among students relating to the value of online approaches within formal education. (Jones et al., 2010; Jones and Healing, 2010; Kennedy et al., 2008; Salaway et al., 2008; Selwyn, 2008). Despite these more measured and empirically-based assessments of the operations of digital difference, moral panics remain readily available. Carr’s (2010) recent work on internet use, for example, worries that our neurological structures will be irrevocably modified, to our detriment, by dependence on search engines, while others, such as neurobiologist Blakemore (2010) have responded dismissively to such suggestions, countering such proposals by emphasising the plasticity of the brain, and pointing out that the basic genetic make-up of homo sapiens has been essentially unchanged for a quarter of a billion years. As Carr’s recent publication and the ensuing reviews indicate, a sense of disquietude seems ever present when discussing new digital practices. And to some extent perhaps it should, as the transformations incurred through new digital practices can be profound, troublesome in nature and far-reaching. Indeed, it is probably true to acknowledge that more or less everything that we encounter will have some effect on our cognitive processes – how could it not? But what is more interesting, for the purposes of this volume, are the opportunities opening up through these cultural shifts, the changes in ways of thinking and the re-invention of conventional practice that digital work seems to be fostering in the academy. It is these which form the body of the work presented in this volume.

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CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY AND (ENVIRONMENTS OF) LEARNING

The chapters in this volume had their first airing at the final gathering of the ICE series of international symposia (Ideas in Cyberspace Education) organised by the Universities of Strathclyde and Edinburgh at Ross Priory on the shores of Loch Lomond in Scotland.1 In his keynote address Professor Gunther Kress emphasised the inevitable and ubiquitous link between technology and culture, however simple or complex the technology. It could not be otherwise, he argued, as our human, social and cultural resources can only go so far ahead of or away from what they are and where they have come from. Culture is, in that sense, he observed ‘an inertial force’, as are social factors, in two ways. ‘First, cultural resources are involved in the shaping of technologies in the first place; in that sense we cannot jump over our shadows. Second, in their social settings, that is, culture in the field of power, cultural resources set the field of potential application (and transformation) for that technology’. He also remarked that it is a commonplace to say that technologies are linked. ...while different technologies have their own rationale and dynamics, they are integrated in an environment where everything affects everything else. So for instance, one would not expect the changes in distribution and function of authorship, which digital technologies offer, to be independent of changes in authority, which characterize the much larger level social changes in which the users of digital technologies are embedded. Both must be seen in terms of the effects of changes in power from state to market, from citizen to consumer, which shape the lives of the users of the technologies. (Kress 2010) The chapters that follow in this collection reflect this complex embrace of culture, power and technology in relation to the learning environment. A variety of significant, often inter-related issues and challenges arise from the topics that they address. These range from social questions of consumption, speed, uncertainty, and risk to individual issues of identity, selfhood and desire, ethical matters involving equity and authority, as well as structural questions of order and ambiguity. From these themes emerges an engaging agenda for future educational research and practice in higher education over the coming decade. PERSPECTIVES ON ONLINE LEARNING

Digital Selfhood Cate Thomas in her striking opening chapter on the Haunted University draws attention to the way in which, given a gradual shift from an ‘analogue’ to a digital university, the uncanny or unheimliche nature of the online world is likely to replace the sense of a stable, fixed and knowable world (albeit perhaps misperceived as such), to one that is shifting and ambiguous. She presents the digital university as haunted in the sense that it affords numerous technological means of constructing the self, and in a witty but faintly disturbing analogy with the restless and unpredictable journey of a stolen letter in Edgar Alan Poe’s short story The Purloined Letter she demonstrates how email messages, as just one indicative digital technology viii

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employed within the university, have the same quality of ‘nowhereness’ as Poe’s notorious missive. The academic subject is haunted by often hastily written texts circulating through the digital university beyond their control and producing a situation where their selfhood becomes ‘clearly unfixed, de-stabilised, split, uncertain and constituted by the readings, utterances and gaze of others’. They lose authority and have little control over their self construction, yet like ghosts cannot ‘die’, as their spectral selves are endlessly reproducible. Like ghosts also they are ‘forced to speak and know in contexts not of their choosing.’ Hamish Macleod and Jen Ross (Chapter 2) are also concerned with the ambiguity and liminal nature of the online space. They note that in such spaces ‘social engagement and hierarchy become less clearly defined’ and this in turn renders the teacher’s authority online a ‘tricky’ matter. The same unstructured nature of the digital space that can offer rich opportunities and connections to foster learning and construct new meanings can also prove difficult for the tutor to regulate. In such terrain, they argue, the tutor’s role ‘is not to regulate, but rather to participate and provoke in creative and playful ways that open up passages or possibilities in chaotic online spaces’. They explore this notion further through the metaphors of jester, fool and trickster, seeing such potential positionings as a ‘frame of mind’ or ‘approach to being alongside students in challenging, chaotic, digital environments’. Such fool-ish practice offers ways of modelling ‘secure notknowing’ and ‘enjoyment of ambiguity’ as well as helping students cope with complexity and sense-making in environments that are uncertain and relatively disordered. They view this kind of disruptive practice as a form of troubling knowledge that will provoke students to see anew. Reporting on their experience of being e-learners in a range of digital environments, including immersive virtual worlds, Maggi Savin-Baden and Christine Sinclair (along with their Second Life avatars Christine Sanders and Second Wind) (Chapter 3) explore the notion that being an e-learning student ‘can sometimes feel like being in a silent space’. This seemed to take the form of a ‘pedagogical immobility’ and sense of ‘stuckness’. Drawing on Meyer and Land’s (2003) notion of threshold concepts, the authors characterise these experiences of lurking and stuckness as ‘liminal states resulting in liminal identities, which for most of the course have resulted in “chronic uncertainty” about ourselves and our relationships to the new environment’. In keeping with threshold theory the state of liminality tended to be characterised by ‘a stripping away of old identities, an oscillation between states and personal transformation’. Nonetheless both authors reported progress across thresholds and through liminal states and, interestingly, discovered that their immersive world avatars performed actions in Second Life that have led to their real life counterparts rethinking some of the things they do in their day-to-day practice in universities. Transformations Colleen McKenna and Claire McAvinia (Chapter 4) explore the opportunities that digital environments offer for new academic writing practices. Observing that whereas many academic digital texts occupy new sites of writing production, and ix

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often depart from conventional essay form, they remain broadly linear in terms of how they organise knowledge. Their interest is drawn to academic hypertext and how student writers in digital contexts are experimenting with hypertextual forms or how new curricula are making use of new digital writing genres. Through detailed examination of student scripts these authors conclude that hypertextual practice challenges conventional academic genres ‘by knowingly disrupting linear organisation and privileging the gaps that such an approach affords’. Hypertext, they find, requires new organisational techniques which displace standard argumentation, relying instead ‘on screen design, visual motifs and juxtaposition through linking. From a broader educational perspective this new form, the authors suggest, ‘might liberate the thinking of student writers as they work outside of established, and probably internalised, essayistic paradigms.’ The chapter by Ray Land (Chapter 5) argues that the nature of academic knowledge is inevitably being transformed in the digital university when its modes of production and exchange employ technologies that operate at the speed of light. Though wary of the perils of technological determinism, he draws on Virilio’s analysis of the relation between speed and power to differentiate the changing nature and uses of knowledge in digital environments from those familiar to us from print-based culture. Print culture, he contends, ‘in the form of the stable, bounded, individual and private text, has tended to operate within, and to reinforce, patterns of authority and identified authorship.’ On the other hand digital environments, ‘more protean and restless in nature, tend to be more concerned with image, openness, multimodality and collectivity.’ Their increased emphasis on collaboration, group self-regulation and self-explanation may lead to changed academic subjectivity, while technologies that operate in ‘fast time’ present significant challenges to practices based in the deliberative and contemplative ‘slow time’ of the cloistered academy. Politics of the Digital A new model of the digital academy – based on devolution and collaboration as opposed to hierarchy, traditional authority and exclusivity – is envisaged by Michael Begg and his colleagues Rachel Ellaway, David Dewhurst and Hamish Macleod (Chapter 6). These authors however anticipate political tensions between the unfixed and de-stabilised characteristics of digital spaces discussed earlier and the concerns and priorities of accreditation-focused institutions. They identify ‘Web 2.0’ as, in many ways, ‘just the latest challenge to reactionary and authoritative cultures in higher education and, as such, ... an essential part of the academy’s lifecycle’. They anticipate that the academy’s embrace of the digital will incur substantial challenges, practically and philosophically. Digital technologies have been a manifestation of globalisation as well as working to accelerate the processes of it. In the chapter 7 Leah Macfadyen and Anne Hewling evaluate an innovative online programme they offer at the University of British Columbia which encourages international students to make connections between the academic knowledge they acquire in their classes, and their roles and x

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responsibilities as members of local and global communities. They oblige these digital-age participants to engage personally and professionally with the practical and ethical complexities of global challenges often in uncomfortable and challenging ways. The authors freely acknowledge the programme’s overtly political aims and present their students with hard questions concerning whose interests are being advanced over others, and the prospect of changes to social or political structures that already well suit the interests of some established communities. The aim of this programme, Perspectives on Global Citizenship, which fully exploits the potential of digital environments in bringing together widely dispersed international participants, is ‘to create a forum where students would engage in issues of social and ecological justice through critical thought, moral commitment, and meaningful engagement in their learning and “coming to know” as global citizens’. As digital environments have become widely accessible over the last two decades, and the social, academic and economic benefits of internet usage have been recognised, debates over equality of access and entitlement have naturally arisen leading to the notion of a ‘digital divide’ between those able to make use of digital environments and those who are less able to do so. To date the central issue in these discussions has tended to be the question of ‘access’. However more recently this notion has been problematised as an over-simplification and in Chapter 8 Debbie Holley and Martin Oliver seek to develop a better understanding of what ‘access’ might actually mean to different groups of users. ‘The “flexibility” offered by online environments does not solve access issues, they point out, ‘but instead adds new spaces (e.g. the home) where these issues must be negotiated’. Their research indicates that even when open access facilities are provided, ‘the disadvantaged are not as well placed to take advantage of this as those who already hold social advantage.’ Access to digital environments in many ways still seems to replicate the unequal power structures of society. Karim Remtulla (Chapter 9) analyses the potential of digital pedagogies within the modern globalised workplace and doubts their capacity, given the evidence of current practice, to authentically deliver constructivist pedagogy, ‘with all its complexity, openness, interpretivism, and multi-dimensionality’. Instead he reports somewhat depressing tendencies towards homogenisation, normalisation and universalisation in prevailing e-learning approaches with adult workers. The pedagogies and epistemologies he encounters in the workplaces of globalised organisations seem poorly to reflect the needs of ‘a socially and demographically diverse, multicultural and multifaceted workforce’. Drawing on Baudrillard’s notion of simulation he argues that e-learning, as simulacrum, has led to the disappearance of face-to-face adult education and training in the workplace, with the overriding objective of ‘efficiency’ reducing all adult education and training in the workplace to questions of distribution and access to information, with solutions sought through investment in more hardware and media. He advocates an urgent need for a socio-cultural critique of e-learning that can offer a radical online pedagogy of difference, rather than pedagogies which occlude social and cultural difference. xi

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A Different Generation? Axel Bruns (in Chapter 10) explores ways in which digital environments enable students to become active producers of content, often able to do so on an ‘ad hoc, on-the-fly basis’. Digital technologies now permit them to ‘occupy a hybrid, userand-producer position which can be described usefully as that of a produser’. He, too, is eager to help participants develop a more informed, self-reflexive, and critical perspective on their own practices as information seekers, users, and providers and sees this as involving not just the adoption of new digital tools and technologies but a longer-term paradigm shift towards networked organisational and communicational structures. Perhaps most significantly he sees higher education, in its embrace of digital technologies, inevitably facing the same kind of ‘casual collapse’ as that experienced by other established hierarchies and institutions. Rather than defensively clinging to the status of a centuries-old brand, or dismissing such a transformative cultural shift as a passing fad he advocates a concomitant shift in service role for higher education institutions, focusing more on the quality assurance of both internal and external content creation activities. As an example of produsage John Cook and Norbert Pachler (Chapter 11) have identified mobile telephony as an area of digital activity in which user-learners are appropriating the technology to construct their own formal as well as informal learning situations. They regard mobile telephony as ‘a socially contingent form of cultural transmission and production’ in which mobile phone use is not an externally imposed commercial activity operating upon society but rather a phenomenon that is constructed, appropriated and understood by that society. In the examples of learners that they provide their underlying assumption is that mobile phones can be viewed as cultural resources for meaning-making in social contexts. Digital phones as artefacts come with culturally formed ways of usage, they argue, and traditionally learners have internalised set practices through patterns of acculturation. However their case studies provide evidence of learners appropriating the device in practices that are new to them. The authors stress the notion of agency on the part of the learner underpinning such processes of appropriation, in which they claim the technology for their own for purposes of ‘identity formation, social interaction, meaning-making and entertainment.’ For some, it is tempting to characterise such appropriation of digital technology by young people for these purposes as the practice of a new generation that is almost naturally technically adept – the so-called ‘digital natives’. In their chapter, however, Siân Bayne and Jen Ross (Chapter 12), seek to dispel such assumptions. They deconstruct the ‘native-immigrant’ binary opposition embedded within such discourse and challenge the positioning of young learners as subjects that are more comfortably ‘at one’ with the digital environment in ways that other ‘immigrant’ learners such as older people or teachers are unable to be. They challenge the primary metaphor of this discourse, pointing out that if the ‘inhabitants’ of technological spaces are the natives or immigrants, then this constructs the technological environment as the ‘nation-state’ or the ‘landmass’, an entity almost impossible to act on, hence minimising the agency and influence of teachers and learners and discouraging dissent. They emphasise the scholarly obligation to critique a shaping xii

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metaphor that is reductive, even racialised and divisive, and which has been glibly marketised. CONCLUSION

We hope that the chapters that follow in this book capture something of the challenge and engagement that characterised their initial presentation and debate at the ICE3 conference at Loch Lomond. Our thanks are due to the contributors to this volume, and to the generosity of their colleagues and students in contributing their time, thoughts and feelings in discussion and dialogue about digital difference. We would also like to record our gratitude to all the speakers and participants in the ICE series of conferences held in the United Kingdom between 2002 and 2007 with the support at different times of The University of Edinburgh, Queen Margaret University Edinburgh, Coventry University, the Institute of Education University of London, and the University of Strathclyde Glasgow. These symposia will be fondly recalled as some of the most enjoyable and valuable events of our academic careers. Ray Land and Siân Bayne Scotland 2010 NOTES 1

http://www.education.ed.ac.uk/ice3/

REFERENCES Baudrillard, J. (1988). Simulacra and simulations. In M. Poster (Ed.), Jean Baudrillard: Selected writings (pp. 166–184). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Blakemore, C. (2010, August 15). The net is no threat to our minds. In J. Naughton (Ed.), Is the Internet changing the way we think? (p. 20). The Observer, New Review. Carr, N. (2010). The shallows: How the Internet is changing the way we think, read and remember. London: Atlantic Books. Jones, et al. (2010). Net generation or digital natives: Is there a distinct new generation entering university? Computers & Education, 54, 722–732. Jones, & Healing. (2010, May 3–4). Learning nests and local habitations. In L. Dirckinck-Holmfeld, V. Hodgson, C. Jones, D. McConnell, & T. Ryberg (Eds.), Proceedings of the 7th international conference on networked learning. Aalborg. Kennedy, G., Judd, T. S., Churchward, A., Gray, K., & Krause, K. (2008). First year students’ experiences with technology: Are they really digital natives? ‘Questioning the net generation: A collaborative project in Australian higher education’. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 24(1), 108–122. Kress, G. (2007, March 21). Culture, technology and (environments of) learning. Opening address. In Ideas in Cyberspace Education 3 (ICE3): ‘Digital Difference’. Ross Priory, Loch Lomond, Scotland. Meyer, J., & Land, R. (2003). Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: Linkages to ways of thinking and practising within the disciplines. In C. Rust (Ed.), Improving student learning – Ten years on. Oxford: OCSLD.

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EDITORS’ PREFACE Salaway, G., Caruso, J. B., & Nelson, M. R. (2008). The ECAR study of undergraduate students and information technology (Research Study, Vol. 8). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research. Retrieved September 2, 2010, from http://www.educause.edu/ecar Selwyn, N. (2008). An investigation of differences in undergraduates’ academic use of the Internet. Active Learning in Higher Education, 9(11), 11–22. Stald, G. (2008). Mobile identity: Youth, identity, and mobile communication media. In D. Buckingham (Ed.), Youth, identity, and digital media (pp. 143–164). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Retrieved from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dmal.9780262524834.143 Virilio, P. (2000). Information bomb. London: Sage.

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CATE THOMAS

1. THE PURLOINED EMAIL Death, Desire and Academic Subjectivity in the Haunted University

‘I sent a letter to my love, but on the way I dropped it Someone must have picked it up and put it in their pocket.’ Rhyme from a children’s playground game ‘…we cannot say of the purloined letter that, like other objects, it must be, or not be, in a particular place, but unlike them it will be and not be where it is, wherever it goes.’ Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter’, Jacques Lacan INTRODUCTION

There is something uncanny about the Internet. The strange, the unexpected, the disturbing, the unaccountable, the familiar found in the midst of the alien, the alien that penetrates the home; the shocking, the obscene, the eerily beautiful; the sense that nothing is fixed, stable, certain or ultimately knowable, be that personal identity, the online environment itself, or the others with whom one’s online self communes – all these classic elements of the uncanny are (un)familiar territory to any regular Internet user. THE UNCANNY

Dolar (1991) describes the uncanny as irrupting with ‘the rise of scientific rationality’ (p. 7) and constantly haunting modernity ‘from the inside’(p. 7)1; how much more so has the uncanny grown and mutated with the development of our new technologies, so that it invades, haunts and possesses the world of the Internet, the very locus of technoculture. And if, as Poster (2001) points out, the technologies have contributed to the fact that we inhabit a cyberspace situated knowledge economy, then the uncanny is the unwholesome double that haunts that economy - ‘from the inside’. As Royle (2003) discusses in his comprehensive work on the uncanny, Freud’s attempt, in his originating 1919 essay Das Unheimliche (translated as The Uncanny), to make an exhaustive list of all that is uncanny, results in stopping, starting, contradiction and confusion, precisely because it is impossible to list all elements of R. Land and S. Bayne (Eds.), Digital Difference: Perspectives on Online Learning, 3–14. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

THOMAS

the uncanny. Because the realm is by nature inexhaustible and contradictory, any definition can never be complete or completely true. There is always a remainder, the definition has always to be partial. Similarly, any attempt to sum up what cyberspace ‘is’ necessarily results in failure; being so intimately intertwined with the uncanny, it shares the same characteristics of inexhaustibility and uncertainty. Freud’s notion of Unheimliche always containing its opposite term ‘Heimlich’ (which translates as the homely or familiar), and the homely and familiar always containing the uncanny, also relates intimately to the experience of navigating the Internet. One may, for example, unexpectedly come across something which is intimately familiar such as an old acquaintance or a childhood haunt when searching the world of the Internet for something completely unrelated; conversely, one may have the opposite experience of ‘Googling’ oneself (i.e. searching with one’s own name as the search term) and finding, not a familiar homepage but the eerie details (or worse still, photograph) of one’s unexpected and disturbing double. Freud describes the uncanny as ‘something which ought to have remained hidden but has come to light’ (p. 364). One of the characteristics of cyberspace is that nothing can any longer be hidden in the way that traditional print media permits for censorship. The world of the Internet, as those who celebrate its lack of boundaries and democratic access to publication expound, means the end of censorship. An example of this is how any event of significance has an internationally accessible presence in cyberspace within hours, or even minutes. Uncannily, it brings to light that which ought to be – or would otherwise be – hidden. If the online world is an uncanny space, how does this affect the Institution of the university, as we move from traditional, face to face, ways of working to a mode where online working is central to our activities? The move from an ‘analogue’2 to a digital university must surely be a move from a space which we collectively view (albeit mis-view) as stable, fixed and knowable, to one which is shifting, unstable and ambiguous. This is a domain where radical uncertainty predominates – the shadowy, unexpected, uncertain strangeness of the haunted university. THE ACADEMIC IN THE HAUNTED SPACE

And where is the academic in this haunted space? We are at an historical point when the online ‘crisis in authorship’ undermines scholarly authority for academics as researchers, as outlined in more detail later in this paper; similarly, a move to social constructivist influenced, student centred, collaborative pedagogic practice undermines the traditional authority-position of the academic as teacher. Against this background the question of who the online academic now is, and how that former ostensibly unified, authoritative pre-digital self is now being overtaken by a less stable, fixed or definable Subject, is key to our understanding of how the digital university differs from the ‘analogue’ institution. The last ten years have seen an increasing move away from face to face to digital teaching and learning practices in universities. There has also been a move, gathering increasing momentum, towards common usage of a variety of digital means for communication in the university workplace. Consequently, with 4

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the use of technologies such as email, intranets, online shared workspaces and document management systems, virtual learning and research environments, videolink lectures, instant messaging, blogs, wikis, discussion tools and conferencing software of various kinds, academic staff in universities are more able to teach, and otherwise communicate, from a range of locations without necessarily seeing their students and colleagues. The academic Subject has always been constituted by the sum of their utterances, whether in oral form in the lecture hall, seminar, tutorial and conference presentation or in written form by inscription in books, articles and scholarly journals. The increasing disembodiment of the Subject means that the electronic self constructed through digital inscription, comes to constitute the day to day changing presence of the Subject, and begins to define them. Although there may still be embodied contact with colleagues and students, this Real Life (RL) contact is re-configured by the self created in the electronic environments, as in the following extrapolation from Zizek’s conception of the impact of cyberspace on RL. Zizek talks about the way in which sex with an RL, flesh and blood partner is impacted on by the experience of virtual3 sex, where a fantasy about the other substitutes for physical contact (Zizek 1998). He argues that this means that when one is engaged in RL sexual practice there are three people involved, oneself, one’s lover and the fantasy one has about one’s lover, as the virtual knowledge makes more explicit the fantasy that has always existed covertly. We might argue, if both parties have this ‘virtual knowledge’ that this could be further extrapolated to include the fantasy one’s lover has about oneself. Also, to include a narcissistic perspective, the projected fantasy of the self one has, could be included and the projected fantasy the lover has of themselves – making six entities in total! To apply this thinking to the rather more mundane everyday work situation of our academic Subject, we could say that when Dr X meets with Professor Y she is not just meeting with the Y she experiences in front of her, but with the Y that has been constructed through online virtual representation and her fantasised, (through online exchange, memory and the filling in of gaps between), Y. Similarly she brings her own virtual and projected selves to the room, so that the meeting of two people becomes haunted by their other selves. So the online world rewrites RL. The area of digital inscription in the online university is vast, as there are a range of technologies which invite and permit a variety of ways of constructing the self. This paper will concentrate on one technology, that of email. The use of email is such a central part of the daily business of work for academic staff in universities, that the Times Higher Education magazine carried an article guiding academics on the best way to use it effectively, so that communication would not be in any way confused or confounded and so that academics could represent themselves clearly (Swain 2006). THE ELECTRONIC ARCHIVE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SELF

This paper will consider the notion that email exchanges constitute part of an endless circulation of unfixed knowledge, where the impossibility of truth, let alone 5

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clear communication, becomes foregrounded. Within this the academic Subject is constituted in a number of ways: through the permanent, haunting nature of the electronic archive; and through the transformation of distinctions between public and private; and through email chains of signification. In particular, the metaphor of the way in which the movement of the Purloined Letter in Edgar Alan Poe’s short story4 traces a symbolic circuit will be used, as will Lacan’s analysis of this (Lacan 1956). The use of this metaphor will aid us in exploring how the concepts used by Lacan (and subsequent works by others on Lacan’s Seminar on the Purloined Letter) might usefully help us consider the constitution of the digital Subject in the circulation of email letters, within the context of the uncanny space of online university In their anatomy or map of Lacan’s Seminar on the Purloined Letter, Muller and Richardson (1988) describe the letter as having ‘the property of nowhereness’, being ‘a symbol of absence [which] is and is not, wherever it may be’ (p. 79) and remaining even when destroyed. The resonance with email is significant – an electronic mail is and is not and is always elusive whilst being ever replicable and omnipresent. But it is its ability to remain when destroyed which concerns this part of our discussion, in its relationship with, or representation of, the archive. As soon as an email is sent, it exists in a number of places. It may be in the ‘sent items’ section of the sender’s software; it may exist on the server of the sender’s email service; it will exist on the server of the receiver’s email service; and it will be in the inbox of the receivers email software, which may mean it has been automatically downloaded to the hard drive(s) on the receiver’s computer(s). In addition to this, the email servers will be backed up in some way, so an additional copy of the mail will be held on both the sender and recipients service providers’ back-up servers. If either the sent or received email, or both, are downloaded to the sender and/or recipient’s hard drives by their email client software, a copy may exist which cannot easily be deleted. (Computer files on hard drives are not actually erased when the user ‘deletes’ them, but renamed, and then not easily accessible to the ordinary user). So, once sent, it can exist in up to eight (or more) places, seven of which are largely out of the reach or control of the sender. Once the email has been replied to or forwarded, the whole process of copies proliferating begins again. These multiple and distributed copies form an archive, in a literal sense. Additionally. the archive exists in a more metaphorical sense of a kind of total cultural inscription of all utterances. The electronic self, the self that is constituted by digital inscription, is and is not the Subject. But it cannot die, or, at least not easily. The Subject can die, in the sense of the embodied self expiring, but the digital double lives on. Because digital texts are Subject to archiving in their very creation, in a way that is completely outside the control of their original author, they become immortal. This archiving forces the Subject to live forever, making impossible, or barely possible, the option of death. But the immortal, revenant self, is and is not the Subject; it is the Subject’s double, the self constituted entirely by a specific arena of electronic discourse, a self simultaneously outside the control of the Subject, but eerily and intimately the ‘spirit’ of the Subject: the Subject’s digital spectre. 6

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The relationship between archiving, the uncanny and the death drive is a complex and intimate one. Freud’s death drive tries to return the organism to its inorganic state and is characterized by repetition phenomena and by destructiveness. This repetition aspect is central to the uncanny. It is about the return of the repressed; it presents as something that has been banished but repeatedly comes back. The uncanny is ‘a compulsion to repeat’ (Freud p. 360) and ‘a constant recurrence of the same thing’ (Freud p. 356). It is, however, as both Derrida (1987) and Hertz (1985) have suggested, as noted by Royle (2003), not the actual thing that is being repeated which create the uncanny effect, but the act of the repetition itself. In Archive Fever, Derrida (1995) discusses the intimate nature of the relationship between the death drive and the archive. Because of its destructive properties, the death instinct incites the annihilation of memory and consequently produces the need to archive. The death drive, because it creates the compulsion to repeat, creates the archive – the archive being essentially a symptom of repetition compulsion. But the death instinct, being a principle of annihilation, seeks to destroy the archive. Therefore as Derrida points out, ‘The archive always works, and a priori, against itself ’ (p. 12). The heart of the archive is death. As discussed later in this paper, the existence of the email archive affects the Subject’s behaviour in a range of ways, but there is a specific and direct effect when archiving. The possibility of loss which the notion of the archive opens up creates great anxiety in the Subject; to lose the contents of one’s inbox in a work environment is to lose one’s way, one’s history and one’s self; on the other hand, the fact of the existence of the archive brings about anxiety in a variety of ways. This contradiction is neatly illustrated by the autoarchive function which many popular email handling software products utilize. At regular intervals, of perhaps a month, the archive speaks to us saying something like ‘would you like to auto-archive your old items now?’ Of course, the items are already archived elsewhere, so what it is really saying is ‘would you like the archive to which you have access to re-organize itself ?’. But this message creates anxiety in the two ways already mentioned. On the one hand we experience fear that the archive will hide parts of itself in a secret location which we will never be able to access. We will never again be able to know our own archive – and so our own self – or have control over it. We connect with the loss of self which the death drive implies. But on the other hand, this explicit reminder of the archive tells us we will be forced to live forever, but in a form over which we have no control. Thus the explicit reminder of archiving confronts us with the contradictions of the death drive and the implications for us as Subjects, constituted by the archive. To put this another way, when the ‘would you like to archive your old items now?’ message pops up on our screen, what it is really saying to us is ‘You’re going to die. And not only are you going to die, but I am going to make puppet representations of you live on, and the world will believe them to be you.’ Unsurprising then, that many of us, albeit guiltily, serially refuse the option to archive5. A significant aspect of the archive, discussed by Derrida, which has direct bearing on the role of email, is the way in which the existence of the archive does not just preserve the past but by doing so, impacts on the present. The existence of 7

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an archive of our email correspondence affects our behaviour and thoughts, both when we write or reply to email, and also in other arenas. And in doing this, it changes the future. So the existence of the email archive does not just record, it produces. How does this affect the academic Subject? Partially constituted by the inscription of all the emails they have ever written and all the emails which have been written or copied to them, all of which remain forever in locations over which they have no control, they are also constituted on a present and future basis by the existence of this archive of the self. A sophisticated user of email self edits continually when writing mail, knowing that they have no control over its publication. The self that is created in the archive is permanent and is there to be gazed at at times, in places and by people unknowable for the Subject. In email exchanges we can never actually see the other’s gaze, so we are conscious that we never know what we are for the other and must fantasise what the other’s gaze may be. How much more is this insecure position compounded when we have knowledge of the existence of the archive, and the consequent awareness of the completely unknowable nature of the other. For the Subject, then, this knowledge of the archive increases the undermining of the imagined stable self, producing greater levels of uncertainty and instability. The email archive also speaks to us directly, creating an uncanny effect that echoes Derrida’s discussion of the disembodied voice on an answerphone message (p. 62) which asks us to speak to it. When the addressee of our mail has set up an automatic response which tells us that they are, perhaps, on holiday and will not respond to us immediately, we are spoken to by the phantom machinic voice of the archive. ‘Your letter has been processed’ it says ‘your utterance is now inscribed indelibly upon the archive and you will never be able to erase it’. But is not the addressee speaking to us, it is the archive itself. And, in a sense, all of the Subject’s letters are addressed to the archive, not to the apparent addressee, because the Subject is conscious of creating their public self in their utterances. So all of our utterances are addressed to death, or to the desire for immortality that the existence of death creates. The relationship of the archive, both to the death drive and the uncanny, is compounded by the silent nature of the email archive. In its creation it is, like the death drive, absolutely silent. One can imagine, when being physically on a university campus, the thousands of silent messages crossing and re-crossing in the ether, an entire, noiseless, set of discourses, sent by soundlessly chattering servers, congealing as soon as created into the archive. This paranoiac, but also fascinating, eerie and uncanny image of silent conversing, leads directly into the next topic of this paper: the idea of the collapse of the concept of a separation between public and private, in which email plays a significant, and in Derrida’s view, a ‘privileged’ (p. 17) role. THE OWNERSHIP OF EMAILS

To return the metaphor of Poe’s letter, it is significant that the letter is not stolen, but purloined. That which does not have a clear owner – and Lacan’s question of ‘to whom does the letter belong’ (p. 41) is always in play – cannot be stolen, merely purloined. How much more so than the letter does an email have dubious ownership, particularly an email written or received in a work context. Not only is there the complication of whether the sender or receiver is the ‘owner’, but the issue of who 8

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owns an item created by a member of staff in the course of their paid employment is also brought to bear – perhaps the employer is the owner? And if the employer is part of the Public Sector, then, perhaps, the State is ultimately the owner. This is further complicated in the context of a university, where academic staff will sometimes own the intellectual property of their work. So we might pertinently ask the question, within a university environment ‘to whom does an email belong’, illustrated in Email Scenario One below: Email Scenario One Our Subject, Dr X, sends an email to a colleague, Professor Y. Y sends a response, which includes the text of the original. X then forwards the letter to W, for information, copying in Y. W replies to both X and Y, copying in A, B and C, who proceed to reply to all, adding their own comments. This ordinary, everyday example of university communication foregrounds some issues to do with the nature of ownership of emails. When Dr X sends the mail to Y, does this mail belong to the sender or the recipient? Similarly with Y’s response to X. In ‘showing’ the compound mail to W has X offended Y’s ownership rights in any way, by publishing the mail to W on his behalf? And has W, in showing the letters to three additional readers, offended X and Y’s rights? Do A, B and C have the right to comment publicly on utterances which were never spoken to them in the first place? If Y’s email contained an original idea which subsequently showed up in a paper by C, would C be plagiarising Y, or would he be building on a discussion in which he, Y and their other colleagues had all played a part? Or is all of this a practical performance of ‘de-authorisation’, started by Barthes’ announcement of the Death of the Author (Barthes 1977 [1967]), continued by Foucault’s notion of the author effect, and by the general thrust of post-Saussurean theory, further dissected by postmodernism, and brought into the realm of the digital by Poster (2003). Poster argues that the notion of authorship is problematised in a very evident way by the democratised shared publishing space provided by the Internet. In a public, digital space it is often impossible to know who is the author of a text, and there are always issues around the authenticity of any claimed identity. The ease with which digital online documents can be replicated and changed leads further to the undermining of author-ity, and this, enhanced by increasingly available technologies for sharing texts of often (seemingly) anonymous authorship, further undermines the traditional autonomous authority of the author. The only clarity in all of this is that the complex chain of utterances has no clear owner. This leaves the Subject in a position where they are obliged to operate on the principle that email exchange is always underpinned by a radical uncertainty as to whom one is addressing, and to assume that all emails are subject to being purloined. Indeed, given that university mail may or may not be the property of the employer or even the State, the emails may be, by their nature, purloined as soon as they are created. But whilst the Subject may be, on one level, aware of this, there are nevertheless forces at work which make us feel that we are operating in a private world when we engage with email. 9

THOMAS

When we delve into our inboxes to read, write or respond to an email, we are in an environment where we experience a powerful sensation of being on our own. We are usually operating in the seemingly confidential space of our own personal computer, at our own desk, in private office space. We compose an email silently, in complete privacy. In the secure box of our computer, the email software is another secure box, within which we write our specific mail in a delimited, defined box (i.e. a window). All of this provides us with an intense sense of privacy and security. The toolset which most of us use is unsophisticated and does not encourage editing, the ‘send’ button is always, invitingly and prominently, present, and the cultural norms which have arisen around the register used for email text invite informality. So, the overall effect for the Subject is a sense of sending a private, informal note to a specific person – as a colleague summed up the experience ‘it makes you feel as though you’re writing a note to your Mum, but in fact you’re writing to the world’. So the Subject is situated in the impossible, contradictory position of half believing their utterances to be private but knowing them to be public, and having to inscribe themselves on the electronic world accordingly. As Derrida has it ‘email transforms the entire public private space of humanity’ (p. 17). And in transforming the space transforms us. Despite the felt intimacy of email inscription, there is an aspect of the remoteness, impersonality, speed and simplicity of use that encourages staff and students in university settings to send emails to people to whom they would not send printed letters, or would not telephone if email was unavailable. The technology invites this. It makes the email addresses of all staff internally easily available to everyone in a university; it enables the sending of a mail to be quick and simple; and it encourages copying in, replying, forwarding, blind copying and replying to all, by making these options available as suggestions, to be performed at the click of a button. Students will email their lecturers quite casually, and senior university staff receive email communication from staff members who do not know them personally, and would not normally speak to them if this channel were not available. Whether this is democracy in action or a damned nuisance is a question of perspective, but its effect is that it increases significantly the number of occurrences and contexts in which the Subject is invited to speak. And, as discussed below, email invitations to speak are not without a directive element. An email is forced on the recipient, be they the formal addressee, the one step removed addressee to whom a mail is forwarded, or either of the two varieties of tangential addressee, the public bystander who is copied in, or the secret bystander who is blind copied in. The Subject, receiving the mail, is publicly forced to know of its contents, as the existence of the archive means there is always an audit trail which the sender – or future, unknown others – can easily make public at the click of mouse button. If the Subject is the formal addressee, the sender is publicly forcing a response from them; the Subject is forced to speak, and to write themselves in an exchange which may not be on their terms. Remaining silent is not an option, however unimportant the Subject may regard the received mail, as, in the culture of the modern university, such silence is seen as a dereliction of duty. Additionally, the 10

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timescale within which knowledge of and/or a response is expected is short – in the region of a day or two. As the speed, ease of use, and culture of email usage invites this multiplication of utterances, an additional anxiety is created for the Subject, in that the volume of email increases and they cannot easily manage to read or respond to their mail. So the anxiety of not knowing, and being seen to be silent when they should speak is added to the picture. The overall effect on the Subject of this imperative to know and to speak is that they are publicly policed, have aspects of their work time and tasks determined by a random selection of others, which represents an erosion of their autonomy, and are forced to inscribe themselves on the digital university in contexts not of their choosing. It conjures up an interactive, internalised, version of Bentham’s panopticon, where all the participants who are being policed simultaneously encourage this policing by participating according to the established Law. But, in a sense, it both encompasses and moves beyond Foucault’s re-conjuring of the panopticon in his analysis of disciplinary societies (Foucault 1975). It has the hallmarks of Deleuze’s (1992) concept of societies of control, in that computers are the machine technology employed, and a control speaks itself though a strange kind of corporate post-hierarchical levelling. Interestingly, it is not university managers who play the most active part in this entire dance, but those in universities whose roles permit them time to send frequent emails, namely students and administrative staff. As these are two constituencies in relation to whom the academic Subject has traditionally occupied a position of relative power, this represents an intriguing shift in internal power relations brought about by the use of digital communication technology. Moving on to consider the way in which email circulation creates chains of signification and a strange, sometimes circular movement of unfixed knowledge and meaning, leads again back to Lacan’s reading of The Purloined Letter. Derrida’s (1979) concept that all texts contain a set of mechanisms or ‘heads’ for reading, with which we read other texts, is demonstrably true for the texts which constitute an email chain. The frequent effect of an answering text in the chain followed by a response or another answer from a different view, gives us a compound text apparently written by a range of unreliable narrators, where the reading of any component section of the text makes us view any other component section in a different light. At the same time, an email is positioned in the same way as the purloined letter, in that its movement around the various actors in the drama establish relationships, and create meaning, which is more than just the text within the letter; this creation of a symbolic circuit itself repositions the meaning of the texts within the letter. A second example of a typical university email, below, demonstrates a dimension of how meaning can be created by the insistence of the chain of signification Email Scenario Two Dr X sends an email to Professor Y subtly pointing out some mistake he has made or mentioning, in a coded manner, something he has omitted to do. She kindly adds that this does not matter because she, Dr X, has helped him by putting right his error or carrying out his neglected task. Dr X ccs the mail to Dean Z. 11

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This email exchange echoes Felman’s diagrammatic illustration of the Purloined letter triads (Felman 1980, pp. 146) which is interpreted according to this context in Fig 1, below. Professor Y’s gaze is that of the Queen who sees that D__ (or X, in this case) sees but is powerless to act; Dean Z’s gaze is that of the King which takes the letter at face value, and sees nothing, i.e. no duplicity. And X’s gaze is that which sees Y is powerless and Z blind, and takes advantage of this to further her own self interest. In this scenario, the addressee is never the true destined receiver. The mail is intended for Z, and sending it to Y is merely a device for performing the statement to one in a position of power – ‘Y is negligent and I, diligently, bail him out’ – in a way that allows the meaning to unfold without having to baldly state it. Like Felman’s translations of the letter, the email represents the unconscious, with Z occupying the position of the Superego, the Law of the Father, like Poe’s ‘law’ which sees nothing; X occupying the position of the ego who can look at the other’s gaze and look at oneself in others eyes; and Y occupying the position of the unconscious or the Id, where substitutions can be made or acts can be carried out without thought for the consequences. When we read X’s Scenario One email, from whatever vantage point, we are seeing it in the chain of texts, and we are always constructing our Subject from their text(s). There are concrete echoes in this of Derrida’s (1995) point that the experience of reading conjures a ghost, and the ghostly Subject we conjure is perhaps an interesting metaphor for what the academic Subject is becoming in the haunted digital university. Where the email actually ‘is’ or ‘is not’ is also of significance in the creation of meaning in/by the signifying chain. In simple terms, the fact that X’s Scenario Two mail to Y is in the Dean’s inbox changes the whole meaning of the mail from a friendly one to a hostile, manipulative one. If Y fails to notice to whom the mail is Dean Z (The law/the superego The King)

Dr X (The ego D___)

Prof Y (The Id/unconscious The Queen) Fig 1. The Purloined Email (adapted from Felman p. 146).

12

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copied, thus believing the mail to be in a place other than where it is, he will behave in a way vis a vis X and Z which may be damaging to him, much in the way that Minister D___ commits political suicide by continuing to act in the same way towards the Queen, because he assumes the letter is one place, when in fact it is in another. In more complex terms, the email is simultaneously nowhere, having no corporeal substance, and everywhere, forever, as it is in the archive. To paraphrase slightly Lacan’s comment on Poe’s letter ‘we cannot say of the purloined [email]… that, like other objects, it must be, or not be, in a particular place, but unlike them it will be and not be where it is, wherever it goes’. One way in which our email decidedly echoes Lacan’s purloined letter is in his point that ‘the sender, we tell you receives from the receiver his own message in reverse form…a letter always arrives at its destination’ (p. 53). The Subject of the purloined email quite literally receives, from the receiver, ‘their’ letter in reverse form, in an email chain where it’s meaning has been altered or ‘reversed’. And, in a slightly different sense, the destination of any email, because of its role in constructing the Subject, is, indeed, the sender or Subject themselves. The destination of an email is always death, the archive and the Subject. CONCLUSION

In summary, then, the academic Subject occupies a position in our haunted, digital university where their selfhood is clearly unfixed, de-stabilised, split, uncertain and constituted by the readings, utterances and gaze of others. They have little control over the construction of their selves, but they cannot die, although they commune with death and the self. They are conscious of the existence of their spectral double, and also conscious that they are that double. Their power is eroded by other constituencies within the university, and they are forced to speak and know in contexts not of their choosing. It is, essentially, a ghostly position that our digital academic occupies. The previously mentioned Times Higher Education article (Swain 2006) warns the digital academic that an email can raise a ghost by becoming ‘a hastily written missive that may come back to haunt you.’ The ghost it raises is the one which constitutes the self. When that early adopter of institutional electronic surveillance, the Abbess of Crewe, announces that ‘The age of the Father and the Son are past. We have now entered the age of the Holy Ghost,’ (Spark, 1974 p. 10), she might be speaking of the contemporary university. With the end of authority for academe, we, too, are entering the age of a ghost less holy; the spectral presence of ourselves within the haunted university. NOTES 1

2

Similarly, Birchall (2001) discusses the way in which contemporary rationality is haunted by conspiracy theories, which act as a necessary excess, permitting the closure of rationality by existing outside it and exceeding it. The Uncanny, I would argue, occupies a similar role as Birchall’s conspiracy theories. I’m using Poster’s (2001) terms ‘analogue’ to mean that which went before, or is not part of, a world which relies fundamentally on computers and the Internet, and ‘digital’ to mean that which is part of 13

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3 4

5

that world. These terms are metaphorical rather than literal, and are not here used in their strictly technical sense. The term ‘virtual’ for Zizek, in this context may reasonably be taken to mean ‘online.’ In the narrative of ‘The Purloined Letter’ the Chief of Police, G, visits the narrator and his friend Dupin and asks for Dupin’s help with retrieving the titular letter. The letter in question was an illicit (presumably an amorous) missive, which was being read by the Queen when the King entered the room. She placed it face down, and the King did not notice it. The Minister D__, however, on entering the room perceives the letter and the meaning of it, and substitutes for it another letter. The Queen sees this but is unable to act without alerting the King to the existence of the letter. Possession of the letter, for D__ means political power as he gains influence over the Queen. The Queen asks G for his help in retrieving the letter, but G’s meticulous searching of D__’s apartments in his absence yields no result. Dupin, however, taking up G’s request for help, visits D__, perceives the letter, it’s appearance altered by being inverted and overwritten in open view on a card rack, and on a subsequent visit substitutes for it another pre-prepared identical letter. In the body of the letter he has written a quotation by means of which D___ will understand that it is by Dupin he has been duped, thus settling an old score he has with D___. An article called ‘Increasing Outlook user acceptance’ in the February 2006 online edition of Windows IT Pro identifies this reluctance on the part of email users to archive, suggesting technical solutions to the issue. (Joseph Neuberger).

REFERENCES Barthes, R. (1977 [1967]). Image-Music-Text. Glasgow: William Collins. Birchall, C. (2001). Conspiracy theories and academic discourses: The necessary possibility of popular (over)interpretation. Continuum, 15(1), 67–76. Deleuze, G. (1992). Postscript on the societies of control. October, 59, 3–7. Derrida, J. (1995). Archive fever. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Derrida, J. (1979). Living on: Border lines. In H. Bloom, et al. (Eds.), Deconstruction and criticism (pp. 75–176). New York: Continuum. Dolar, M. (1991). ‘I shall be with you on your wedding night’: Lacan and the Uncanny. October, 5–23. Felman, S. (1980). On reading poetry: Reflections of the limits and possibilities of psychoanalytic approaches. In J. P. Muller & W. J. Richardson (Eds.), (1988). The Purloined Poe (pp. 133–156). Maryland, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Foucault, M. (1991[1975]). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. England: Penguin. Freud, S. (1990-1). The complete Penguin Freud library. London: Penguin. Lacan, J. (1956). Seminar on the purloined letter (J. Mehlman, Trans.). In J. P. Muller & W. J. Richardson (Eds.), (1988). The Purloined Poe (pp. 6–27). Maryland, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Muller, J. P., & Richardson, W. J. (Eds.). The Purloined Poe. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Poster, M. (2001). What’s the matter with the Internet. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Royle, N. (2003). The uncanny. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Spark, M. (1974). The Abbess of Crewe. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin. Swain, H. (2006, November 9). Be aware of the paperless trail. Times Higher Education, pp. 54–55. Williams, L. R. (1995). Critical desire: Psychoanalysis and the literary subject. London: Edward Arnold. Zizek, S. (1998). Interviewed in Telepolis. Retrieved from http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/2/2492/1.html

Cate Thomas UEA London University of East Anglia,UK

14

HAMISH MACLEOD AND JEN ROSS

2. STRUCTURE, AUTHORITY AND OTHER NONCEPTS1 Teaching in Fool-ish Spaces

INTRODUCTION

As the rules of social engagement and hierarchy become less clearly defined in online spaces (Dubrovsky et al., 1991, Joinson 2002), so authority becomes an increasingly tricky notion in online teaching. In addition, unstructured digital spaces (wikis, live chat, virtual worlds) have great potential as sites of learning, connection and construction of meaning and self (Turkle, 1995), but the teacher’s capacity to control or regulate these spaces is limited (Land and Bayne, 2006). Indeed, we argue the tutor’s role in such a space is not to regulate, but rather to participate and provoke in creative and playful ways that open up passages or possibilities in chaotic online spaces. In choosing to talk about the role of the tutor, what it is that a learner needs of his or her senior colleague in an educational engagement, and what might be changed about the relationship between the tutor and the learner in the online learning environment, we come to our first noncept: the definition of tutoring itself. It is reassuring to find that, at time of writing, the entry ‘tutor’ in Wikipedia is a hotbed of controversy. The main article carries the warning that ‘This article appears to contradict itself ’ and the reader is directed away to the discussion about the topic on the ‘talk’ page. Superficially, the discussion seems to be about the differences in the way in which the word is used in the UK as compared with the rest of the world. On closer inspection however, the distinction being discussed is between the use of tutor as an academic rank and as academic role; between who tutors are, and what tutors do. The plot thickens considerably when we consider the term ‘tuition’. For some, tuition is what you receive when you engage in an educational exchange with another person. For others, tuition is what you pay, for… well, it is not clear what precisely. All the good words seem to be used up. The Wikipedia definition of online tutoring, on the other hand, is rather distressingly uncontroversial: Online tutoring refers to the process by which knowledge is imparted from a tutor or knowledge provider or expert to a student or knowledge recipient over the Internet.2 It does have the virtue of being clear. But it is hopelessly authoritarian and instructionist in conception, putting the sage firmly centre stage. The rhetoric is all transmission and content, without the slightest nod to a constructivist epistemology. R. Land and S. Bayne (Eds.), Digital Difference: Perspectives on Online Learning, 15–27. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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Something has to be going on in a tutorial, but if it is simply knowledge transmission then a good textbook would probably serve us better. The notion of tutorless tutorials espoused by problem-based learning enthusiasts helps focus attention here. Something happens in such tutorials that is not dependent on the presence of an authority figure: the tutorial consists of conversations that contribute to building understanding. So what is it that tutors do, or should do, in support of the online learner? Some have sought to explore and clarify by the adoption of particular metaphors, such as moderator, mentor, or facilitator, to describe the tutor’s role. These terms have their value in guiding our behaviour as online tutors, but their force is primarily to warn us to stand aside. The evidence is that too much, or inappropriate, contribution to tutorial discussion by the tutor can inhibit contributions by the students (Mazzolini and Maddison, 2003). The rhetoric of facilitator and moderator speaks of a duty to liberate the students, and empower them to participate in their own learning. This has the ring of critical pedagogy about it, which would seek to remove the authority of the teacher, casting teacher and learner as equal participants in the educational endeavour. Such protestations of equality will ultimately show themselves to have been disingenuous, however, when the imperative of assessment rears its ugly head. Worse, though, is the fact that these formulations guide us about what we shouldn’t do, but remain rather silent about what we should be doing. If the online tutor is going to move from centre stage (King 1993) and sacrifice some ideas of his or her sagacity, what sorts of roles might be taken up to contribute to the guidance of the online learner? There are paradoxes here. We know that distance education (and, by implication, online engagement) is associated with particularly high discontinuation rates (Simpson, 2003; Tinto, 1993) and so it would seem that the online learner will need more, rather than less, perceived support from the teacher. Yet the online teacher has no physical presence to which the online learner can turn, and the nature of time-shifted asynchronous communication that supports much online learning will mean that significant delays must be tolerated between exchanges. In deliberately standing aside to allow the learner more personal autonomy, the online teacher must nevertheless make their virtual presence felt strongly (Garrison & Anderson, 2003). Steps must be taken to counter the remoteness and mediated nature of the relationship. In this paper we explore the notion of the presence of the online educator as being that of the jester, trickster or fool. To start with, here are some general thoughts about each of these archetypal characters. JESTER

They have ridden like froth down the whirlpools of time, They have jingled their caps in the councils of state, They have snared half the wisdom of life in a rhyme, And tripped into nothingness grinning at fate. (Don Marquis, from ‘The Jester’, 1915. http://www.thenoodlebowl.com/jesters/pages/jesters.html) 16

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And while the king was looking down, the jester stole his thorny crown… (Don McLean, ‘American Pie’) Who shall bring redemption, but the jesters? (The Talmud) Court jesters have been figures in European history and literature since ancient Roman times. Jesters in other traditions – Chinese, Middle-Eastern, Indian – have similarly long lineages (Otto, 2001). Though their characteristics and roles are not identical across these traditions, there are some common qualities: irreverence, wit, and a complex and shifting relationship with power. Jesters are irritants in the society around – like the proverbial grain of sand in an oyster. The responsibility of these characters is to poke fun at the established authority, and to ask questions about what would seem to be the obvious, natural order of things. TRICKSTER

Tricksters challenge the status quo and disrupt perceived boundaries. Whether foolishly, arrogantly, or bravely, tricksters face the monstrous, transforming the chaotic to create new worlds and new cultures. (Smith 1997, p. 2) Coyote, Raven, Loki, and Anansi are some names the trickster is known by. Tricksters emerge from their many cultural contexts as some combination of magical, powerful, arrogant, challenging, irresponsible, malicious, difficult-to-pin-down, shapeshifting, selfish, frightening and unpredictable. The trickster is a maker of mischief and a creator of tension, occasionally with actively malicious intent, but more often than not s/he (and indeed, ambiguity of sex, sexuality and gender is often a feature of the trickster’s persona) is also responsible for the resolution of the tension by fun and foolery (Radin 1956). FOOL

Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (I Corinthians 1:25) In considering the Fool as a metaphor, there are many stories and ideas to choose from. From sacred or mystical fools, to the ‘feast of fools’, to the Zen ‘beginner’s mind’ and Shakespearean and other literary fools, fools are characters who provoke new wisdom in others, rather than owning conventional wisdom in their own right. They are tolerated rather than loved by the objects of their attention, and yet their importance is tacitly acknowledged through assumptions of divine protection, commission, or even essence. The irritation that the fool engenders is frequently the source of insights on the part of others; protagonists frequently emerge as sadder, but wiser, following a fool’s ministrations. 17

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The fool’s mastery is of context (Welsford 1935, p. 5), not content. The trickster stands at thresholds and deals in liminality, and delights in the role of outsider, stranger, other. The jester is both grounded and exposed, and is therefore a lightningrod for aggression. S/he both challenges and upholds authority, while the trickster is more consistently subversive. As we will see, there is a place for all of these roles in online teaching. They are not easy to sustain – they are uncomfortable and, perhaps, quite lonely. By embracing discomfort and loneliness the teacher-fool can therefore also perhaps gain insight into their students’ sense of being lost in online spaces. By exploring themes and ideas relating to these archetypal characters, we invite teachers to embrace some of the challenges, contradictions and fun of teaching and learning online. What follows is divided into three sections, which reflect the insights and strategies we think the metaphors of fool, jester and trickster offer to online teaching: – authority, attention and risk; – innocence, danger and fun; – complexity, liminality and absurdity. AUTHORITY, ATTENTION AND RISK

First: a story about Anansi3, a trickster with West African origins, who is also often found in Caribbean folklore. He is both very clever and very greedy, and once went though many trials in order to be named the ‘King of All Stories’4. In this tale, he makes it his business to gather up and hoard all the world’s wisdom (or common sense) in a calabash. He succeeds eventually, and is looking for a place to hide the wisdom. He decides to hide it at the top of a tall tree, so he straps the calabash to his chest and begins to climb. However, the calabash keeps getting in his way, and Anansi becomes frustrated. A small child observes what Anansi is doing, and calls up to him to put the calabash on his back, instead. Anansi is furious that after all the work he has done, even a small child has wisdom that he doesn’t possess. He smashes the calabash, and the wisdom scatters everywhere, so that everyone has some, but no one has it all. Anansi wanted to control access to stories, and to define everyone’s relationship with knowledge, and this is one way of looking at the traditional ‘sage on the stage’ approach to teaching. Online, though, it is impossible to make authority/truth claims as if in a vacuum; the online space is one where the presence of other knowledge, and the willingness and ability of students to locate and articulate this, is never very far from the surface. And, in a medium that is itself evolving quickly, the tutor is not always going to be able to look like the source of all wisdom. What, then, is the online tutor’s role? A willingness to be the focus of critical attention – and, at times, a lightning-rod for aggression – is part of the function of the jester-teacher. It is possible that in online spaces any type of attention the tutor can attract is better than none at all. The volume of readily available information ‘out there’, where the tutor and the learner must meet, means that the ability to grab and hold a learner’s attention is challenged: “...in an information economy, the real scarce commodity will always be human attention” (Lanham 2006, online). To be impossible to ignore must, at times, be the 18

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tutor’s primary goal in entering the noisy silence of the online learner’s experience in chaotic spaces. As Roszak (1994) has it, ‘An excess of information may actually crowd out ideas, leaving the mind (young minds especially) distracted by sterile, disconnected facts, lost among shapeless heaps of data’. In Second Life, being impossible to ignore may involve donning fins and a wetsuit or a bright red mohawk and, quite literally (well, quite virtually), clowning. In textual spaces like wikis, it may mean being flagrantly provocative, in playing ‘devil’s advocate’5, and in demanding active debate and disagreement from students. Self-mockery or encouragement of critical attention from students can be challenging for tutors, though. Jesting demands exposure, while traditional models of ‘sage on the stage’ teaching serve to protect and distance the teacher from personal vulnerability, and, as such, provide little to prepare the online teacher for the lengths to which he or she may wish to go in inviting challenge and attracting attention. Part of the jester’s role has traditionally also been to mock and expose the folly of powerful people and ideas (Peterson 2003, online). However, the jester-teacher who encourages his or her students to question authority and speak truth to power must be prepared for the possibility that he or she will be the first casualty of any student brave enough to take such encouragement seriously. The flattening effect of online spaces, where students are already less likely to perceive the tutor as the source of all authority or respect the boundaries of a traditional, hierarchical student/ teacher relationship (Dubrovsky et al., 1991), enhances the likelihood that the jesting gaze will be turned on the tutor. The fear of exposure and loss of authority that could accompany such strategies may be heightened by the teacher’s own subject positions in terms of gender, age and ethnicity, for example. Some tutors may feel they cannot afford to allow their hard-won authority to be challenged. For others, it may be important for them to ask themselves what masking function playing the jester/fool might perform, in light of the their unquestionable authority to assess: ‘we should not forget that the metaphor of the Jester also implies the use of indirect and subtle ways to achieve desired results. There is a clear idea on the part of the Jester of which results are important to achieve...’ (Ashworth 2004, p. 80). Court jesters in history have often been ‘learned men’ in disguise (Welsford 1968, p. 23), and we do well to be reminded of the layers of identities the tutor as jester assumes. Ellsworth, who has problematised critical pedagogy as being insufficiently attentive to the tutor’s own position(s) of privilege, describes a shift from ‘dialogue’ to ‘working together across differences’ (Ellsworth, 1989). Such a shift acknowledges social positions and involves everyone – teachers and students – in attending to the circulation of power in their online classrooms. INNOCENCE, DANGER AND FUN

In a story about Mulla Nasrudin (sometimes Nasreddin), a mystic Turkish jester/fool: Nasrudin sat on a river bank when someone shouted to him from the opposite side: ‘Hey! how do I get across?’ ‘You are across!’ Nasrudin shouted back.6 19

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Nasrudin’s response hints at several possibilities for the online learner: that the place one is may be perfectly adequate; that there is not necessarily a need to rush off somewhere else. This may be particularly the case at times when ignorance is felt most keenly. Moments of not-knowing can be extremely uncomfortable, and extremely productive. The fool embodies secure not-knowing in a way which can serve as a model for teachers and students. Secure not-knowing might also be termed ‘beginner’s mind’ (shoshin), or ‘Zen mind’: The Zen way of calligraphy is to write in the most straightforward, simple way as if you were a beginner, not trying to make something skilful or beautiful, but simply writing with full attention as if you were discovering what you were writing for the first time; then your full nature will be in your writing. (Introduction to Suzuki 1996, p. 14) Students often fear, apologise for, or worst of all, conceal their feelings of ignorance. Convincing the student that it is perfectly acceptable not to know is not just a matter of tolerance and patience – not simply that the tutor should be courteous and unthreatening in his or her questioning. It is a matter of seeing the value in searching for an uncluttered perspective and a beginner’s mind. To quote Groucho Marx, ‘A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five’. The benefit for the learner of seeking to find nothing strange is the engagement of intelligence in the Piagetian sense of being ‘what you use when you don’t know what to do’ (Calvin, 1996). Attentive, ‘childlike’ curiosity on the part of tutors and students, and the accidental learning which can result is a gift that being Fool-ish might offer us. Willeford (1969) writes of confrontations with foolishness which require us to untangle ourselves from our assumptions about the world: Two Englishmen are riding in a train. FIRST ENGLISHMAN: ‘I say, is this Wembley?’ SECOND ENGLISHMAN: ‘No, Thursday.’ FIRST ENGLISHMAN: ‘I am, too.’ The Englishmen remain placid in what strikes us as their foolishness; they are [not] troubled by their incomprehension of each other... But their behaviour inflicts violence upon our assumptions of what people are and of how they ought to behave... we feel ourselves fooled by the irrational mess that has been made of a conventional conversation; in freeing ourselves from that mess, in which our conscious assumptions about the world have become for a moment stuck, we experience within ourselves the supremacy of the fugitive and irresponsible fool. The magical force that induces chaos in the presence of the fool often results in a transvaluation of values that could be the beginning of a new order. (p. 110–111) Good learning is often dependent on the ability to stand back from that which is already known. Alvin Toffler (1970) suggested not only the ability to learn as being central to literacy in the 21st Century, but also the ability to unlearn, and to relearn. Existing classifications of information should not be allowed to prevent us from seeing alternative patterns. Kurt Lewin (1947), in thinking about the challenge of 20

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social change, used the notion of ‘unfreezing’ to describe this need to challenge the obviously true in one’s cognitive structures. Indeed this can be seen in a very concrete way in the scholarship of physics teaching, where it can be shown that the active removal of incorrect, naive models is an important basis for establishment of more useful, predictive models of physical understanding (Hake, 1998). Perry’s (1970) model of the development of the student’s epistemology suggests that the learner new to higher studies begins with the view that the truth exists, is out there to be known, and that it is consequently the teacher’s job to set it forth, and the learner’s job to assimilate it. The view that knowledge is contested and conditional in all sorts of important ways is often a difficult one to arrive at from this starting point. However, tolerance of ambiguity, and a willingness to let go of the security felt in previous learning, can open doors to the complexity of a subject. Tutors in online spaces have a unique opportunity to demonstrate the partiality and situatedness of knowledge, much as Nasrudin does, by drawing parallels with that which is so obviously the case in a physical sense – that each learner is somewhere else, and that much depends on perspective. Even those disciplines which would seem to offer the possibility of certainty and objective truth are full of ‘partially correct’ models of the world which serve us well, and have been reinforced on many occasions. The reasons for this are explored in books by Gilovich (1991), and Piattelli-Palmarini (1994). There is evidence that individuals differ in the strength of their need for cognitive closure. But there is also evidence that a playful or humorous approach by a teacher in a child’s early years can encourage that child to be less upset by cognitive ambiguity (Tegano et al., 1999). Perhaps it is not too late for the higher education tutor. The jester-teacher, however, must be particularly careful to direct his or her antics away from the audience – to include and involve them without making them targets or demanding self-mockery in return. Even with this in mind, challenging forms of humour, such as satire, can be painful for learners. The actor and entertainer Michael Flanders once said that ‘The purpose of satire, it has been rightly said, is to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half truth, and our job, as I see it, is to put it back again!’ Moving away from the comforting illusion and cosy half truth can be a distressing business. Sensitivity and care are needed in order to successfully tutor jest-fully; like juggling or tight-rope walking, there is skill involved. The skill in jesting is to make it look easy and spontaneous, while at the same time being aware of the limits of one’s audience: in other words, not to go too far. The tradition of humanitarian clowning may be a useful model here, one whose principal aim is to calm, heal and facilitate: ‘Most of the time we don’t know what rippling affect [sic] our little silliness has in calming situations and opening doors for others to do their work. We are not attached to results. The play of the moment is what is important’ (Shobhana Schwebke, hospital clown7). There is certainly a place for casting the chaos as fun and excitement, rather than threat and danger, in our role as tutors. The gentle clown also offers spaces for laughter and fun amongst the serious business of learning (Berk, 2003). ‘As a pedagogical device, humour can promote various objectives, such as to increase student interest and attention, facilitate the 21

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student-teacher relationship, provide students with a ‘mental break,’ or promote the understanding and retention of a concept.’ (LoSchiavo & Shatz, 2005, online). In addition, as Berk has found, ‘humour’s primary psychological role is as an emotional response or buffer to relieve physical stress… laughter has been shown to stimulate a physiological effect that decreases stress...’ (Stambor 2006, online). Space for fun and light-hearted moments can be difficult to provide for in asynchronous interactions. However, LoSchiave and Shatz found that ‘humour can… help create an online atmosphere that encourages participation, creativity, and exploration’ (2005). COMPLEXITY, LIMINALITY AND ABSURDITY

Unlike the jester, part of whose role is consciously and carefully to ‘speak truth to power’, the fool is often seen as revealing the truth unwittingly, and to the benefit of the audience rather than himself. Shakespearian fools, for example, can ‘test our capacity to hear truth, in slant, peculiar and painful forms, and to use it to take a few steps in the general direction of freedom” (Edmundson 2000, online). There is much that could be usefully drawn out here about individual fools in Shakespeare: Touchstone, ‘a wise fool who acts as a kind of guide or point of reference throughout the play, putting everyone, including himself, to the comic test’ (John Palmer8), and who travels with the protagonists into the Forest of Arden – the place between – where their fates are sorted out; Feste in Twelfth Night, both pivotal to, and slightly removed from, the action of the play; and Yorick, the silent Fool, whose absence deprived Hamlet of an usher ‘down the road not taken, a road on which he might have found some measure of happiness’ (Edmundson 2000, online). Generally speaking, though, Shakespearian fools draw attention to the depth and complexity of things, but often in sidelong ways, in minor roles, and rarely for more than a moment or two at a time – perhaps because the audience, once pointed in the right direction, can do much of the work of untangling complexity themselves. Indeed, it is necessary that we do untangle complexity ourselves. The online tutor is required to be so explicit and so prepared to have the first word that he or she may forget to leave spaces for the necessary work of the learner in constructing his or her own understanding of the material. These spaces can be a gift, and a vote of confidence: ‘In Shakespeare, to have a fool attending on you is generally a mark of distinction. It means that you’ve retained some flexibility, can learn things, might change; it means that you’re not quite past hope… To be assigned a fool in Shakespeare is often a sign that one is, potentially, wise’ (Edmundson 2000, online). The online tutor can often leap in too quickly, and make his or her guiding or clarifying input as soon as a student is seen as floundering. However, the evidences are that contributions from the tutor can lead to what Jean Wood has called ‘premature teacher closure of online learning conversations’ (Wood, 2003). The temptation for the students is to say ‘That’s alright then’ in response to the tutor’s contribution, and to hear the tutor’s input as definitive. When this happens in a faceto-face tutorial it is obvious, and there is usually the opportunity to repair it. When it happens online, it may not be noticed by the tutor until the moment has passed, and the opportunity is lost forever. 22

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On the other hand, and also following the model of a Shakespearian fool, the tutor should try to create a felt presence, so that the group, and the individual student, trusts that the tutor is aware of what is going on and is available to help out should it be needed. This may be an entirely psychological matter, or may be assisted by technology. For example, the manifestation of the presence of the tutor online within systems such as Blackboard/WebCT or through some application like Microsoft Messenger, or Skype, may serve to encourage and reassure the student. There is no implication here that the student will approach the tutor’s online presence – although this may happen if it needs to – but that a felt presence bolsters the student’s confidence to work, and take risks, on their own. Turner maintains that the wide presence of tricksters in world literatures: derives from their liminality, the “betwixt and between” state of transition and change that is a source of myth in all cultures (‘Myth and Symbol’ p. 580). As liminal beings, tricksters dwell at crossroads and thresholds and are endlessly multifaceted and ambiguous” (Smith 1997, p. 7–8). Online tutors, like tricksters, are the guardians of liminal spaces and of states of change and flux. These correspond, perhaps, to Meyer and Land’s (2005) ‘threshold concepts’. In the case of all online learners, regardless of discipline, one ‘troublesome knowledge’ (Perkins 1999) tricksters guard may be a practical understanding that there is always a position to take: Interpreter, storyteller, and transformer, the trickster is a master of borders and exchange, injecting multiple perspectives to challenge all that is stultifying, stratified, bland or prescriptive. (Smith 1997, p. xiii) The perceived boundaries of the self are more fluid in this medium (Turkle, 1995), and the online trickster-tutor has the opportunity to be present at this threshold and to demonstrate the power of exploring identity as a way of understanding what we hold sacred about ourselves – the sacred as a point of transition, not a starting point, nor necessarily a place of ultimate arrival. For example, we might consider what the medieval Feast of Fools (a day on which ecclesiastical hierarchies were inverted, choirboys dressed up as priests and elected a ‘bishop’ from among their number – see for example Jung, in Radin 1956) accomplishes by reversals and other acts which straddle the line9 between playful and radical. To perform a reversal or make fun of something in a Fool-ish or trickster-ish way does not necessarily mean that we are dismissing it. Rather, this is about bringing ideas into sharp relief so they can be examined. Self-awareness, reflexivity and the security of being able to recognise one’s own position (at any given moment) is a possible reward for the trouble of entering online spaces with an openness to their difference and our own difference within them. To provoke such exploration is sometimes to provoke fearful responses, and here, also, the trickster has something to offer. Fear can be a useful catalysing force, but: The important point here seems to be getting to know our fear, examining it closer, staring at it square in the eye – not as a means of solving our problem, but as a way of undoing old ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling…. The ‘trick’ 23

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is getting people to keep exploring and not bail out, especially when we discover something is not what we thought or expected it to be. (Sessums 2007, online) The trickster has the ability to play with and celebrate ambiguity. S/he prefers chaos to order, and such a preference opens up radical possibilities for structuring (or deconstructing) online learning situations. These possibilities fit well with the nonlinear, hypertextual/visual worlds in which online learners and teachers find themselves: pedagogical methods and intentions rooted in principles of textual stability and the dissemination of knowledge among stable, autonomous subjects [are] often at odds with a medium in which both text and subject are liable to metamorphosis, to the shape-shifting which is so much a feature of our lives in the digital realm. (Bayne 2005, online) One final story. Nasrudin was said to have ascended on three different days into the pulpit to preach, asking each time whether the audience knew what he was going to say. The first time, they said ‘no’, to which he replied ‘What shall I say to you until you do know?’, and left. The second time Nasrudin asked, the people said ‘yes’, and Nasrudin said ‘Some of you do know already, what should I have to say to you?’, and left again. The third time he asked, and after much discussion, some of the congregation replied ‘yes’, and some replied ‘no’. Nasrudin again left, this time telling them that ‘It were now well that those among ye who knew what the Cogia said should teach those that did not’ (Borrow 1884, online). Along with advocating a Web 2.0-style collaborative pedagogy, what is Nasreddin doing here? He may be poking fun at his followers and their desire to give the correct answer. He is also exposing them to absurdity. The ability to entertain absurdity and paradox is an important part of the process of arriving at new insights: old knowledge and understanding must be disrupted and reconfigured by new ideas or information in order for a more complex understanding of a subject to take shape. Piaget saw this disruption as a fundamental part of cognitive growth (Piaget, 1964). He described the way in which new knowledge, incompatible with existing knowledge structures, brings about a state of cognitive disequilibrium, thus motivating the cognitive resolution that follows. Similarly, Dewey (1934) observed that ‘equilibrium comes about not mechanically and inertly but out of, and because of, tension’. We are all inclined to want the safety of feeling sure of ourselves and certain that we have all the answers. Someone needs to come along and prise our white-knuckled fingers off the safety rail, and push us over the side, perhaps with a simple observation: the view is marvelous as you fall. This is what the trickster, fool and jester invite and challenge us to do for ourselves and for our students. CONCLUSION

As we have roamed through the territory opened up for us by the metaphors of jester, fool and trickster, we have often found the boundary between what we would wish to say about online ‘learners’ and ‘teachers/tutors’ blurring or dissolving entirely. 24

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The possibility that our approach might contribute to some of the ambiguity and surprise that we have celebrated through these characters is both pleasing and troubling. However, we have explored several aspects of what we consider to be fool-ish practice specifically for online tutors. In conclusion, our view is that online tutors should: – be willing to be the focus of critical attention, and to make themselves impossible to ignore in noisy online spaces; – support students to question and challenge authority (theirs and others’), but be aware of their own positions of power in doing so; – model ‘secure not-knowing’ and enjoyment of ambiguity; – find ways to provide a felt presence; – allow students to untangle complexity for themselves, in their own context; – be playful and use humour without making students a target; – make the sacred a point of transition. These are not practical ‘tips for teachers’, and nor do we intend them to be. Rather, they represent a frame of mind: a jester, trickster or fool’s approach to being alongside students in challenging, chaotic, digital environments. NOTES 1

2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9

The story goes that the title of the book by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore ‘The Medium is the Massage’ was actually a misprint which the authors allowed to stand because they felt that the event (the misprint) contributed to the point they were trying to make, and because they enjoyed its value as a pun. Our ‘noncepts’ word derived from a typo in an email exchange between us while discussing the paper, and has stuck as a way of expressing those ideas that we were trying to grapple with for which no appropriate words or metaphors existed. Judging by the relative proximity of the ‘c’ and ‘n’ keys on the QWERTY keyboard, this was more likely to have been a Freudian Slip than a typographical error, the word striving to combine the spirit of ‘concepts’ and ‘nonsense’. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_tutoring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anansi http://mythsandtales.com/_wsn/page17.html Playing devil’s advocate is in itself a challenging notion for many learners, who may, especially in their early years of higher education, be conditioned by what Stewart and Cohen call ‘lies to children’ (Pratchett, Stewart and Cohen, 1999) to expect simple and unambiguous questions and equally simple answers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasreddin http://www.hospitalclown.com/InfoPages/What%20is%20a%20Hospital%20Clown.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchstone If there is such a line – ludic postmodernism, for example, would suggest that the playful is the radical. See Kellner and Best 1997, The Postmodern Turn.

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MACLEOD AND ROSS Berk, R. A. (2003). Professors are from Mars, students are from snickers: How to write and deliver humor in the classroom and in professional presentations. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Calvin, W. H. (1996). How brains think: Evolving intelligence, then and now. New York: Basic Books. Dubrovsky, B. J., Kiesler, S., & Sethna, B. (1991). The equalization phenomenon: Status effects in computer-mediated and face-to-face decision-making groups. Human-Computer Interaction, 6, 119–136. Edmundson, M. (2000, April). Playing the fool. New York Times, 2. online. Ellsworth, E. (1989). Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 59, 3. Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Evanston, IL: Row Peterson. Flanders, M., & Swann, D. (1964). At the drop of another hat. Parlophone PCS 3052. Recorded live during a performance at the Haymarket Theatre, London, 1963. Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. New York: Capricorn Books. Garrison, D. R., & Anderson, T. (2003). E-learning in the 21st century: A framework for research and practice. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Gilovich, T. (1991). How we know what isn’t so: The fallibility of human reason in everyday life. New York: Free Press. Joinson, A. N. (2002). Understanding the psychology of Internet behaviour: Virtual worlds, real lives. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hake, R. R. (1998). Interactive-engagement versus traditional methods: A six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses. American Journal of Physics, 66(1), 64–77. King, A. (1993). From sage on the stage to guide on the side. College Teaching, 41(1), 30–35. Land, R., & Bayne, S. (2002). Screen or monitor? Surveillance and disciplinary power in online learning environments. In C. Rust (Ed.), Improving student learning using learning technology (pp. 125–138). Oxford: OCSLD. Land, R., & Bayne, S. (2006). Issues in cyberspace education. In M. Savin-Baden & K. Wilkie (Eds.), Problem-based learning online. Maidenhead: Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press. Lanham, R. (2006). Economists of attention. In The economics of attention: Style and substance in the age of information. Extract online at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/468828.html Lewin, K. (1947). Frontiers in group dynamics human relations. Reprinted in D. Cartwright (Ed.), Field theory in social science (Vol. 1, No. 1). London: Tavistock, 1952. LoSchiavo, F., & Shatz, M. (2005). Bringing life to online instruction with humor. Radical Pedagogy. Online at http://radicalpedagogy.icaap.org/content/issue8_2/shatz.html Mazzolini, M., & Maddison, S. (2003). Sage, guide or ghost? The effect of instructor intervention on student participation in online discussion forums. Computers & Education, 40(3), 237–253. Meyer, J. H. F., & Land, R. (2005). Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2): Epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning. Higher Education, 49, 373–388. McWilliam, E. (2005). Unlearning pedagogy. Journal of Learning Design, 1(1). Mortola, P. (2001). Sharing disequilibrium. A link between Gestalt therapy theory and child development theory. Gestalt Review, 5(1), 45–56. Otto, B. (2001). Fools are everywhere: The court jester around the world. University of Chicago Press. Extract online at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/640914.html Perkins, D. (1999). The many faces of constructivism. Educational Leadership, 57(3), 6–11. Perry, W. G., Jr. (1970). Forms of intellectual and ethical development in the college years: A scheme. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Peterson, B. (2003). Fools are everywhere: The court jester around the world (review). Journal of World History, 14(4), 555–559. Piaget, J. (1964). Development and learning. In R. E. Ripple & V. N. Rockcastle (Eds.), Piaget rediscovered. New York: Cornell University Press. Piattelli-Palmarini, M. (1994). Inevitable illusions: How mistakes of reason rule our minds. New York; Chichester: Wiley. Pratchett, T., Stewart, I., & Cohen, J. S. (1999). The science of discworld. London: Ebury. 26

STRUCTURE, AUTHORITY AND OTHER NONCEPTS Radin, P. (1956). The trickster. A study in American Indian mythology (With commentaries by Karl Kere & C. G. Jung, pp. xi, 211). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Roszak, T. (1994). The cult of information: A neo-Luddite treatise on high tech, artificial intelligence, and the true art of thinking. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Sessums, C. (2007). Please panic! Allowing the moment to become the teacher. Online at http://elgg. net/csessums/weblog/147086.html Simpson, O. (2003). Student retention in online, open and distance learning. London: Kogan Page. Smith, J. R. (1997). Writing tricksters: Mythic gambols in American ethnic literature. London: University of California Press. Stambor, Z. (2006). How laughing leads to learning. Monitor on Psychology, 37(6). Online at http://www. apa.org/monitor/jun06/learning.html Suzuki, S. (1996). Zen mind, beginner’s mind. New York: Weatherhill. Tegano, D. W., Groves, M. M., & Catron, C. E. (1999). Early childhood teachers’ playfulness and ambiguity tolerance: Essential elements of encouraging creative potential of children. Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 20(3), 291–300. Tinto, V. (1993). Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press. Toffler, A. (1970). Future shock. London: Pan Books. Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster. Welsford, E. (1935). The fool; his social and literary history. New York: Farrar & Rinehart. Willeford, W. (1969). The fool and his sceptre. London: Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd. Wood, J. A. (2003). The ‘re-skilling’ of tertiary teachers for new learning environments. Victoria, Australia: Deakin University.

Hamish Macleod and Jen Ross University of Edinburgh, UK

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MAGGI SAVIN-BADEN, CHRISTINE SINCLAIR, CHRISTINE SANDERS AND SECOND WIND1

3. LURKING ON THE THRESHOLD Being Learners in Silent Spaces

INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents our perspectives on being learners on the first two modules of a new and innovative MSc in E-Learning. We explore our reasons for undertaking this course, particularly as we are both fairly experienced academics, and we examine when and how we experienced ‘stuckness’, and the particular factors that created this sense of disjunction. We use narrative inquiry as our informing methodology. The chapter delineates the forms of stuckness we have experienced and identifies the catalysts for these forms. The final section of the chapter suggests that some of the stuckness we have experienced is related to a new form of lurking, and argues that our experience may have implications for other learners in online spaces. LURKING ON THE THRESHOLD: OUR STORIES

We begin by presenting our positions as both academics and learners and explore the notion that being an e-learning student can sometimes feel like being in a silent space. Christine/Christine Sanders: I had two motivations for undertaking the MSc in e-learning: one an awareness that I was slipping behind in understanding of the ‘e’ environment and the other, the main one, to experience actually being an e-learning student. I had already researched the experience of being an undergraduate student in a new discipline by becoming such a student again. (I had become a mechanical engineering student, though my background is philosophy and education.) Now I wanted to explore a new mode of study, as well as a new discipline, and from a postgraduate perspective As Christine Sanders, I have been enabled to enter a whole new environment (Second Life) and have even learned to fly and teleport myself. I have been surprised at how wary I have been about Second Life, given my enthusiasm for taking on an alternative perspective both in my early study and this current one. Maggi: Over the last five years I have enjoyed the shifts to e-learning and I like to fiddle and play with technology - even though most of the time I don’t R. Land and S. Bayne (Eds.), Digital Difference: Perspectives on Online Learning, 29–42. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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actually know what I am doing. However, as someone who has researched learning for many years I was constantly frustrated by what I saw as the ‘clunkiness’ of learning in online spaces. I hated the ordering strategies of VLEs and the discussions I had had with many experts was that the problem was not with the VLE but how I was choosing to use it. Having heard Sian Bayne speak about learning in cyberspace I realised that the problems might not just be with me. I felt I had given WebCT ‘a go’ but thought that if I wanted to learn differently then perhaps many others did too. I heard about this MSc and decided the best way to prevent any further courses I developed from being completely vanilla, being a learner for my ‘self ’ was the way forward. However, I didn’t expect the shift into liminal spaces to occur quite so quickly nor did I expect the course to be quite so addictive. As Second Wind I have found that I have been more playful and challenging than usual, particularly in group seminars on the beach. My biggest shock was how much my appearance affected how I was ‘seen’ and because of this I have changed from looking quite like my-self to looking like a goth-withattitude, (which probably reflects the subtext of my RL). Maggi’s identification of ‘liminal spaces’ is key to our interpretation of what has happened to us as students and occasionally to our avatars. This notion, originally derived from cultural anthropology, relates to transition and ambiguity and is considered further below in our account of how we approached our task. METHODOLOGY

Our stories show that the idea of using our own data as research material occurred to both of us from an early stage. We both saw a value in providing a thick description (Ryle, 1968; Geertz, 1973) of our experiences as students. In short, we adopted a form of narrative inquiry. Our new stories, we believed, could be a means of understanding experience as lived and told, through our blogs, assignments, discussions and the literature we read. Narrative inquiry can be seen in a variety of ways and tends to combine a number of different approaches and traditions such as biography, autobiography, life story and more recently life course research. In terms of locating it in the broad spectrum of qualitative research, it tends to be positioned within a constructivist stance with reflexivity, interpretivism and representation being primary features of the approach. It is possible to see these features by comparing how reflexivity is seen in narrative inquiry against other approaches. For example, Lincoln separated what she termed conventional qualitative methods from constructivist methods that emphasise holism. She highlighted the ontological stance of constructivist research as being that ‘realities are constructed entities’ (Lincoln, 1992, p.379), and emphasised the subjective nature of its epistemology. Our own stories, then, might be expected to relate to our own representations of our student experience. Differences about the issue of representation seem to be one of the strong points of disagreement between qualitative researchers who hold different perspectives. 30

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This is not surprising, because to debate the issue of representation would usually draw into question the very processes by which the voices of participants are believed to be captured and presented. We consider that such opinions are, in turn, strongly influenced by views that are held about the nature of truth and truths. Denzin’s view of the representational crisis is characterised by the assumption that ‘much, if not all, qualitative and ethnographic writing is a narrative production…’ (Denzin, 1997, p.4). The assumption that follows is that ‘there is a world out there (the real) that can be captured by a ‘knowing’ author through the careful transcription (and analysis) of field materials (interviews, notes, etc.)’ (Denzin 1997, p.4). Denzin, positioned within critical post-structuralism, challenged these assumptions by stating that: Language and speech do not mirror experience: They create experience and in the process of creation constantly transform and defer that which is being described. The meanings of a subject’s statements are, therefore, always in motion. (Denzin 1997, p.5) It is in such transformations that a sense of liminality may be experienced. And when what is being described happens on the Internet ‘which draws users into peculiar kinds of ephemeral ‘places’ that we do not have words to adequately describe’ (Waskul, 2005, p.54), then inevitably we find ourselves in liminal spaces. However, we argue that narrative inquiry must go beyond the notion of just telling stories. By using our narratives at the beginning of this article we hope to begin the process of illuminating the difference between ‘stories’ as data and narrative inquiry. POSITIONING OURSELVES AS RESEARCHERS

Our interest in narrative inquiry emerged from our experiences of using stories in our teaching and in the notion of the blog and discussion forum as being a space for sharing experiences, journeying and telling stories. In practice, we: – read each others’ blogs – critiqued each others’ coursework – considered each others’ postings on the discussion board – interpreted these as data – from the data, located common and contradictory themes We opted to select and analyse excerpts from each others’ data. Through this process, we tried to understand each others’ stories and thus came to an appreciation of shared and informed consent. This chapter therefore contains both separate and joined stories; there are two voices with a shared interpretation. Yet the reading of each others’ blogs, for example, enabled us to see not only similarities and differences but also how one of us privileged some ideas, concepts and experiences that the other had barely noticed. Furthermore, the notion of what counted as a story and biography in this self reflexive study was something we necessarily saw as problematic, but how it was problematised was an issue that seemed to slip in and out of focus as we used it as a research method, as we illustrate in the examples below. 31

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Although presented as separate themes, there is an overlap and intermeshing across them. The overarching themes across our stories comprised: – silence and stuckness – catalysts to stuck places – lurking on thresholds SILENCE AND STUCKNESS

The overarching sense of silence and stuckness pervaded the course for both of us. What we mean by silence is not only lurking on the discussion boards, but not knowing what we thought, how to position ourselves, what to say. While our stuckness was largely characterised by conflict, ambiguity and incoherence, sometimes it seemed as if we were just pedagogically immobile; at other times we were cross and frustrated, knowing there must be better ways of attempting tasks but not really knowing where to start. Paradoxically, online spaces can also seem to be very noisy places, with many people ‘talking’ at once and using a language that may be alien in part. For example, Phipps (2005) has discussed the notion of ‘sounds’ in academia and argues that the changes in sounds is having a somewhat unhelpful impact on the quality of academic life experiences. Phipps’ work, although located in a deconstruction of sounds, in many ways refers to the impact of noise on learning spaces. However, it is important to note at the outset that how we saw these concepts and the way we experienced them were both similar and different for both of us. Maggi had not expected so much liminality so soon. Christine had expected it – and was indeed looking out for it – but it came from unanticipated sources. Whilst this might seem negative, for us it was actually an exciting learning space and our sense of being in control of our learning destiny seemed to be out of focus most of the time. Positioning of Self The notion of what presence and embodiment mean in digital spaces was something that was constantly problematic for us. The way we seemed to cope in this silent space in the earlier stages of the course was to (super)impose what we ‘knew’ using an identity we felt we ‘had’. We both intuitively felt that this new learning space was distinctively different but it might be that we were imposing difference on it because it was new and unfamiliar, which would seem to be a contestable position, just as is the notion that we are somehow disembodied in cyberspace. Thus, there is an assumption that because we were not ‘seeing’ non-verbal cues such as eye contact and body language, this is making online learning and communication difficult. However, it might be the case that new and diverse forms of communication are emerging that are creating new textual and identity formations, not previously located or understood, as Christine reflected: But I don’t want to make the separation between the worlds as strongly as yesterday’s blog suggests. I always get annoyed when people contrast university with the ‘real’ world: though I suppose that does fit with students saying it feels like another planet. (I do think that these are two different issues though.) Some of the current discussions and next week’s reading are making some 32

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very interesting points about what’s visible and available and the relationships between online and embodied identities. Yesterday I wrote in my journal, ‘I’m not convinced that the embodied identity can be ditched so easily’ and left myself an instruction to think about this. Sometimes not having a physical presence can be convenient. Maggi found that she welcomed the opportunity to decide where she should ‘be’. She had decided not to participate in the discussion thread but go off and explore Second Life in advance: I…wonder if it matters that I haven’t joined my group. Part of me feels it does matter but I have enjoyed ‘not’ being there which has given me a chance to reflect and play with some other things. For example, I have an avatar in Second Life and I managed to change my clothes and hair today. I feel as if I am really enjoying the experimental side of all this and feel very clueless but sort of more confident in my clueless-ness. At this stage, then, working with Second Wind seemed more comfortable for Maggi than the group discussions in WebCT. The idea of having a digital identity emerged predominantly from the notion of a mind-body split and the overarching sense when operating in cyberspace that there is a feeling of disembodiment and of not being present, a sense of being present and yet not being there but this was a notion to which neither of us subscribed. Yet our embodiment still appeared to be troubling because it prompted us to consider the nature of our identities in cyberspace and whether they were the same or different from our other identities. (Christine): Embodied people can’t lurk – they have presence. However, it occurred to me afterwards that there may well be disembodied lurkers in SL, as we show our RL colleagues what is going on on screen. I’ve done this a couple of times. I didn’t do it during our tutorial, but I might have – and now I’m questioning the ethics of this. Yet this in turn introduced concerns about lurking and lingering with questions about the extent to which the notion of lurking came from somewhat arbitrarily imposed boundaries. Imposed Boundaries Although we had both been engaged in digital spaces for some years we still felt we were new to them and thus felt we did not have a sense of how to be in these spaces. The result was that our face-to-face stances imposed pre-existing structures to online settings. However, in undertaking a module on digital game-based learning we both felt launched into liminal spaces as we felt that the games were positioning ‘us’ rather than be able to position ourselves in relation to the game, as Christine reflected: I have noticed two things that give me cause for concern: 1) I am positioned as having no choice but to engage in violence. I am unable to continue with the game if I do not. Carrying this message into real life is disturbing for a pacifist. 33

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2) When my soldiers get killed, it is more ‘costly’ if they have good weapons as I have to replace them. Thus the more lightly armed soldiers’ life has less value. When I first noticed the second point, I said to myself: ‘But it’s just a game; I wouldn’t take that stance in real life.’ But the game seems to have exposed a side of me that has taken that stance and I don’t like it. Maggi’s journal shows similar deep concerns about violence in computer games and this was a strong theme from many of our fellow students too. Perhaps it is because as a society or even as an academic community we have become so focussed on signs, and because signs seem to change so fast, organising principles that once seemed stable are constantly shifting. Thus the ability to ‘take a position’ is not just shaped by our personal and pedagogical stances but also by the late modern focus on signs. Thus our position, even our ability to ‘take up’ a position, is located by the game, by our reaction to the game as well as the impact of our life world on/with the game. It seems to us then that positioning is probably more important than the game itself but it is only through understanding the subtext of our position through the game that we come to understand our responses and reaction to our selves. Thinking about games in new ways proved uncomfortable for us both and suggested some liminal spaces – but with the possibility of release through discussions with each other and with the tutor, as recorded by Maggi: After some very interesting email conversation with [the tutor] I have been challenged to think through a number of issues to do with games, but what is also interesting is firstly that I feel I am now on the cusp of my disjunction and things are on the move, and secondly that everywhere I look I now see games… Such discomfort introduced concerns about new pedagogies (as we saw them) and emergent power relations. Power and Pedagogy There seems to be relatively little understanding of how digital spaces are constituted, how they might be mapped, how they might be used differently, and the impact that such spaces are having on the nature of higher education. For example, the provision of information for students, the structuring of learning, the development of websites and learning materials, and the changing in patterns of communication are some of the noticeable but probably smaller impacts that digital spaces are having on the higher education experience for staff and students. Yet Christine wondered about the extent of the commitment of many university staff: My main point is that unless people have themselves experienced the presentation of self through blogs, portfolios and WebCT, they are not really in a position to make judgements about how other people do it. And then I have a question: is it the presentation of the self that we are judging or the actions and artefacts that tell us that this person is someone who can participate in a particular activity? And can these be separated? 34

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One of Maggi’s blogs on the same topic (e-portfolios) takes the arguments a bit further. After reflecting that the issues involved are not that different from other types of portfolio, she concludes: Surely too the extent to which one allows the database to order and privilege for oneself is a matter of choice, creativity and structure, and choice of tool. There are also arguments by McAlpine [2005] that the e-portfolio becomes a virtual identity – yet it is not clear how this is different (or the same) as the identities that we present in discussion board and blogs. Ordering proved to be a source of discomfort for both of us. Ordering A subtext of control is evident in many VLEs, not only through semiotics, symbols and terminology, but also in the way learning is ordered in ways that suggest how teaching and learning should be. Whilst for many people these images of scaffolding, structure and safety suggest stability and control, for us there were times when the ordering brought into question our perspectives as both teachers and students; for example Christine reflected in her blog: The course is making me question some of my assumptions about my own practices, particularly in relation to written materials. There are some issues of control and boundaries here that are surprising me. Two specific triggers should perhaps be recorded: 1) the increased opportunities for collaboration afforded by technology 2) the role of technology in liberating or constraining what a student might do. All this is making me think that there might be another side to Gee’s [2003] ‘rules’ - perhaps an analysis that’s more from the student perspective: ‘what video games have to teach us about how we can get on at university’. Ordering strategies in VLE systems encouraged us as students not only to manage knowledge but also to manage our discussions and possibly sometimes to think and learn in linear ways. Thus, the way in which technology is employed in many universities is resulting in the sense of an institutional panopticon, where visibility and calculability are not seen as problematic. As Land has argued: The Web, for example, remains unruly, risky and troublesome, an implacable aspect of the supercomplexity and intractability of the post-modern condition. An intriguing irony is that though current commercial virtual learning environments (themselves global corporations) might be seen as spaces that dis-place older collegial spaces, symbolised by the quadrangle, they nonetheless still attempt to wall in their own ‘onscreen real estate’, to fend off, perhaps, the post-modern wildness of the Web. In this respect they function as an ordering strategy (Land and Bayne, 2006). Like many modernist practices and spaces, they are singularly rectangular. (Land 2006, p.108) Perhaps VLEs and other manifestations of the Web preserve some of the stereotypical or established teacher and learner roles. As both learners and teachers, we did, of course, have some observations to make on these roles. 35

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Teacher and Learner Identity The way in which we portrayed and projected ourselves in digital spaces seemed very much to reflect our pedagogical stances, the way we see ourselves as learners, and teachers. Thus, the complexity of being a learner (and teacher) in a variety of digital spaces constantly challenged us to question what it meant to ‘be’ a learner in these kinds of spaces, not only in terms of portrayal and presentation, but also in relation to pedagogy and action. For example, while there has been much discussion about presence and forms of presence in the literature on digital learning there has been relatively little exploration of the impact of diverse forms of digital presence on pedagogy (see for example, Feenburg, 1989; Bayne, 2005, 2008; Land, 2006). Maggi summarised some of these issues succinctly in her blog after an early meeting we had to discuss this chapter: Yet, as Christine suggested, maybe our constant contestation was problematic to others and I also wondered whether my strong pedagogical stance might be intimidating at times to others. The use of the blog to expand on pedagogical issues was invaluable to Maggi. Later she said: I think due to so much going on I have struggled with the reading but really got fed up with the Dreyfus [2001] article. I think this is because of the way I see learning as approach and deeply connected to our multiple and changing identities and much of this and the other articles for the last 2 weeks seemed over simplistic…I avoided going on the discussion list about it all because I felt I might get too inflammatory… so here is really what I think… Although Maggi the student was fed up with the reading, Maggi the university teacher was prompted by the issues to keep writing for another page or so beyond this. These examples illustrate how pedagogy in digital spaces is continually changing and both this and the pedagogy of digital spaces are mutually shaping and changing each other. We both found exchanges with tutors on the two modules considered here particularly helpful, to move us on as students and also to take forward the implications to our own teaching. The interplay of student and teacher personas was both discussed and practised during the course. It might be argued then that the pedagogical discourse emerged at the boundaries of these. One of the tutors reflected: Teaching on this course involves engaging at the same time in multiple written conversations across multiple media - in a morning’s work I can be commenting on 15 weblogs (each of which are ‘voiced’ very differently), responding to a handful of discussion threads, talking synchronously in groups in Second Life, and also responding to individual emails both in WebCT and in my usual email client. Personally I love working in this way but it strikes me that the opportunities for the linguistic performance of ‘teacherliness’ are so complex here, that we’ve barely even begun really to explore what this complexity might mean for the ways in which power operates in the classroom, or for the ways in which academic developers might need to work with teachers in helping 36

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them work with digital teaching spaces. I confess I’m still a little haunted by the chat session I had earlier in the semester, where - it emerged afterwards - the students couldn’t see my postings, and I didn’t even realise. What does that say about the operations of power in the online class, when the teacher can be quite literally invisible, yet can be continuing to teach without ever realising? However, there are further difficulties with the language of online learning. The notion of ‘moderating’ clearly locates the control with the lecturers. The notion of ‘lurking’ implies that silence and watching are inherently bad, while at the same time raising questions about what counts as presence in digital spaces – and who decides. However, these concerns about silence and stuckness enabled us to locate some of the catalysts to stuck places. CATALYSTS TO STUCK PLACES

We found becoming stuck in learning was both deeply problematic, useful and transformative. This is echoed in the similarities in our experience and also in the differences in our responses. However there were trends we shared and in particular we both felt that the stuckness did not necessarily always result in the displacement of identity (in the sense of a shift causing such a sense of disjunction that it resulted in costs personally and pedagogically, and hence has a life cost) but rather a shift in identity or role perception so that issues and concerns were seen and heard in new and different ways. The catalysts we experience included: Technical Difficulties and Understandings For both of us, despite being used to using a VLE, we found that the volume of links, information, reading and in particular the speed of communication and learning made us feel awash with complexity. While we enjoyed the stimulation, there were times when we fell silent because of feeling overwhelmed and almost voiceless in the discussion spaces. Pedagogical Concerns Our pedagogical concerns stemmed from not only our interest in how knowledge was created in and through the course but also around what might constitute the underlying pedagogy of the course. It seemed to be a course that was largely behaviourally constructed but was actually constructively positioned. For example we had learning objectives and a very traditional course guide with readings and the prerequisite guidance about plagiarism, but when ‘on ‘ and ‘in’ the course it was much less constrained or striated (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988) than we anticipated. There was also a sense of egalitarianism and reciprocity not only within the cohort, but also with tutors, who seemed to be learners too. Understanding the Conventions of the Media Used We were both familiar with some conventions of the e-learning environment though would not necessarily adopt them (Christine commented that she would not know 37

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what she meant if she used a ‘smiley’). Others were very new conventions, though adaptations of the familiar – for example, behaviour in Second Life such as turntaking in conversations, bumping into people and how to respond to strangers’ suggestions. Finally, there were the norms and in-jokes of a developing group (Cutting, 2000) – made more difficult as some people’s references came from technical sources unknown to us and others came from a range of theoretical perspectives. For example, while we understood the references to ‘deep’ approaches to learning, some others were bemused (and amused) by them – though others could refer to technical processes and perspectives that were alien to us (and which we have now forgotten). Feeling Out of Control There were more fascinating leads to follow up than there was time available – an inevitable outcome of such a widely experienced group of staff and students. Feelings of being out of control would arise when we were not able to access the site for a while or could not keep up with tasks because of work and other commitments. In such circumstances, we found we had to regain control by focusing on essential tasks, such as blogging and completing assignments. Both of us found that we had far more to say than the allotted word count for our assignments: a ‘normal’ case of feeling out of control but taking steps to restore the balance. LURKING ON THRESHOLDS

The final theme is that of lurking on thresholds in the sense that the betwixt and between-ness of such lurking emerged from a number of behaviours and actions we adopted. The notion of a ‘threshold concept,’ (Meyer and Land, 2003) captures the idea of a portal that opens up a way of thinking that was previously inaccessible. This conceptualisation seems to resonate with the experiences that are emerging from the blogs. However, what is problematic, but also vital, about the notion of a threshold concept is that preliminal variation exists. Meyer and Land (2005) begin by suggesting that when students find particular concepts difficult they are in a state of liminality which tends to be characterised by a stripping away of old identities, an oscillation between states and personal transformation. For us, some of the thresholds themselves were entrances to places where we did not want to go – and some were entrancing places where we wanted to escape the more mundane tasks. The themes here illustrate this sense of lurking at entrances and being entranced. Avoiding Engagement Both of us are sufficiently experienced to ensure that we have done what we had to as students to get through the course, but there were aspects that we avoided. It has already been suggested that neither of us wanted to engage with the e-portfolio, but the reasons for that resistance were familiar to us from other personal development planning issues. (Resistance to PDP does, however, raise some interesting questions in relation to the fact that we are both quite keen bloggers.) 38

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Again, we have already pointed out that neither of us wanted to engage with violent games, and this has brought out additional issues. Maggi reports not just having problems engaging with the games but also with the literature on games. The following extract throws an intriguing light on the use of the word ‘game’ – both in the unfamiliar and the familiar pedagogical contexts. I have had so many frustrating attempts on Pacman and other games I have decided to try something else.… However, I have decided that I am not getting to grips with a lot of this not just cos I don’t like the games but I don’t understand not only people’s fascination for them but also the literature. So I have done some searching and found some likely looking journal articles – that will at least make the researcher identity a little happier. However, I realised today that I also need to think about games differently, something [the tutor] indicated in the introduction to the module. For example, Perkins [1999] discusses the notion of ‘underlying games’ and epistemic games. In the process of avoiding engagement, we then might find our way back to more familiar territory and discourses. Yet there were others where we just found things too difficult. Sometimes moving on from one of the above positions would not take us far enough to have a voice in what the students in front were doing: for example, only getting on top of how to contribute to the wiki when all the excellent contributions were already there. Christine Sinclair also felt several steps behind in Second Life: avoiding the bigger tasks such as building, buying and selling and therefore being ‘invisible’ at some stages of the course, though her avatar Christine Sanders was actually pottering around in the shallows somewhere in Second Life and getting used to this new environment. However, there were other areas where we found ourselves doing the opposite. Over Engaging The idea of over engaging was that we became over keen and over involved in some areas of the course to the detriment of others (something we both find our students do). Second Life is probably the space that prompts the most different responses from us, and illustrate this theme best. Maggi’s preference for Second Life over some of the other more controlled spaces led her to wonder whether she was over-engaging: Yet what struck me was the juxtaposition of real life (RL) and Second Life (SL) and the extent to which one feels more ‘real’ in SL than in the online discussions – which I certainly seem to… I went back into SL this morning, flew, took my clothes off, and found the ski resort. I think I am getting addicted. However, maybe it can be used pedagogically to teach students to ask questions, good questions, since this is something we are not great at helping students to learn. Not sure how I could do this but would be worth more thought I think… As with avoiding engagement, thoughts about over-engagement are associated with a return to familiar ground and wondering how that can be integrated with the new ideas. 39

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RETURNING TO THE LITERATURE

It has been interesting to relate all of the above to what we are reading both as learners and as academics, especially work on liminality, thresholds and identity (Meyer and Land, 2003; Waskul, 2005). Such catalysts have promoted shifts into liminal states resulting in liminal identities, which for most of the course have resulted in ‘chronic uncertainty’ about our selves and our relationships to the new environment. The state of liminality tends to be characterised by a stripping away of old identities, an oscillation between states and personal transformation. Liminal spaces are thus suspended states and serve as a transformative function, as someone moves from one state or position to another. Engaging with liminal spaces may involve choice but in the case of troublesome spaces they are often more likely to be ‘stuck places’ (Ellsworth, 1997). Yet this conception of stuck places would seem to imply that stuckness is a place one travels to – whereas being stuck or disjunction is often a position one seems to find oneself in, often somewhat unexpectedly. There is little (if any) preparation and it may be because of this that disjunction is where people are before they reach a liminal space, prompted by a threshold concept or a new learning experience. Thus for us, having overcome the shock of the disjunction we find ourselves re-examining our position. Chronic uncertainty and liminal states should not necessarily be taken to be negative descriptions of where we are: the chapter identifies an associated excitement and stimulation prompted by these conditions. IMPLICATIONS

A number of implications emerge from the above findings. Each of us has been able to move on through our silent spaces to find ways of expressing ourselves as fledgling ‘e-learners’ and to integrate this new identity with our identities as teachers. Though we have still a long way to go, we have passed through some portals, perhaps never to return. A graphic example of this can be seen in our avatars: Christine Sanders and, especially, Second Wind have performed actions in Second Life that have led to their real life counterparts rethinking some of the things they do in their day-today practice in universities. Though we cannot return to our former neophyte state, we do have a wealth of information about the journey towards and through those portals. This helps us to prepare for the next ones. We know that when we are stuck it is likely that we will lurk around the threshold – either by avoidance or over-engagement in related activity – and will only pass through when we are ready. We believe that this may be a necessary phase; nevertheless, it may still be useful to seek ways to ensure that this phase is reached and satisfactorily transcended. CONCLUSIONS

This chapter has proved to be an interesting collaboration for a variety of reasons. We found it both reassuring and illuminating to read each others’ blogs about the same activity. Our experiences were liminal – arguably by definition because we were

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serious learners – but the boundaries, edges and thresholds we encountered were sometimes similar and sometimes different, as were our responses to them. When we got stuck, we reacted to the silence in two distinctive ways – by avoiding or over-engaging. We regard both avoidance and over-engagement as manifestations of ‘lurking’. This is perhaps an extended definition, emphasising the ‘prowling’ aspect of lurking as well the ‘not responding’ aspect. As university teachers, we now have some increased insights into student responses that may be relevant not just for online liminality but also for dealing with stuckness in general. As researchers, we have some more questions about what our stories are revealing and how they are revealing them. POSTCRIPT

Since we wrote this paper both of have continued on the MSc. We thought about changing the chapter to reflect the new spaces we find ourselves lurking in, but we chose not to. Both of us feel the edgy rawness reflects our position of being new students on a new course. However, since that time Maggi has moved into developing PBL in SL and gained funding to research the socio-political impact of learning in Immersive Virtual Worlds. Her avatar remains a strong part of her identity as both student and teacher. Christine identifies much less with her avatar, and would be more comfortable in seeing her as a separate character in a digital story. She wants to do something creative online – perhaps involving digital writing – rather than just snipe from the edges when she’s stuck. Stuckness remains part of learning for both of us – so much so that Maggi nearly gave up on one module completely. But stuckness seems to grow in various forms though there is still a sense of moving forward in the silence. A fellow student has stimulated some further thoughts about silent spaces by asking: “How do you analyse ignoring?” This has extended our ideas about shared perspectives on the same situation: who determines whether someone is lurking, lingering or ignoring? Our reflexive ideas on our early experiences have reinforced our belief in the importance of sharing what we notice and value about what counts as learning, quality and assessment – and whose voice is privileged most in the silent spaces of online learning. NOTES 1

There are four names on this chapter: two of them belong to our ‘Second Life’ avatars. On occasion, these characters appear to be sources of observations that we might not have made ourselves.

REFERENCES Bayne, S. (2005). Deceit, desire and control: The identities of learners and teachers in cyberspace. In R. Land & S. Bayne (Eds.), Education in cyberspace. London: Routledge. Bayne, S (2008). Higher education as a visual practice: seeing through the virtual learning environment Teaching in Higher Education, Vol. 13(4), pp. 395-410. Cutting, J. (2000). Analysing the language of discourse communities. Oxford: Elsevier Science Ltd.

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SAVIN-BADEN ET AL Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1988). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. London: Continuum. Dreyfus, H. (2001). On the Internet. London: Routledge. Feenberg, A. (1989). The written world: On the theory and practice of computer conferencing. In R. Mason & A. Kaye (Eds.), Mindweave: Communication, computers and distance education. Elmsford, NY: Pergamon Press. Gee, J. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. Land, R. (2006). Paradigms lost: Academic practice and exteriorising technologies. E-Learning, 3(1), 100–110. McAlpine, M. (2005). E-portfolios and digital identity. E-Learning, 2(4), 378–387. Meyer, J., & Land, R. (2003). Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: Linkages to ways of thinking and practising within the disciplines. C. Rust (Ed.), Improving student learning – Ten years on. Oxford: OCSLD. Meyer, J. H. F., & Land, R. (2005, April). Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2): Epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning. Higher Education, 49(3), 373–388 (16). Perkins, D. (1999). The many faces of constructivism. Educational Leadership, 57(3), 6–11. Phipps, A. (2005). The sound of higher education. Accompanying text of the closing keynote lecture given at the annual conference of the Society for Research into Higher Education, 15th December 2005, at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Ryle, G. (1968). The thinking of thoughts: What is “Le Penseur” doing? University Lectures No. 18, the University of Saskatchewan. Waskul, D. (2005). Ekstasis and the Internet: Liminality and computer-mediated communication. New Media & Society, 7(1), 47–63.

Maggi Savin-Baden Coventry University, UK Christine Sinclair University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

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COLLEEN MCKENNA AND CLAIRE MCAVINIA

4. DIFFERENCE AND DISCONTINUITY – MAKING MEANING THROUGH HYPERTEXTS

INTRODUCTION

Digital writing is a practice with which university students engage regularly. Increasingly, students communicate with each other and their lecturers using email, message boards and online posts, among other forms. Unsurprisingly, the research into writing in digital contexts has focused on these types of texts, and although such writing departs in its production from more conventional ‘essayistic’ writing (Lillis 2001), it is still broadly linear in terms of the expression and organisation of knowledge. Indeed, as Goodfellow and Lea (2007) have persuasively argued, there is much similarity between this type of writing and other, non-digital, genres with which students engage: many digital texts occupy new ‘sites’ of writing production but they do not represent fundamentally different writing practices. However, a more radical but underused genre in higher education is hypertext writing. That is not to say that hypertext has not been theorized: a great deal has been written about hypertext fiction, blogging, and, to a lesser degree, professional, published, academic writing (Landow 1994, Kolb 1994, 2008; Bolter 2001 and Ingraham 2000). Nonetheless, relatively little research exists about how student writers are experimenting with academic hypertext or where such work might feature in curricula. This chapter considers how hypertext assignments might disrupt conventional academic narratives and offer new opportunities for expression by enabling the interplay between text, image and sound, among other modes. By analysing two student assignments, we will argue that hypertext poses a challenge to conventional essay writing by knowingly disrupting linear organisation and privileging the gaps that such an approach affords. In the place of standard argumentation, new organisational techniques are adopted which rely on screen design, visual motifs and juxtaposition through linking. We also suggest that in order to subvert the ‘argumentative line’ (which as Kolb, 1994, reminds us is itself a problematic context, and to some extent, an illusion), students must be alert to what it is they are undermining. So, the act of engaging with hypertext may enable writers to think more fully about rhetorical features of academic writing generally. We also have some evidence to suggest that writers of hypertext reconceptualise the relationship between writer and audience. We also explore how this new form might liberate the thinking of student writers as they work outside of established, and probably internalised, essayistic paradigms.

R. Land and S. Bayne (Eds.), Digital Difference: Perspectives on Online Learning, 45–60. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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For this paper, we are drawing on the work of students in two iterations of the course Communicating in a Digital Age: Issues in Electronic Literacy that we taught at UCL. The course involved about 12 students and we will refer to their coursework, self-commentaries and interviews conducted by the authors. We will briefly consider theoretical approaches to hypertext and essay writing followed by an account of the course, as well as a consideration of technical fluency. Then we will analyse the students’ work and we’ll consider ways in which they playfully subvert more conventional approaches, re-presenting academic argument in new spaces which combine text, image and sound. WRITING IN HYPERTEXT: THEORETICAL APPROACHES

Research into hypertext writing has largely concerned non-academic texts (fiction, poetry or reflective writing) with less attention devoted to potential shifts in the way academic knowledge is represented in digital spaces. Despite the capacity of technology to afford new shapes of writing, little has changed in the world of academic publishing: even when made available online, academic research continues to be published in standard, linear formats (Bolter 2001, Ingraham 2000). Additionally, as Kolb 2008, observes, despite the proliferation of argumentative hypertexts on the internet, the writing seems to generally lack complexity, in terms of linking and distribution. Therefore, as Ingraham has suggested, the potential for digital writing to compel us to reconsider ‘the ways in which scholarly argument is constructed’ and how we might value multimedia within scholarly discourse has largely gone unrealised. One possible reason for this apparent lack of interest in academic hypertexts might be the perceived inappropriateness of non-linear, unbounded, multimodal formats for expressing academic knowledge. However, in ‘Socrates and the labyrinth’, Kolb, who both analyses and publishes academic hypertexts, suggests that hypertext writing affords a different type of meaning making, one which privileges exploration over conclusion. Kolb argues that distributed, non-linear claims making; multiple pathways and voices; spaces and disruptions; and the juxtaposition of ideas offer alternative ways of knowing: ‘A text can still make a claim on you even if it does not support a particular proposition or present a particular abstract structure of argument’ (Kolb 1994, p.340.) Similarly, in his ‘Sprawling Places’ project, in which he wrote both a book and a hypertext on the same topic, he compares the media and suggests that with the latter, readers ‘see the argument coming into focus gradually as a whole’ rather than being guided through it step by step (Kolb, 2004). That said, in his most recent work he observes that there are still relatively few examples of elaborate, expository hypertexts and he asks whether the ‘ideal of complex hypertext rhetorical structures’ was ‘mistaken’ (Kolb 2008). Towards the end of his 2008 lecture, Kolb suggests that increased hybridity of text types and multimodality might attract academic writers and this idea resonates with our experience. For our student writers, the disruption of the textual line was accompanied by new possibilities for organisation and expression enabled by the inclusion of new modes accompanied by the movement from page to screen. Gunther 46

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Kress and colleagues have written powerfully about the visual grammar of the screen and ways in which this offers an alternative approach to meaning making with the ‘logic of the image dominat[ing] the semiotic organisation of the screen’ (Kress, 2003). Kress distinguishes between the organisation of writing – largely sequentially and ‘temporally governed’ – and the organisation of the screen, ‘governed by the logic of space, and by the logic of simultaneity of its visual/depicted elements’ (Kress, 2003). However, the inclusion of modes such as sound and animation reintroduce a temporality to the screen and offer additional opportunities for disruption and juxtaposition, as we will show below with case study 2. One question that we are trying to understand is what does multimodality mean for academic writing and how might it challenge more conventional notions of argumentation for these students. What Might Hypertext be Challenging? As suggested above, there appears to be relatively little research on students’ academic writing in hypertext, and where students’ writing is mentioned in a wider discussion of hypertext publication, this is often with reference to potential future work (Burbules, 1998). Other case studies of students’ hypertext writing have focused on fictional narrative or on writing at secondary level rather than in a higher education context (Russell 1998, Dickson 2002). Writers in this area tend to focus on hypertext as an alternative to conventional writing, rather than as any kind of challenge to it (Carter 2003, Brooks 2002). Our thinking about disruption and discontinuity in student writing is informed by the academic literacies approach which problematises the dominance of certain conventions and genres, interrogates the way in which certain forms are seen to be naturalised, explores the impact of power relationships in student writing, and considers student writing in relation to issues of institutional regulation (Lillis 2001, Ivanic 1998, Lea and Street 1998). The academic literacies framework has been useful in helping us think about what hypertexts might be ‘challenging’ in terms of student writing in higher education and reminds us that the concepts ‘essay’ and ‘argument’ are themselves problematic. That is, although we’re positioning the work of our students against some notion of conventional writing, clearly the academic essay is not an agreed genre or text type that is static across all disciplines (Lillis 2001). Indeed, research by Lea and Street (1998) and Lillis and Turner (2001) has foregrounded the lack of agreement on the terminology of the academic essay. Nonetheless, there’s a general use of the term ‘essayistic’ which refers to academic writing that is broadly ‘linear’, that contains an argument and is characterised by certain shapes – usually an introduction, main body and conclusion. So, while we do not want to offer an essentialist account of academic writing and while we recognise there are other genres in use in higher education, we still feel able to speak about ‘essays’ in the belief that there is a broad, shared understanding of what we mean. As Lillis (2001) suggests,’ “essay” is really institutionalised shorthand for a particular way of constructing knowledge which has come to be privileged within the academy.’ 47

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THE COURSE

The Communicating in a Digital Age course addressed theoretical and practical issues associated with writing in online contexts. Seminar topics included the history of online communication; the dynamics of electronic communities; hypertext theory; issues of identity in online writing; power and surveillance in digital spaces; audience and electronic publishing. Students were reasonably well-versed in hypertext theory. The course was taught over a ten week period, in which students had two hours weekly in a seminar setting, and one hour per week in a ‘lab’ session, which took place in a computer room. The lab sessions were designed to support students’ development of their hypertext documents, through a combination of teaching writing in HTML, and providing time to work on the hypertext projects with advice and supervision. The assessed components of the course were a hypertext document, an essay, and a portfolio of short writing. The hypertext document (deliberately not called an essay) had to be multimodal (combining at least text and image), and roughly 1,500 – 3,000 words in length. The hypertexts had to contain links to external sources and comprise at least 15 pages/images. Some attempt to develop academic argumentation in hypertext was required along with an analytical/critical approach to the topic and the work was expected to be appropriately referenced. Although the theoretical and discursive aspects of the course were taught separately from the technical elements in seminars, the lab sessions were deliberately planned to encourage students away from thinking they were receiving neutral inputs to ‘train’ them in the use of a particular technology. Instead, in the planning stages we identified ways in which the computer room sessions would draw on the discussions of the seminars and lead from those discussions into the students’ development of their hypertext assignments. Learning to Write in Hypertext: Technical Competency as Fluency? During the technical sessions, it became clear that some students had more ambitious plans than others for their hypertext documents, and these students worked hard to acquire the technical competency to realise these projects. This is not to suggest that particular technologies ‘led’ their work, but rather that many students invested additional effort to achieve a ‘fluency’, the competency they wished to have, in the medium. We noted that two students who were already competent writers of blogs did not produce hypertexts as rich as those of students who had no previous experience in writing for the web. Although we discuss here a small number of examples of students’ work, nonetheless we ask whether technical competency is a necessary pre-requisite for fluent writing in the online environment – the question of competency influences the extent to which a person can communicate, and the sophistication of his/her communication. Further, we ask whether the current emphasis on the use of so-called ‘Web 2.0’ technologies in higher education might unwittingly take away opportunities for students to learn to write in more sophisticated ways online. Spaces for self-publishing, while extremely popular in non-academic contexts, usually offer prescriptive 48

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interfaces rather than blank canvasses in which an author can truly experiment. Of course, much good learning and reflection can take place in a blog, and in nonacademic contexts social networking has grown exponentially in popularity since the inception of the course we discuss here. However, we argue that these technologies have functions separate to the purpose of working with students to communicate their ideas through arguments in hypertext, particularly in the sense that Kolb means it. As Kolb (2008) points out, blogs may well reinforce a model of linearity, pointing outwards to other texts but not themselves breaking the narrative line. We suggest that what might now be called a more ‘traditional’ approach to writing in hypertext offered two possibilities that would be difficult to replace with the web publishing spaces currently so popular amongst many students. The first is that learning to storyboard and design a webpage from the blank screen means that the student is liberated from the structure of ready-made interfaces and design templates. The second is that there is no assumption that certain kinds of media or tools will be needed since these are not automatically on offer. If you think your site should include a discussion forum, you have to decide where it fits with your hypertext, then find one, and build it in. While not wishing to draw conclusions about how students may now be using the newer technologies now available to them, we are asking whether the Web 2.0 tools are as flexible as is often suggested. We will return to some of these questions later. We turn now to two examples of the students’ work and examine their hypertexts in closer detail.

Figure 1. The homepage of Manchi’s project.

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Figure 2. Manchi’s discussion of current VR research.

Figure 3. Manchi’s discussion of avatars. 50

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Figure 4. Manchi examines The VR Paradigm. DESCRIPTIONS OF TWO STUDENTS’ WORK

Manchi’s Project Manchi describes her project as a ‘discursive tour of virtual reality’. (Figures 1–4 above). She considers existing virtual reality technologies and outlines the possibilities they offer. Links are made to literature and popular culture in which virtual reality is a central theme, but the project also foretells the popularity of Second Life with its link to there.com. The design of this project is image-driven rather than text-driven, and in fact Manchi used image editing software to create all of the image maps forming the pages of the hypertext. A bubble design motif is used throughout this project to organize pieces of text, major sections, links and secondary references. Its listing of references and sources for the project as a series of differently sized text bubbles makes an interesting parallel with social bookmarking sites and ‘semantic clouds’, which were not in widespread use at the time this project was created. However, in contrast to the technologies that followed, this hypertext offers Manchi control over how the information is (un)organised and the variety of paths a reader may take to find it. Using images as the main medium of this project allowed Manchi to control absolutely the look of the project on the page: while other students struggled to organise their pages and to keep a consistent design across different platforms and browsers, for Manchi these technical issues were resolved by fixing the design in this way. 51

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Shujon’s Project A Brief History of MUDs examines the development of Multi-User Domains through an essay in the form of a MUD (Figures 5–7 below). The hypertext is organised around the idea of a mansion as MUD, and the rooms of the mansion each house a different theme of the discussion. The map of the mansion indicates the organization of the hypertext. The Hallway provides a history of MUDs, the Lounge Bar recounts visits to a number of MUDS. A room designated only with a query symbol ‘?’ presents a view of the psychology of MUDs. The Dining Hall page talks about relationships between MUDs, while the Ballroom categorises different kinds of MUDs, for example combative versus social. The Balcony, fittingly, presents a view of the future development of MUDs, and (perhaps most strikingly) the Teleporter is used for references and links. Technically, this proved to be very ambitious project for the student author. In order to realise it fully, he wished to use a real MUD or similar environment, but this was not possible without access to server space and assistance from a technical administrator. Instead, he sought ways to exploit fully the potential of simple interlinked webpages in order to convey the structure and ‘feel’ of a MUD. He invested extensive time and effort into the image and audio-visual effects included in the site, and the result is a carefully structured hypertext drawing heavily on the design characteristics of MUD environments and gaming. In this case, the design the student wished to use was closely interlinked with the topic of the essay. In both projects, design is critical to the overall effect: in other words, it is difficult to imagine either of these hypertexts as a conventional essay, so closely are they related to the visual design motifs the students have chosen.

Figure 5. The lounge area of Shujon’s MUD hypertext. 52

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Figure 6. Shujon discusses different types of MUD.

Figure 7. The Teleport Room of Shujon’s MUD hypertext. 53

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SUBVERSIVE PLAY: METAPHOR, HUMOUR AND GENRE SWITCHING

This new genre allowed students to experiment with rhetorical features of academic writing. In more conventional essay writing, characteristics such as consistency of voice, argumentative line and tone are assumed and even internalised by student writers. As suggested in the previous section, the hypertext assignments offered an uncharted space in which the student writers were able to experiment with alternative rhetorical techniques. Two that we’ll explore here are organisation and genre switching. In terms of the former, the multimodal nature of the hypertexts meant that metaphor – both in terms of the organisation of entire sites and key elements of the assignments – was privileged. For example, one student, who created a hypertext essay on the solar system positioned the reader as a space traveller who journeyed to different areas of the site. As described above, Manchi wrote about virtual reality using a spatial metaphor, the bubble design motif, as an organising theme. For Manchi, this motif signalled difference; in her words, this approach was ‘not conventional’: ‘In an essay, it’s all square. And I had the text floating in these bubbles … there was [an] Escher piece that it was inspired by.’ The bubble motif functioned at two levels. Firstly, the images on the opening screen (Figure 1), in which smaller ‘bubbles’ containing themes were positioned around a larger circle containing introductory thoughts on the topic of virtual reality. (The bubbles are almost like satellites orbiting a planet; an interpretation encouraged by the background image of a galaxy.) The images of this opening screen were highly appropriate to the circular organisation of the site and they signalled from the outset a nonlinear approach to the assignment, about which we’ll say more below. Secondly, the circular motif provided a primary mode of organisation on each screen. So, nearly all communication (analytical text, image, rhetorical questions, fictional text, cartoon, web links) was bounded by circles on the page and this constructed a creative and potentially disruptive tension. On the one hand, these ‘bubbles’ gave the different modes and discourses a sort of equivalence to each other. (Although, the essayistic discourse was generally located in a larger bubble to the rest, thus it had a certain prominence. See Figure 3, for example.) On the other hand, the space between the items was foregrounded and the student writer imagined that the reader would have to – ‘jump… from one sphere of text to another’. Additionally, the bounding of these items (text, questions, images etc.) allows them to be positioned in different places on the screen on different pages. So, while the look of each page is familiar, the positioning of the items is changeable. Both the necessity of ‘jumping’ and the unpredictability of this use of space disrupt the reading process: conventional features, such as the movement from left to right or the salience of top and bottom, cannot be assumed. As described above, Shujon’s hypertext assignment uses a MUD mansion floorplan as a visual and thematic organising device, with each section accorded a room, as shown in Figures 5 and 6. Additionally, the text, notably the introduction, intermittently imitates the faux-gothic language of MUDs and shifts among a range of discourses (including academic, reflective and fictional genres) as well as adopting different subject positions, with shifts between first, second and third person expression frequently occurring on the same page. Furthermore, the site incorporates 54

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sub-motifs – drawing on tropes from Star Wars and Star Trek. From the latter comes one of the most striking metaphorical elements of the assignment - the teleporter page (Figure 7) which replaces the traditional references section; buttons on the console form links to sites referenced elsewhere in the assignment. The use of the teleporter room as an analogue for a bibliography extends the assignment’s link between place and writing to include travel, and Shujon described his decision to construct a teleporter room in highly spatial terms: I was trying to make each room name relevant to the subject that was in it, so for the lounge bar I decided to put stories I had from MUDS in there, as it’s where people relax and tell you their adventures - a bit like tavern tales. When it came to [deciding] what room could [contain] the links, I thought of it being the room that is going to take you elsewhere from the site, and being a trekkie, the teleporter room came to mind. I thought it would also reinforce the idea of the user acknowledging they are leaving the ‘safety’ of this site. The student has re-conceptualised the rhetorical function of the bibliography/ references. Rather than simply an inert list at the end of an essay, the references page is transformed into a portal, offering excitement and perhaps ‘danger’ to the reader, who is re-positioned as a cyber-traveller. As with the previous example, the metaphorical frame, in this case the mansion, offers a (non-linear) structure within which the student writer can be highly experimental and disruptive: … I thought it would be funny to put in some things completely out of the blue, as in the beginning you are told you are in a mansion and it seems scary, then you walk into the lounge and you are in the Star Wars world, thinking am I still in the mansion? I wanted to make it act like a break in between reading pages and keep the user’s attention fresh as it breaks up the text, then allows the user to know this is a new section and they can focus on that. In academic writing, unless I was writing fictional stories, I usually did not use humour... Again, Shujon is knowingly constructing discordant spaces and gaps, and he imagines how a reader might respond to such disruption. Additionally, he seems to be referring to the playful and disruptive qualities of the genre-switching he uses throughout the assignment. Each page begins with a Gothic discourse in 2nd person which imitates the text of a MUD site: You jump as you hear a match being struck, and look to your left as the wall lamp is lit, casting an eerie glow around you. You see you are in the entrance of some kind of mansion, with a door directly in front of you. (opening screen) This discourse style appears at the top of every page, followed by contrasting genres. For example on the page entitled ‘MUD encounters’ (see Figure 5), this Gothic description is followed by a first person account of exploring MUDs as a novice, which is succeeded by a more conventional, 3rd person comparison of two seminal MUDs. The genres are visually distinguished by shifts in font and colour. Additionally, a large photograph is positioned prominently at the top of the page 55

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and a sound file containing music with a ragtime feel starts playing as soon as the page is loaded. So the page is multimodal and multi-voiced and the reader experiences a charged, creatively chaotic space similar to Bakhtin’s state of heteroglossia, in which heterogeneity and multivocality are celebrated. FREEDOMS/CONTROL/CHALLENGES TO CONVENTIONAL ESSAYISTIC LITERACY

Argumentation One of the main shifts that hypertext affords is the loosening or even loss of the linearity that print-based text privileges. Most of the students viewed a lack of linearity as an opportunity. (One exception was a very confident essay writer who seemed uncomfortable with the thought of departing from the conventional narrative line. He imposed a strong sequential narrative onto his hypertext writing by setting out sections vertically and implying a prescribed reading order.) Nonetheless, the majority of students embraced the shift away from a strictly sequential approach and the move to online writing made them rethink the relationship between each part (screen or ‘page’) and its relationship to the whole (the entire hypertext assignment): I tried to make each page stand-alone yet be connected, so you could just read a page and understand it without having to read the other pages to do so. If you read them all, then you got the whole picture and each page complemented [the] other[s]. (Manchi) For Manchi this new approach to argumentation was more than a rhetorical shift; it shaped the way in which she conceptualised both the resultant text and the writing process. Here she explains the former in terms of spatial dimensions: ‘it wasn’t … a 2-dimensional sort of text – where you’re running through it from introduction to main argument to conclusion … it was trying to be a bit more 3-dimensional in that you could go from one bit of text to another without taking that linear approach.’ She suggested that while she lost an organisation afforded by the ‘traditional linear approach’, that she gained a different kind of cohesion through design by using ‘other markers’ particularly graphical ones: colour, style, repetition of images etc. For her, the writing process really was web-like, and she described her storyboard for the assignment as – ‘a web of ideas that went out from the introduction [which was] the central piece… the ideas were more circular … It wasn’t linear.’ Content and form are closely related and contribute to her sense of the writing process and the organisation of ideas. Additionally, she felt that the ‘argument’ was more implicit than explicit and she commented that she had no formal conclusion. Similarly, most of the hypertext assignments, opened with a well-defined introductory screen and most lacked a conclusion. A student who constructed an assignment on image manipulation, re-thought the rhetorical link between conclusion and argumentation and suggested that ‘argument’ could be achieved independently of ‘closure’. His approach and his assignment embraced Kolb’s notion that academic meaning-making can be about exploring a territory. As Goodfellow and Lea have 56

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observed, neither the writing nor the reading ends at a fixed point in many of these texts. Another theme that emerged was students’ sense of potential readers being more active (less ‘controllable’) and their increased awareness of how audience influenced the writing process. This imagined online reader is reminiscent of the Bakhtinian superaddressee (McKenna, 2005). Audience is linked to argument because an awareness of it often affected decisions taken about the content of individual pages. As students observed, a writer cannot make assumptions about what a reader has already read in a hypertext environment and this reader ‘input’ had implications for the overall organisation. As one student observed, ‘the reader had a lot more input into it [the design]; maybe because they could choose their own path throughout the text, you had less control over the way it was read. Of course, you put in what you wanted in the actual content – but … the reader had more control.’ So a consideration of audience and an awareness of the shape of the hypertext seem to be linked. This view of hypertext readers and their ‘input’ mirrors Carusi’s sense of the reader as one who ‘co-creates’ the hypertext (2006). The students were, in part, accommodating an imagined reader and, in part, positioning themselves as readers in order to analyse their writing and a strong sense of audience was generally evident. Some students even made direct appeals for feedback from an anticipated, but unknown audience. Lastly, what seemed to appeal especially to students was a shift from a strictly written expression to a multimodal one with image and sound being the modes introduced most frequently followed by animation. For most of them, making meaning using images, sound or movement was a novel experience, and multimodal presentation offered the opportunity to disrupt assumptions about academic texts. In particular, multimodality enabled the introduction of humour and irony in the assignments through sound (the Star Wars bar tune, creaking door), image (cartoon cow, Lurch) and animation (one writer introduced a clip from the Simpsons). This integration of humour arguably enables the more formal elements of academic writing to be subverted, as Shujon suggests: ‘Instead of creating using just words, you can think of what appropriate music or sound can be used, what images you want to use to create the atmosphere you want. I think in this piece, the subject itself, MUDs allowed even more ‘playfulness’ as in MUDs you are usually roleplaying anyway.’ Additionally, imagery such as Manchi’s stylised galaxy (which formed the background to every screen) and the futuristic, computer-generated images that appeared alongside written text, both situated the material within a particular set of tropes and offered an additional dimension to meaning-making which both complemented and disrupted the written text. CONCLUSIONS

Bruce Ingraham (2000) has suggested that writing in online spaces might trigger the reimagining of academic argument: ‘If we are to fully exploit this technology …. This may compel us to re-think the ways in which scholarly argument is constructed’. 57

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It seems that these students have been trying to experiment with argumentation, by developing different and looser organisational devices: ones which rely on visual motifs; exploit and embrace rhetorical spaces and gaps; and predict but do not prescribe relationships between information. Although the sites’ designs varied, the students tended to create a clearly identified central or opening page after which the writer relinquished control of movement to the reader and relied on image, colour and repetition for coherence rather than relying upon sequence. There also seemed to be a balance struck between the whole and the part: the overall hypertext and the lexia or units of text on each screen (Kolb 1994, Carusi 2006). Nearly all the students agreed that print-based conclusions were difficult to reconstruct, or remediate (Bolter) and they seemed, instead, to gravitate towards Kolb’s idea of making claims through exploration. Another question we have asked, and one which we would wish to explore further since teaching this course, is whether teaching students to write in plain hypertext, and to explore it as a medium, offers a complementary skill to the development of reading online as it is conceived of in the information literacy debate. Much is made of the challenges to students searching for and evaluating information as researchers in the digital age. Australia, New Zealand and the US have all recently formalized standards and learning outcomes for information literacy curricula. Similar developments are underway in Ireland and the UK (Antonesa 2007, Secker et al., 2007). However, we ask where the parallel developments are in relation to students’ writing. The response that students are ‘digital natives’ (Prensky 2001) and somehow automatically equipped to write online because of their fluency in social networking software seems inadequate to us, given the possible constraints of those systems. An analogy we might make is that Google is to reading what ‘Web 2.0’ is to writing: the power of the technologies is undeniable, but without adequate understanding of each medium, a student may potentially be disenfranchised and in both researching and producing argument. We also wonder to what extent the novelty of the form and context had an impact upon student writing and their attitudes towards it. The multimodal nature of the texts both increased the possibilities for rhetorical complexity and meaning making while providing new challenges to the textual line. This is particularly apparent with Shujon’s work. In the introduction to Reading Images, Kress and Van Leeuwen suggest that within certain coded practices ‘only a small elite of experimenters is allowed to break the rules…visual communication is coming to be less and less the domain of specialists, and more… in the domain of public communication. Inevitably this will lead to new, and more rules, and to more formal, normative teaching’ (p. 3). For the moment, however, hypertext writing as we have described it still sits largely outside the ‘rules’ of writing in higher education and currently, there exists a freedom that perhaps students struggle to find elsewhere. And, of course, ultimately these assignments were judged within an academic examinations framework, thus the students experienced the tension, described by Goodfellow and Lea (2007), between engaging in seemingly innovative digital practices and remaining alert to (and actively challenging) dominant paradigms of writing. 58

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That is, for these students there were few guidelines and not many examples upon which to model their work. We think they found this unchartedness initially unnerving but ultimately liberating. However, if more institutional guidelines and regulations were devised for such types of writing, would some of these playful and subversive qualities be lost? Why are creative and subversive spaces important? In his book, Learning to Write, Kress, considers the acculturation of school children into types of writing valued by schools, and he concludes that the prescribed genres come to ‘control’ their writers to an extent: the learning of the genres involves an increasing loss of creativity on the child’s part and a subordination of the child’s creative abilities to the demands of the norms of the genre. The child learns to control the genre, but in the process the genre comes to control the child. Given the cognitive and social implications of these generic forms, the consequences for the child are immense. (Kress, 1982) We would ask, to what extent would enabling the disruption of an established genre, like the academic essay and more broadly, the linear argument, ‘compel’ (to recall Ingraham) different approaches to thinking. Perhaps the consequences for students (and academics) are immense too. We think that the use of hypertext writing, with its capacity to enable other modes, offers a challenge to this dominance. As one of our students said, ‘It does disturb the standard writing practices … I definitely felt that in the hypertext I could not carry on writing like I did in an essay…’ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank Shujon Chowdhury and Manchi Chung for their contributions to this work. REFERENCES Antonesa, M. (2007). Can information literacy motivate students to become global citizens? Sconul Focus (42), 28–30. Bakhtin, M. M. (1988). The dialogic imagination (M. Holquist, Ed., C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. New Jersey, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Brooks, K. (2002). Reading, writing and teaching creative hypertext: A genre-based pedagogy. Pedagogy, 2(3), 337–356. Burbules, N. (1998). Essay review: Digital texts and the future of scholarly writing and publication. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 30(1), 105–124. Carter, L. (2003). Argument in hypertext: Writing strategies and the problem of order in a nonsequential world. Computers and Composition, 20(1), 3–23. Carusi, A. (2006). Textual practitioners: A comparison of hypertext theory and phenomenology of reading. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 5(2), 163–180. Dickson, M. (2002). Click here to organize. Pedagogy, 2(2), 253–257.

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MCKENNA AND MCAVINIA Goodfellow, R., & Lea, M. (2007). Challenging e-learning in the university: A literacies perspective. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Ingraham, B. (2000). Scholarly rhetoric in digital media. Journal of Interactive Media in Education. Retrieved October 5, 2008, from http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/00/ingraham/ingraham-t.html/ Kolb, D. (1994). Socrates in the labyrinth. In G. P. Landow (Ed.), Hyper/Text/Theory (pp. 323–342). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kolb, D. (2008). The revenge of the page. Retrieved October 5, 2008, from http://www.dkolb.org/ fp002.kolb.pdf Kolb, D. (2004). Twin media. Retrieved October 5, 2008, from http://www.dkolb.org/twin.media.ht04/ covershe.html Kress, G. (1982). Learning to write. London: Routledge. Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. London: Routledge. Kress, G., & van Leeuwen. (2006). Reading images. London: Routledge. Ivanic, R. (1998). Writing and identity: The discoursal construction of identity in academic writing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Landow, G. (1997). Hypertext 2.0. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Lea, M., & Street, B. (1998). Student writing in higher education: An academic literacies approach. Studies in Higher Education, 11(3), 182–199. Lillis, T. (2001). Student writing: Access, regulation, desire. London: Routledge. Lillis, T., & Turner, J. (2001). Student writing in higher education: Contemporary confusion, traditional concerns. Teaching in Higher Education, 6(1), 57–68. McKenna, C. (2005). Words, bridges and dialogue: Issues of audience and addressivity in online communication. In R. Land & S. Bayne (Ed.), Education in cyberspace (pp. 140–162). Abingdon: RoutledgeFalmer. Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5). Russell, G. (1998). Elements and implications of a hypertext pedagogy. Computers and Education, 31(2), 185–193. Secker, J., Boden, D., & Price, G. (2007). The information literacy cookbook: Recipes for success. Oxford: Chandos. Senn Breivik, P., & Gee, E. G. (2006). Higher education in the Internet age: Libraries creating a strategic edge. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Colleen McKenna Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching University College London Claire McAvinia Centre for Teaching and Learning National University of Ireland, Maynooth

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5. SPEED AND THE UNSETTLING OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE DIGITAL UNIVERSITY

INTRODUCTION

This chapter considers how the nature of academic knowledge is inevitably being transformed in the digital university when the latter’s modes of production and exchange employ technologies that transmit data, through fibre optics, at the speed of light. Whilst remaining aware of arguments that draw too easily on notions of technological determinism, the chapter will draw on Virilio’s analysis of the relation between speed and power to differentiate the changing nature and uses of knowledge in digital environments from those familiar to us from print-based culture and some of the implications of this digital transformation and changed temporality for academic authority, approaches to academic writing, and traditional ways of practising. PRINT CULTURE AND THE DIGITAL TURN

At the centre of many of the rather splendid heraldic crests proudly sported by our older universities lies the image of a printed text – the bound codex. This is not surprising, as in earlier centuries many universities were the printing houses of their town or city, and tended to regulate what was permitted to be printed. Cambridge University Press in the UK remains the oldest publishing house in the world. Harvard University’s crest features three open texts with the word VE-RI-TAS emblazoned across them. Truth becomes identified with and embodied within the bound text. We still swear ‘the whole truth’ on such a bound text in our courts of law. The printed page, and the wider print culture through which it is produced becomes the basis of reliability, of authorship, of academic authority and the higher education institutions in which it is inscribed (Bayne 2006a). The last two decades, however, have witnessed, as part of the wider phenomena of globalisation and supercomplexity, an inexorable shift in higher education away from this print-based culture to a digital culture. As the media through which learning activity is conducted move increasingly from the printed text to the digital forms enabled by internet-based technologies, learners and their tutors are implicitly asked to confront some quite fundamental notions concerning textual stability and the nature of academic knowledge. By destabilising and seemingly ‘disordering’ the academic text, digital media enable new forms of academic discourse, literacy and knowing to emerge. (Kress, 2003; Landow, 2004; Privateer, 1999). In doing so they alter the traditional roles of teacher and learner and, by extension, the nature of the R. Land and S. Bayne (Eds.), Digital Difference: Perspectives on Online Learning, 61–70. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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academic institution itself. It is no longer possible, Spender (1995) argues, for teachers to appear as experts in digital learning environments as there is just too much information for any one individual to master. Within the print-based university – the society of the closed, static text – knowledge was in short supply, a special commodity. This empowered the gatekeepers, the initiators into disciplines, to determine intellectual boundaries, to regulate entry to the next level of information. Lyman (1994) talks of an ‘ecology of knowledge’ in which, when knowledge is scarce, centralisation and conservation take precedence. In an information-saturated environment, however, selection as much as conservation is the distinctive information problem. At the textual level, this digital turn occasions a shift to openness, inconclusivity, and fluidity. In his pioneering work on hypertext and academic discourse, Landow (1997) outlined some of the possibilities such environments offer for the transformation of the student learning experience. Within digital space, students gain both information and habits of thinking in a critical fashion through using several different approaches and varied sources. The online environment, he argues, orients students towards the making of connections. This then fosters more participatory and engaged reading-and-writing practices which empower students by encouraging them to be research-minded. They operate within the domain of research and scholarly enquiry rather than on its margins. It enables students to explore and create new modes of discourse suited to the ways of reading, writing and collaborating that are increasingly used in digital space. The more recent forms of digital textuality loosely characterised as ‘Web 2.0’ – weblogs, wikis, social media, shared bookmarking – further reinforce these characteristics of connectivity, multiple approaches and causation. The digital environment affords excellent opportunity for collaborative learning, whereas the latter, as Ede and Lunsford (1990) demonstrate, tends to be mistrusted in closed-text environments, where a relatively unquestioned assumption is that writing is mainly a solitary and individual act. By predisposing students towards multilinear and multisequential patterns of thinking, and immersing them in environments of multivocality, digital environments may encourage the higher order processes of integration and contextualisation in ways not achievable by linear presentation techniques (Mayes et al., 1990). SHIFTS IN THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE

This growing emphasis on the modality of learning has occasioned different ways of generating and engaging with knowledge. Print culture, in the form of the stable, bounded, individual and private text, has tended to operate within, and to reinforce, patterns of authority and identified authorship. Digital environments, more protean and restless in nature, tend to be more concerned with image, openness, multimodality and collectivity. They foster collaborative enquiry and production, inviting contestability but also requiring consensus and trust. Social media entail a shift toward new, often volatile forms of textual mediation and subject formation (Bayne 2006a). Such developments place increasing emphasis on collaborative modes of enquiry and the importance of group self-regulation and self-explanation. They alter 62

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relations between process and artefact, permit fragmentation over cohesion, exploration over exposition, the visual over the textual and, perhaps, convenience over quality (Hemmi et al., 2009). Alexander (2006) suggests that it is the quality of ‘openness’ that is the characteristic hallmark of such media, ideologically and technologically. They are characterised by endless re-crafting and addition: These sections of the web break away from the page metaphor. Rather than following the notion of the web as book, they are predicated on microcontent. Blogs are about posts, not pages. Wikis are streams of conversation, revision, amendment, and truncation. (Alexander, 2006, p. 32) THE CHALLENGE TO ACADEMIC AUTHORITY

This capacity of the digital for rapid editing, instantaneous cut-and-paste, offers the promise of progress and unlimited perfectibility, though what is gained is, in reality, only ever provisional stability. The perplexing volatility and instability of digital text – infinitely re-editable and instantly distributable – defies methods for imposing closure and authorial control. The writing and learning spaces represented by this ‘read/write web’ are defined by what O’Reilly (2004) has called an ‘architecture of participation’, increasingly oriented toward distributed authorship, collaboration and social networking (Alexander 2006). Wikipedia, the best known wiki, is a salient example in this regard. Whereas the authority of, say, Encyclopaedia Britannica, rests with the prestige and authority of its authors, the authorship of Wikipedia, in contrast, is of little interest. Its reliability lies not in its authority but in the expectation that if an entry is incorrect it will rapidly be amended or revised by someone, and speedily. Within such digital texts continued exploration and contestability are emphasised in place of settled knowledge. The challenge of the endless incompleteness of open digital text, its permanent state of new ideas and emergence, its endless revisability and mutability, the networked nature of its knowledge, its privileging of access over possession (Hayles 2009), and furthermore, its unclear and ambiguous positioning on the public/private continuum (Bayne 2006b) all seem to undermine the authority of academic knowledge. The latter has traditionally been necessary as the foundation of research evidence, and hence of veracity and the verifiable. The playful modes of online interaction characterised as ‘Web 2.0’ often sit uncomfortably within existing higher education practice (Hemmi et al., 2009). Textual instability, according to Barnett (2005), comes to function as a reflection of instability in the university’s idea of itself. The new media, characterised by their volatility, multivocality and radical contestability, become implicated in the 21st century university’s difficulty in maintaining and asserting its traditional authority. In this way the communicative landscapes opened up by social media can be troublesome to the academy, and are redolent of the spaces of strangeness, both epistemologically and ontologically, of which Barnett (2005) speaks: 63

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we now live in a world of radical contestation and challengeability, a world of uncertainty and unpredictability. In such a world, all such notions – as truth, fairness, accessibility and knowledge – come in for scrutiny. In such a process of continuing reflexivity, fundamental concepts do not dissolve but, on the contrary, become systematically elaborated. (Barnett 2005, p. 789) In this respect the changing nature of Web 2.0 media expose the university’s inability to claim universality in its pursuit of truth, and are characterised by the ‘supercomplexity’ Barnett sees as integral to the 21st century academy. In this process of infinite elaboration, concepts are broken open and subjected to multiple interpretations; and these interpretations may, and often do, conflict. As a result, we no longer have stable ways even of describing the world that we are in; the world becomes multiple worlds. (Barnett 2005, p. 789) THE ACADEMY AND SPEED

The processes of rapid amendment, revision and re-editing discussed earlier depend upon speed to be effective. From this perspective the rise of digital information technologies seems located within the neo-liberal ideology of globalisation, and caught inexorably within a logic of increasing acceleration and exponential growth of information. Virilio (1999, 2000) emphasises such a view, seeing the defining characteristic of early twenty-first century society, and an increasing source of its hazards, as its relentless acceleration and compression of time. ‘Our history is the history of acceleration’ he argues (2000, p. 51) and ‘Speed is power itself,’ (1999, p. 15.) He suggests that ‘Faster, smaller, cheaper’ – the slogan of NASA – could shortly become ‘the watchword of globalisation itself’ (2000, p. 66). Web 2.0 technologies are a product of this speed, operating through fibre optics literally at the speed of light. In relation to digital temporality, Virilio warns of the ‘death of geography’ created by speed which appears to by-pass physical spaces and leads to an ensuing decline in their potential for democratic action. The death of geography is a notion that eerily comes to pass, perhaps, in the unheimlich arbitrary temporality of the 3-D avatar world Second Life. Here (if it is a ‘here’) one exists in an eternal present where no-one ages, where private and public boundaries are hopelessly confused, and where space only comes into being as one’s avatar moves through it and then disappears behind the avatar. As one tele-ports, geography disappears altogether. In this view the important democratic and political space of cities and the cultural and creative traffic contained within these spaces is ultimately reduced by accelerated technology until cities are rendered mere ‘intersections of speed’ (Virilio 1999). TEXTUALITIES AND TEMPORALITIES: FAST AND SLOW TIME

Print and digital cultures seem to favour distinctive temporalities. Whereas print culture and the cloistered academy required ‘slow time’ (Eriksen 2001) and private space to foster contemplation and deliberation, the digital would seem to thrive, in the main, on ‘fast time’, immediacy of response, and universal virtual space. Web 2.0 64

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practices seem caught in an awkward tension, if not disjunction. The pedagogical claims made for them seem to be located within, and to require the integrative and deliberative logic of, what Eriksen characterises as slow time. As digital phenomena, however, they increasingly serve to constitute fast time, can only accelerate in their future modus operandi, and reinforce the dromocratic principle that fast time drives out and occupies the place of slow time. Despite the unquestioned benefits of speed, there rise potential threats from fast time to reflection and creativity. Adam (1998) puts forward a similar case when discussing the social risks of speed, pointing out that ‘an important indirect effect is created through the ever decreasing time for reflection, contemplation and deliberation on the processes and their effects’ (p. 69). Slow time, which characterised earlier cultures of the written and printed word, an attribute of the cloister, the library and silent reading, is traditionally considered necessary for certain kinds of intellectual and emotional experience, for the production of certain forms of thought, and for the generation of certain kinds of knowledge (Eriksen, 2001). Don Novello, the American comedian, in his alter ego of Fr. Guido Sarducci, rock critic of the Vatican’s l’Osservatore Romano, provides a light-hearted spoof of these issues in his Saturday Night Live TV sketch of ‘The Five Minute University’. For $20 his innovative University offers a five minute degree course in any subject, complete with orange juice snack and instamatic graduation photograph. What is provided as outcome is what remains from a $25,000 ivyleague education five years after graduation, when virtually all the content has been forgotten. What one learns in the ‘Economics’ degree at Five Minute U is ‘Supply and Demand’. In the ‘Business Studies’ degree ‘You buy something and sell it for more’. His amusing deadpan delivery, however, emphasises both the pointlessness of crammed curricula memorised (and quickly forgotten) through rote memorisation, and the relentless performative shortening and intensification of the modern modular degree. Speed also transforms the academic estate, replacing traditional closed spaces such as the library and the personal study with open plan spaces buzzing with email traffic. Reflection and deliberation are compromised, and so is creativity, which is displaced, according to Eriksen (2001), by a relentless stream of new combinations. The filling of gaps, which seems to be an effect of speed and is typical of the tyranny of the moment, ‘is seriously detrimental to creativity. The new arises unexpectedly from the gaps created by slack in time budgets, not from crowded schedules’ (Eriksen, 2001, p. 112). He elaborates further, arguing that when growing amounts of information are distributed at growing speed, it becomes increasingly difficult ‘to create narratives, orders, developmental sequences. Within the digital the fragment threatens to become hegemonic. This has consequences for the ways we relate to knowledge, work and lifestyle in a wide sense. Cause and effect, internal organic growth, maturity and experience; such categories are under heavy pressure in this situation (p. 113)’. Strate (2005) goes further and suggests that digital temporality, in its present-centredness, recreates the stored past as the present, making it available for instant replay, and attempts to bring the future into the present through simulation. 65

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STUDENTS WRITING DIGITALLY: RE-THINKING THE NATURE OF AUTHORSHIP

These reflections have been borne out by empirical data derived form a recent national study funded by the UK Higher Education Academy. This study examined the experience of learners and teachers when Web 2.0 technologies, or social media, are employed within formal academic settings (Hemmi et al., 2009). We investigated four courses, two entirely online, two blended, in two large UK research universities1. The disciplinary contexts included E-Learning, Engineering Design and Divinity. Our observations of students working in digital environments, and specifically writing within wikis and blogs, provided an interesting re-thinking of the nature of authorship. There was a sense among some learners that the wiki space almost gives permission to ‘be’ a writer in a new way: The wiki has been a very engaging totally new experience as contributor/ author. At first, it was daunting. The idea of contributing content/s and with personalised examples to a web page that so many people can read, well, it’s just something that I thought only writers would want to get into. Reading by scrolling up, down; clicking back and forth and in a non linear way with the hyperlinks and videos made the reading of contents more dynamic and in my case more conducive to remembering and learning many new concepts. I loved the possibility of organising and editing your new /old contents with immediate hyperlinks to references, translations, images, other pages in the wiki or web with certain ease of use. (Discussion board contribution from Student A) These reflections on the nature of authorship within the wiki were echoed by students on other courses. As one wrote within his weblog: In making a couple of entries and rephrasing some of the headers it occurred to me that my ‘marks’ in the text are probably ephemeral. They will endure for as long as the interval between editing (minor or major). So a wiki is a dynamic text – it really doesn’t have a form but (changing) content. When is it considered completed? Is it just a provisional evolving set of microcontent, juxtaposed texts? Is it pure luck that the ‘authors’ who endure manage to leave a lasting trace are those who happen to arrive at the end – when the ‘uberauthor’ (the course tutor?) halts the process? The process, of course, could just go on, ended by boredom, or exhaustion (everyone ‘written out’). But then the process of social writing could simply be renewed as new ‘authors’ join the fray. (Weblog posting from Student B) In a textual space where text is characterised by ephemerality and authorship is problematised, students across all three courses were concerned about ways in which they might accurately attribute authorship and spent some time considering and negotiating the forms of etiquette which applied to the editing and re-factoring of each other’s work. In thinking about editing the text produced by someone else I felt a considerable reluctance. It somehow seemed unacceptable to mess around with someone’s work. Certainly this is an interesting collaborative exercise. Good fun if only 66

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I can allow myself more latitude to alter what is there without feeling I’ll give offence! I’m really intrigued by it – wicked. (Weblog posting by Student C) I do think wikis tend to present a finished product that is a consensus more than something like a discussion board, or at least lay out the arguments in several groups. …I think we have to not be afraid to delete each other’s text in the wiki, which is a different way of thinking than the discussion board, and a more sensitive one. (Discussion board posting by Student D) ASKING FOR TROUBLE: THRESHOLD CONCEPTS AND TROUBLESOME KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge is troublesome for a variety of reasons (Perkins 2006). It might be alien, inert, tacit, conceptually difficult, counter-intuitive, characterised by an inaccessible ‘underlying game’, or characterised by supercomplexity. Students who find the learning of certain concepts difficult, seem to enter transitional spaces akin to states of ‘liminality’ which tend to be transformative in function, and usually involve an individual or group being altered from one state into another. (Meyer and Land, 2006). As a result of such transformation the learner acquires new knowledge and subsequently a new status and identity within a community of practice. However, this state of liminality, the space of transformation, can also become a suspended state, or ‘stuck place’, in which understanding approximates to a kind of ‘mimicry’ or lack of authenticity. Insights gained by learners as they cross thresholds can be exhilarating but might also be unsettling, requiring an uncomfortable shift in identity. Paradoxically this may be experienced as a sense of loss as an earlier, more secure stance of familiar knowing has to be abandoned as new and unfamiliar knowledge is encountered. A further complication might be the operation of an ‘underlying game’ or episteme (Perkins 2006) which requires the learner to comprehend the often tacit games of enquiry or ways of thinking and practising inherent within specific disciplinary knowledge practices. Transformation can be protracted, over considerable periods of time, and involve oscillation between states, often with temporary regression to earlier status. It would appear however, that once the state of liminality is entered, though there may be temporary regression, there can be no ultimate full return to the pre-liminal state. There would seem to be no re-winding of the transformative process. Though digital environments, as suggested earlier, might afford opportunity for collaborative learning and awareness of the contestability of arguments, a countering tendency might arise in relation to the issue of speed and acceleration in such environments. A question arises as to whether the liminal or threshold space, and the transformative process – in which (necessarily) troublesome knowledge is negotiated and conceptual difficulty encountered and overcome – is actually truncated or eroded by fast time and the ‘consumptive’ university it ushers in, as in Fr Sarducci’s comedic Five Minute University. The liminal state permits an integration of new knowledge into a new way of seeing, a re-conceptualisation. It is the state of trouble, stuckness, letting go and changed subjectivity, without which the possibility of things being otherwise is unlikely to come into view (Perkins 2006, Meyer and 67

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Land 2006). It is a transformative state that engages existing certainties and renders them problematic, and fluid. Such troublesomeness or disquietude, however, is purposeful, as it is the provoker of change that cannot be assimilated, and hence is the instigator of new learning and new ontological possibility. Is this increasingly ‘squeezed’ by what seems to be the increasingly accelerating nature of digital temporality? Or are the long hallowed academic prerequisites of slow time, reflection, tranquillity and solitude in (private) cloistered space merely residual factors of an older, analogue print culture that is increasingly irrelevant to a generation comfortable with rapid knowledge sharing through i-phones and i-pads? DIGITAL MEDIA AND DISTANCIATION

Finally, Giddens’ concept of ‘distanciation’, which includes the notion of our carrying around our social world with us, regardless of the time-space continuum, suggests that certain social media (Facebook being a prime example) permit learners to access existing higher education infrastructures, and their own private social worlds, simultaneously, as points of web presence, regardless of the geographical location of their embodied presence. The structuring of time-space distanciation relies on such social relations as ‘presence-availability’ – the organization of presence, absence proximity and availability, and the degree of co-present activities in relation to ‘tele-present’ activities. (Giddens, 1984) The Higher Education Academy-funded research described above encountered the notion that students in the digital age are ‘never away’ but permanently networked. This leads to the blurring of boundaries between social/informal and formal spaces and between public and private spaces. It is becoming commonplace, and increasingly accepted by teachers, for students to have laptops open and connected through wireless broadband throughout the working day, whether working privately or whether participating in large or small group settings such as lectures and seminars. Student familiarity with Web 2.0 technologies, and their collaborative, user-generated materials such as weblogs, social media, tagging and filesharing, means that they are increasingly ‘backchannelling’ and multi-tasking electronically, recording, searching for information, sharing data and comments – even across the space of the lecture theatre or seminar room whilst formal teaching is in progress. This apparent digital ‘unruliness’ can be seen initially as transgressing the norms of conventional transmissive or didactic pedagogies and challenging the authority and control of the tutor in those settings. Increasingly, however, such practices seem likely to develop graduates capable of coping with complex flows of information, successfully prioritising and regulating their own behaviours and adopting critical informed views through access to multi-perspectival data. Such technologies are now being integrated within inquiry-based and self-regulated learning which are congruent with and can help sustain effective research-led academic environments. These practices, rather than being resisted in teaching, might be purposefully incorporated and successfully exploited. However a negative effect of distanciation (and fast time) is that the contemplative (research or private study) space becomes 68

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dis-placed by requirements for open office space and student learning centres to the domestic sphere, where it is invaded and compromised anew by the digital in the form of 24/7 domestic broadband connection. I certainly don’t feel I have much of a distinction between home and work any more, with both functioning in more or less the same way as portals into the internet where almost all my work is. I wonder if that is bad, or a healthy deconstruction of the work/home opposition into simply ‘life’? (Face to face interview with Tutor A) CONCLUSION

Despite an understandable caution in the use of digital environments in the 21st century academy, and a wary curtailment of them, it was encouraging in the research reported here to see universities experimenting with these new spaces in novel, productive and enjoyable ways (Hemmi et al., 2009). In its appropriation and repurposing of digital environments the university is beginning to acknowledge, and engage with, the radical potential which these media represent. Higher education is perhaps beginning to acknowledge and adapt to the ontological state of speed, disquietude and radical uncertainty that the learners of the future must competently and critically navigate. In this way it may exploit the digital to discover alternative contemplative and creative spaces. Alternatively it might develop new forms of subjectivity that accommodate states of almost perpetual liminality, or, at least, quickly shifting provisional stabilities. Whichever way, it is unlikely that 21st century higher education can constrain indefinitely the radical implications of the digital turn ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The first presentation of ideas in this chapter was as a keynote address at the 15th Improving Student Learning Symposium held at Trinity College, Dublin in September 2007. An earlier version of the chapter was published in the proceedings of that symposium as Land R. (2008) ‘Asking for trouble: speed, slow time and troublesome knowledge in the 21st century academy’, in Improving Student Learning – For What? Ed C.Rust, OCSLD, Oxford. The author is grateful to Chris Rust and staff at the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development for permission to publish this revised version of the chapter here. NOTES 1

This was a joint study by the Universities of Strathclyde and Edinburgh. I am indebted to my coresearchers at Edinburgh, Dr Siân Bayne and Dr Akiko Hemmi, for the data presented here.

REFERENCES Adam, B. (1998). Timescapes of modernity: The environmental and invisible hazards. London: Routledge.

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LAND Alexander, B. (2006). Web 2.0: A new wave of innovation for teaching and learning? Educause Review, 41(2), 32–44. Retrieved January 6, 2008, from http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0621.pdf Barnett, R. (2005). Recapturing the universal in the university. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 37(6). Bayne, S. (2005). Deceit, desire and control: The identities of learners and teachers in cyberspace. In R. Land & S. Bayne (Eds.), Education in cyberspace. London and New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Bayne, S. (2006a). Networked learning with digital texts. In Networked learning 2006 proceedings. Lancaster University. Bayne, S. (2006b). Temptation, trash and trust: The authorship and authority of digital texts (pdf). E-learning, 3(1). Eriksen, T. H. (2001). Tyranny of the moment: Fast and slow time in the information age. London: Pluto Press. Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hayles, N. K. (1999). How we became posthuman: Virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hemmi, A., Bayne, S., & Land, R. (2009). The appropriation and repurposing of social technologies in higher. Education Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 25(1), 19–30. Kahn, R., & Kelner, D. (2005). Reconstructing technoliteracy: A multiple literacies approach. E-learning, 2(3), 238–251. O’Reilly, T. (2004). Open source paradigm shift. Author. Retrieved January 6, 2008, from http://tim. oreilly.com/articles/paradigmshift_0504.html Meyer, J. H. F. & Land, R. (Eds.). (2006). Overcoming barriers to student understanding: Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge. London and New York: Routledge. Novello, D. (2007). Father Guido Sarducci’s five minute university. Retrieved from www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kO8x8eoU3L4 Pelletier, C. (2007). Learning through design: Subjectivity and meaning in young people’s computer game production work. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of London Institute of Education, London. Perkins, D. (2006). Constructivism and troublesome knowledge. In J. H. F. Meyer & R. Land (Eds.), Overcoming barriers to student understanding: Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge. London and New York: Routledge. Strate, L. (2005). Eight bits about digital communication. Turner, V. W. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. Chicago: Aldine. Virilio, P. (1999). Politics of the very worst. New York: Semiotexte. Virilio, P. (2000). Information bomb. London: Sage.

Ray Land University of Strathclyde Glasgow UK

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POLITICS OF THE DIGITAL

MICHAEL BEGG, RACHEL ELLAWAY, DAVID DEWHURST AND HAMISH MACLEOD

6. LOGOS AND MYTHOS The Political Dilemmas of Web 2.0 in an Accreditation-Driven Educational Environment

“Believers in progress are seeking from technology what they once looked for in political ideologies, and before that from religion: salvation from themselves” (Gray, 2004) INTRODUCTION

For a number of years teachers in higher education have been encouraged to make use of online learning to transform individual and institutional learning and teaching practices (Crook, 1994; HEFCE, 2005; Laurillard, 1993; Squires, Conole, & Jacobs, 2000). This push to adopt e-learning has been reinforced by political reactions to growing student numbers, falling per capita funding and the growing dominance of bureaucratic university cultures which see e-learning as a means of providing cheaper, more flexible and more scalable delivery of both courses and whole programmes of study. Such an imperative is in turn arguably symptomatic of a wider change in higher education marked by a shift in focus from education to accreditation (Jacobs, 2005). The other contextual drivers behind the widespread adoption of e-learning are the social and cultural imperatives driving the ‘information revolution’. Such has been the speed of change that despite computers now being common to most education environments their use is often adopted with scant regard to their impact beyond the immediate context of problem (Nardi & O’Day, 1999). Such is the momentum of these changes that critics often self-identify as reactionaries or luddites (Landauer, 1995; Tenner, 1996) or as working to bridge huge divides (Henning & Van der Westhuizen, 2004). The latest wave of enthusiasm and investment in e-learning has centred around the educational use of online technologies that support widespread collaboration, and the creation and sharing of ‘user content’ via the so called ‘Web 2.0’ generation of applications (Alexander, 2006). However, the devolution of authoring and control to end users – a defining aspect of Web 2.0 – would appear to be antithetical to the increasingly managerialist cultures of many HE institutions, with the result that the politics and economics of learning technology use in Higher Education are increasingly misaligned. The consequences of this are as yet unclear. This argument can be situated within a broader discourse concerning the principle (and for many the seeming inevitability) of progress that has underpinned Western R. Land and S. Bayne (Eds.), Digital Difference: Perspectives on Online Learning, 73–82. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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thought since the Enlightenment. A prime tenet of technocratic and secular societies is that advancing knowledge and understanding will lead towards a convergence of interests and an end to conflict and social dissonance (Gray, 2004). However, there is, Gray argues, little evidence to show that progress has led to this kind of reconciliation. Homogenous and harmonious learning technology provision within higher education is unlikely given the conflicts of identity, purpose and control. Indeed, that would only underline Gray’s observations that this kind of hopeful convergence amounts to little more than groundless faith in technology. Although political aspects of learning technology adoption and use have been considered before (Jones, 2001; Roberts, 2002) this paper takes a different perspective by focusing on issues of alignment and misalignment arising from the use of Web 2.0 technologies (and their underlying philosophies) and some of the ways in which they can affect educational contexts and professional identities. In so doing we present methods to support the exploration of the political nature of different learning technology contexts, individual technical interventions/systems and practitioners’ roles to better support their alignment with their intended cultural and political outcomes. WEB 2.0

The phrase “Web 2.0” is generally used as a way of differentiating newer collaborative and social web applications from the more static and informational instances that marked the first wave of web development, or “Web 1.0”. Despite debate over what actually constitutes Web 2.0, common factors include devolved user ownership and management of data, extensive syndication (and therefore reuse and repurposing) of content, a major emphasis on participation, collaboration and community building, along with service oriented technical architectures (Wikipedia, 2007). In just a few years whole communities have grown up around Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook, Blogger, YouTube, Flickr, Delicious, and many others. More recently Tapscott has identified the properties of Web 2.0 as consisting of openness, peer-peer relationships, sharing and acting globally (Tapscott & Williams, 2006). The scale of this phenomenon was reflected in Time magazine awarding their ‘personality of the year’ in 2006 to ‘You’ i.e. the multitudes involved in creating, publishing and communicating online, predominantly in Web 2.0-like ways (Stengel, 2006). Although this emphasis on individuality and community might be seen as a highly democratic phenomenon, it should be borne in mind that a lot of the most popular applications are controlled by just a few global corporations: Google controls YouTube and Blogger, News International controls MySpace, and Yahoo! Controls both Flickr and Delicious. Despite the many issues and unknowns surrounding Web 2.0 we are already in a cycle of hype over the educational use of Web 2.0, in particular social and collaborative tools such as wikis, blogs and the use of various forms of syndicated content like podcasting and vodcasting (Alexander, 2006). While voicing enthusiasm for the engaging, self directed, collaborative approaches apparently enabled by 74

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Web2.0 applications, institutions often remain slow to implement them until such time as they can be replicated within the controllable confines of institutionally provided systems. EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND WEB 2.0

There can be little doubt that information and communication technologies have had a significant effect on many if not most HE institutions. E-learning continues to be viewed as an umbrella term for much of this activity, even though in many cases the processes may largely be to do with management, administration, data handling, filtering and auditing, and other less pedagogically focused activities. For instance it is now increasingly commonplace for students to be enrolled in courses and programmes of study without once having engaged physically with their host institution. From an institutional perspective this affords opportunities to extend their business and influence, with expectations of increased revenue, streamlined processes associated with teaching and administration and other enterprise-focused benefits (Pollock, 2002). While novelty often inspires enthusiasts to explore what they can offer, institutions as a whole seem largely unprepared for the implications of this latest wave of technologies. New management techniques, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), which model the institution as a business made up of well-understood and centralised processes seem to be antithetical to technologies that support massively devolved control of content and identity. Most commonly, concerns are raised such as the defence of intellectual property, quality control, data protection, user privacy and ownership, and although these concerns existed well before Web 2.0 the affordances of Web 2.0 have significantly emphasised these anxieties. LEARNING TECHNOLOGISTS AS PARTISANS

The authors have previously described how the sense of professional purpose of staff who develop and run these systems is typically focused on the creation and support of more effective learning opportunities for students (Ellaway, Begg, Dewhurst, & Macleod, 2005). However, in practice it is not uncommon for learning technologist responsibilities to be more directed to operational and logistical management of e-learning systems. The required result is clearly more about passing students through programmes of study than the development and improvement of those programmes. Nevertheless, educational innovation still happens, but often without a direct institutional mandate. It would be tempting, therefore, to portray educational technologists as some kind of partisan force – part of an academic underground challenging the status quo in order to better serve both their client communities and their own interests. Educational institutions are paradoxical in both preserving knowledge and simultaneously challenging their own orthodoxies. It may therefore be the case that change can be effected more quickly in more localised contexts. However, if our students are engaged with their own education as a means towards accreditation, rather than 75

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a period of their life devoted to self and societal enriching through academic engagement, then this begs the question: who is it the partisans are fighting for? LOGOS AND MYTHOS

Web 2.0 clearly represents a substantial challenge to the orthodoxies of the academy. However, it is a difficult task to find a voice that is representative of the institution as a whole, not least because ‘the university’ as a coherent identity is typically seen as being ‘elsewhere’ (Cornford & Pollock, 2003) and therefore more about exclusion than inclusion. There are several approaches to eliciting information about domains of practice that allow participants to examine their relationships with and understanding of their working environments, the systems that impact upon their practice within those environments, and their roles and relationships within the institution. By directing attention towards these critical areas in the consideration of current challenges, such as those posed by Web 2.0, the academy has a chance to redeem itself from an apparently growing industrialization. It is the thesis of this work that we can progress in a spirit of Logos with an emphasis on reason and forward looking, and step aside from the real and present danger of being implicated in what Jacobs has termed “society’s decline from cultural vigor” associated with a more backward looking, dogmatic, and fundamentalist Mythos (Jacobs, 2005). POLITICAL ALIGNMENT ANALYSIS

The dialectic between the corporate and the individual is reflected in the argument that contemporary institutional cultures tend to diminish institutional loyalty, diminish trust between workers and weaken institutional knowledge (Sennett, 2006). As a means to address this disconnect Sennett proposes an emphasis on core values around the themes of personal narratives and individual interpretations of events, individuals feeling useful and engaged with the organizational enterprise and personal craftsmanship expressed in doing something well for its own sake. The similarities between these ‘healing’ values and the affordances of Web 2.0 are notable, so perhaps it is in this socio-economic vein that we can explore issues around power and identity in higher education and the ways in which the environment can be used to control or direct those within it. Given that all technologies “embody specific forms of power and authority” (Winner, 1980) it follows that a political critique of the alignment between higher educational values (and the institutions that embody them) and the affordances of Web 2.0 technologies can provide particular insights into their significance and impact. Political orientation analysis involves mapping one or more entities onto a political continua diagram, such as the Political Compass or the Nolan Diagram (Nolan, 1971) (see figure 1), which present biaxial spaces defined by opposing right/left and libertarian/authoritarian (or totalitarian) positions. In practical terms respondents are required to place an entity such as a person, service, artefact or technology on two separate continua; one ranging between collectivism and individualism 76

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Figure 1. Coordinate models of political alignment; the political compass1.

Figure 2. Results from the alignment analysis2. 77

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and the other between libertarianism and authoritarianism. Indicators of collectivism include communities, societies and tribes, and indicators of individualism include independence, self reliance and egotism. Indicators of libertarianism include independence, free expression and anarchism, and indicators of authoritarianism include social control, hierarchies and obedience. This instrument was applied with participants at the Ideas in Cyberspace Education meeting in Scotland in the spring of 2007 with 12 respondents from a variety of academic education technology backgrounds rating a number of 8 factors or technologies. The results were plotted in Adobe Illustrator and a number of aggregate plots created for each factor. Each respondent entry was set at a transparency of 50% to show overlays and densities – see figure 2. Although subject to the usual cautions over low sample sizes and a nonrepresentative respondent group the following tentative observations can be made: – The top row represents context; the university, teachers and students. Both the university and teachers were seen as occupying a moderately authoritative position but spanning collectivist and individualist perspectives. Students were seen as moderately individualistic and moderately libertarian. Interestingly there was more agreement over the position of teachers and students than there was for the university. – The middle row represents existing technology use; e-learning and virtual learning environments (VLEs). ELearning was largely seen as encompassing the entire continuum while VLEs were seen as moderately authoritarian but spanning collectivist and individualist perspectives. – The bottom row represents Web 2.0 technologies; blogs, wikis, Facebook. All three were seen as quite libertarian. Despite this blogs showed quite a pull towards authority along with a particularly individual perspective. Wikis showed a more collectivist perspective and Facebook a broader spread although notably individualistic. These ratings reflect the participants’ perceived affordances of the different phenomena they refer to and start to demonstrate the different political domains their use represents. Although these axial models can be useful as high-level illustrations it should be noted that there are several problems with such a method. For instance there are several credible choices of continua that could be used (such as between national and free market or between global and personal) and there are inevitable problems of overlap and the extent to which different continua are orthogonally related. Other credible templates for this kind of analysis include Boisot’s axial models of information economies (Boisot, 1995), and models of cultural alignment (Hofstede & Pedersen, 2002). PERSONAL CONSTRUCT ANALYSIS

A second method for generating a visual representation of alignment is to model how individuals construe a domain and the relationships between agents and/or applications within that domain. Personal construct psychology (Kelly, 1955) is 78

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based on the idea that all phenomena are construed in terms of how they had been anticipated. In short, experience is evaluated in terms of existing knowledge and entered accordingly into a meaningful framework (the personal psychological construct) relating to that domain. Kelly developed tools and techniques for eliciting such constructs, most significantly the triadic elicitation of constructs mapped onto grids with associated conceptual elements. The theory and methods of personal construct psychology remain somewhat controversial as there is no single clear-cut method for eliciting data (data can emerge from both constructs and/or elements) and there are issues in aggregating data from multiple respondents in a satisfactorily objective fashion. Nevertheless, like the previous biaxial compass method, personal construct psychology tools and elicitation techniques may suggest ways for practitioners to explore their role and position in relation to their working environment. As an illustrative example, one of the authors used the (freely available) online grid elicitation tool provided by the University of Calgary to create a grid based on a few elements associated with the Web 2.0 and Higher Education. These elements were ‘blog’, ‘wiki’, ‘Myspace’, ‘WebCT’, ‘Moodle’, ‘discussion board’, ‘Facebook’, ‘Google’, and ‘email’. Examining the resulting grid (see figure 3) there is a clear cluster on the right hand side of the diagram. The elements ‘blog’, ‘Myspace’, ‘Google’ and ‘Facebook’ are closely linked to the construct poles learner centred, property of individual, cost effective, emphasis on independent learning and, interestingly, vulnerable to attack and threatens institutional control. If bipolar constructs based on a core set of negotiated elements were elicited from a number of individuals an empirical opportunity, similar to that offered by the political compass model would be suggested.

Figure 3. WebGrid of learning environment3.

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IN CONCLUSION

Winner asserts that technologies “are ways of building order in our world” (1980). From this kind of political perspective the analysis and critique of learning technology provision can be expected to provide insights unavailable from purely technical or educational perspectives. Indeed such perspectives have been shown to be essential in eliciting holistic representations of technology use in educational settings (Ellaway, 2006). Although it is possible that this kind of misalignment or dissonance may result from insufficient technological maturity, the identity of the academy (and those within it) faces substantial challenges in this new environment. Many individuals and institutions are making sizeable personal investments in Web 2.0. For instance we have observed that many teachers collate their materials outside their institution’s core services and they direct students towards home grown websites, or to personal blogs, despite working within HE contexts that provide opportunities to contain all such activity within a few centralised and normalised systems and environments. Learning technologists may wish to pursue developmental and exploratory uses of new technologies such as Web 2.0 but the pressures of ‘minding the shop’ mean that mainstream e-learning is increasingly about supporting logistical, administrative and managerial processes than rather than engaging with teaching and learning. Those who do manage to apply time and effort to improving student learning are often confounded by an audience more concerned with acquiring the institutional credit to allow them to advance their personal agendas rather than exploring the meaning and practice of effective learning. Given that technology is never politically neutral (Graham, 1999) and should be considered as indicative elements of a system (Bereano, 2003) the growing interest in Web 2.0 would appear to contribute to a disconnect between the intended and actual roles and service models for learning technologists. Furthermore although many Web 2.0 technologies afford unprecedented levels of user control, and opportunities to collaborate and interact in new ways, the Web2.0 mainstream is increasingly controlled by a small number of very wealthy, very powerful organizations using their position to market products and analyse and subsequently influence consumer behaviours. Within the framework of academic institutions, we often observe local champions seeking to utilise what they perceive to be the positive aspects of new technologies. Institutions on the one hand recognise their reflection in academic principles of openness and discourse while at the same time inhibiting their uptake with reactionary concerns regarding the nature of these same applications. Becker’s model of the art world (1982) reminds us that what we come to perceive or personally construct as an idea of art has been shaped not only by the artist, but by journalists, gallery owners, critics, commissioners, archivists, courts, politicians, educators, and many others. The same premise perhaps holds true here. Our perceptions of the phenomenon of e-learning are individual and heterogeneous and inevitably impact on how e-learning is constructed and how it impacts on our ways of working. The assumptions, sociopolitical positioning and alignment of students, teachers, academic managers, policy and strategic leaders, technology providers and vendors are all equally implicated. 80

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If we accept that: “technology and organization are not ontologically separate categories, but rather mirror reflections of a mutual interchange of knowledge meanings and political interests” (Scarborough & Corbett, 1992, p. 157) and the university in the information age is about pursuing increasing flexibility and accommodation of individual student and faculty needs (Brown & Duguid, 1995), then the opportunities afforded by Web2.0 technologies would seem to provide ample opportunity for this to be realised. At the present time many institutions are teetering between embracing this new model of the academy based on devolution and collaboration and one based on authority and exclusivity. In many ways Web2.0 is just the latest challenge to reactionary and authoritative cultures in higher education and, as such, is an essential part of the academy’s lifecycle. To this extent, Web2.0 represents significant practical and philosophical challenges to the academy, and this time maybe the revolution will be televised after all. NOTES 1

2

3

Left – see http://www.politicalcompass.org accessed 2 March 2007) and the Nolan Diagram (Right – see (Nolan, 1971) and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_chart. The top row represents the context; the institution, teachers and students, the middle row represents existing e-learning and VLEs and the bottom row represents Web 2.0 technologies. An example of a map generated using the University of Calgary’s Webgrid tool showing the spread of elements and constructs associated with the proposition “Reifying relationships between institutions, applications and individuals” see http://tiger.cpsc.ucalgary.ca (accessed 13th March 2007)

REFERENCES Alexander, B. (2006, March–April). Web2.0: A new wave of innovation for teaching and learning? EDUCAUSE Review, 33–44. Becker, H. S. (1982). Art worlds. Berkley, CA: University of California Press. Bereano, P. (2003). Technology is a tool of the powerful. In M. D. Erman & M. S. Shauf (Eds.), Computers, Ethics and Society (pp. 85–90). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Boisot, M. H. (1995). Information space: A framework for learning in organizations, institutions and culture. London: Routledge. Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (1995). Universities in the digital age. Retrieved January 18, 2004, from www2.parc.com/ops/members/brown/papers/university.html Cornford, J., & Pollock, N. (2003). Putting the university online: Information, technology and organizational change. UK: Open University Press. Crook, C. (1994). Computers and the collaborative experience of learning. UK: Routledge. Ellaway, R. (2006). Evaluating a virtual learning environment in medical education. Unpublished PhD, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh. Ellaway, R., Begg, M., Dewhurst, D., & Macleod, H. (2005). In a glass darkly: Identity, agency and the role of the learning technologist in shaping the learning environment. E-learning, 3(1), 75–87. Graham, G. (1999). The Internet: A philosophical enquiry. Routledge. Gray, J. (2004). Heresies. London: Granta.

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BEGG ET AL HEFCE. (2005). HEFCE strategy for e-learning: Higher Education Funding Council for England. Document Number. Henning, E., & Van der Westhuizen, D. (2004). Crossing the digital divide safely and trustingly: How ecologies of learning scaffold the journey. Computers & Education, 42(4), 333–352. Hofstede, G. J., & Pedersen, P. B. (2002). Exploring culture: Exercises, stories and synthetic cultures. Yarmouth, Maine: Intercultural Press. Jacobs, J. (2005). Dark age ahead. New York: Vintage. Jones, C. (2001). Do technologies have politics? The new paradigm and pedagogy in networked learning. Paper presented at the TPP - What Next? Calgary, CA. Kelly, G. (1955). Principals of personal construct psychology. New York: Norton. Landauer, T. K. (1995). The trouble with computers: Usefulness, usability, and productivity. USA: MIT Press. Laurillard, D. (1993). Rethinking university teaching - A framework for the effective use of educational technology. UK: Routledge. Nardi, B. A., & O’Day, V. L. (1999). Information ecologies: Using technology with heart. MIT Press. Nolan, D. (1971, August). The case for a libertarian political party. The Individualist. O’Reilly, T. (2005). What is Web2.0: O’Reilly Publishing. Document Number. Pollock, N. (2002). The informational view of the university. In W. H. Dutton & B. D. Loader (Eds.), Digital academe: The new media and institutions of higher education and learning (pp. 232–249). London, UK: Routledge. Roberts, G. (2002). Complexity, uncertainty and autonomy: The politics of networked learning. Paper presented at the Networked Learning, Sheffield, UK. Scarborough, H., & Corbett, J. M. (1992). Technology and organization: power, meaning and design. UK: Routledge. Sennett, R. (2006). The culture of the new capitalism. New Haven, CT; New York: Yale University Press. Squires, D., Conole, G., & Jacobs, G. (Eds.). (2000). The changing face of learning technology. UK: ALT. Stengel, R. (2006, December 25). Now it’s your turn. Time. Tapscott, D., & Williams, A. D. (2006). Wikinomics: How mass collaboration changes everything. New York: Portfolio. Tenner, E. (1996). Why things bite back: Predicting the problems of progress. Fourth Estate. Wikipedia. (2007, February 19). Web2.0. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0 Winner, L. (1980). Do artefacts have politics? Daedalus, 109(1).

Michael Begg, David Dewhurst and Hamish Macleod University of Edinburgh, UK Rachel Ellaway Northern Ontario School of Medicine, Canada

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LEAH P. MACFADYEN AND ANNE HEWLING

7. HOW THE EARTH MOVED ‘Difference’ and Transformative Learning in an Online Course on Global Citizenship

BACKGROUND

In September 2005, we launched a new online course, Perspectives on Global Citizenship, at the University of British Columbia. As an educational undertaking, we hoped that it would not only allow students to acquire more ‘information’ about global issues, but also push them to reflect critically on their own assumptions about ‘how the world works’ and on their own social and political roles and responsibilities, locally and globally. The course explicitly introduces notions of social justice, equity, sustainability and social action, and it directly challenges students to examine their privileged worldview. Because exploration of such themes necessarily involves asking hard questions about whose interests are being advanced over others, and can involve proposing changes to social or political structures “that are already quite congenial to some people in the community…” (Eyler & Giles, 1999, p. 131), some may contend that the course has overtly political aims. We agree! Unless one fully embraces Freire’s (1970) contention that education itself is political, how can one possibly help students make connections between academic knowledge they acquire in their classes, and their roles and responsibilities as members of local and global communities? How else can one engage students personally and professionally with the practical and ethical complexities of global challenges? The ‘political’ ambitions we have for this course are, in fact, fully in line with Trek 20101, the Vision and Mission Statement of The University of British Columbia (hereafter, UBC), which articulates the wish that: …the graduates of UBC will value diversity, work with and for their communities, and be agents for positive change. They will acknowledge their obligations as global citizens, and strive to secure a sustainable and equitable future for all. Eyler & Giles (1999) note, “politics is about competing interests and controversy” (1999,. p. 131). Perspectives on Global Citizenship seeks to create a forum for students to engage in debate on the controversial and competing issues of social and ecological justice through critical thought, moral commitment and meaningful engagement in their learning and ‘coming to know’ as global citizens.

R. Land and S. Bayne (Eds.), Digital Difference: Perspectives on Online Learning, 83–100. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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Evidence from student feedback and course-based writing suggests that this course is achieving at least some of our educational goals. A student writes: …this class was different in a big way. Whereas in other classes, you can do readings and assignments, get the 3 credits and that’s it...walk away...I felt like suddenly we’ve identified ourselves not only as students but active participants in what we’re learning through the concept of global citizenship. Global citizens seemed like an abstract idea at first but slowly I think we realized that we were talking about ourselves As tutors in this course, we also feel that we regularly experience something extraordinary, taking us beyond what we have experienced in other courses. In this chapter we attempt to explore just how ‘the earth moves’ for learners in this course, and try to capture the nature of the ‘difference’ in learning experience that some of them describe. We investigate elements of course structure and pedagogy that triggered this different learning, in the hope of learning lessons of our own that will reposition our future online endeavours. DEVELOPMENT OF PERSPECTIVES ON GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP

The meaning of global citizenship is hotly debated and poorly defined (see, for example, Dower & Williams, 2002). Developing a course that would introduce this contested concept (Roman, 2003) – one that is so tightly connected to questions of global power, culture and values – was therefore no small undertaking. As the first course of a new interdisciplinary program collaboratively offered by UBC and a number of its Universitas 212 partner universities (currently Hong Kong (China), Nottingham (England), Melbourne and Queensland (Australia), Lund (Sweden) and Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico)), we recognized that participating students would represent a great diversity of cultural and disciplinary backgrounds, necessitating attention in the curriculum development process to cultural assumptions underlying contemporary models of citizenship and worldview. Nor could we assume deep background knowledge in any one topic area. We resolved therefore that topics within the purview of global citizenship would be presented for debate, discussion and critical analysis by each student cohort. We developed the initial course outline with input from a wide range of local and international colleagues. Topic areas were selected to create a course outline3 that would represent an introduction to a range of concepts and topics relevant to the discussion of global citizenship (Table 1). Twelve different subject matter experts, located at UBC and elsewhere in the world, drafted content for the modules contained in the course. Perspectives on Global Citizenship now comprises twelve weekly thematic modules, presented via a web-based course management system (WebCT CE4.1 from September 2005–December 2006, and Blackboard Vista from January 2007 – present). Tutors make use of course management system (CMS) communication tools to promote critical thinking and reflection through course readings, facilitated (asynchronous) discussion with tutors and international peers, and regular written work. 84

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Table 1. List of course modules Module 1: Ethics of global citizenship Module 2: What is ‘citizenship’? Module 3: The challenge of global divisions: Race, ethnicity, nation, state Module 4: Challenging old conceptions of citizenship: Diversity and multiculturalism Module 5: The challenge of being informed: Media, communications and critical thinking Module 6: The universal requirements for a healthy society Module 7: Globalization, world trade and poverty Module 8: Consumption and consumerism in the global context Module 9: Human impact on the environment Module 10: Sustainability as a conceptual framework Module 11: Options for action: Politics, participation and civil society Module 12: Global citizenship in daily life?

Each module offers summary contextualizing pages, links to electronic material (required reading, audio- or video-lectures) and further resources. Also included are ‘points for reflection’ to which students are required to respond via a discussion group forum each week. A minimum of one direct response to the reflection point(s) and one response to the posting of a class member is required to achieve a participation score, which contributes to the final grade for the course. THE LEARNERS

The pilot offering of Perspectives on Global Citizenship launched in September 2005 with students participating from UBC, Hong Kong University and the University of Melbourne. It has been offered every term since, to 304 students at time of writing, including 40 (13%) from HKU, 23 (8%) from the University of Melbourne, and the remainder (79%) from UBC (including UBC’s new satellite campus, UBC Okanagan, in Central BC). Of the total, 110 (36%) were male, and 194 (64%) were female. The vast majority (250, or 82%) of participating students were in Year 3 or 4 of an undergraduate degree or higher, including post-graduate students, ‘unclassified’ students completing a fifth or further year of courses, and students in (post-graduate) medical or dental programs; 54 (18%) students reported being in Year 1 or 2. In addition to students participating from their home universities in Vancouver, Hong Kong and Melbourne, the course also attracted UBC students on study exchanges in Nottingham (UK), Sydney (Australia), Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Western Australia. Others have participated from (for example) Montréal (Quebec) and from Japan, while completing study-related work placements. Learners based in locations such as Bahrain, Bangkok (Thailand), Calgary (Alberta), Victoria (British Columbia), and Ottawa (Ontario) have enrolled in the course through UBC’s Distance Education program. 85

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In all cohorts, students have represented a diverse ethnic mix that is masked by simply considering university or national affiliation. In addition to our Hong Kong Chinese students at HKU, numerous UBC and Melbourne students have characterized themselves as first- or second-generation immigrants from Hong Kong or China. Other UBC and Melbourne students have self-identified as first- or secondgeneration immigrants from Egypt, Singapore, the Philippines, the United States of America, South Africa, Iran, Korea, Poland, Thailand, Uruguay, Vietnam, Russia, Romania, Malaysia, Korea, India, Pakistan, Greece, and Singapore. Moreover, class rosters have included international students attending UBC on student visas from the USA, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Russia, Korea, Kenya, Japan, Indonesia, Colombia, Bermuda, the UK and Mainland China. Some students have noted religious affiliations that included Catholic or Protestant Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Baha’i and Judaism. In addition, the course has attracted students from a wide range of academic disciplines, including a diverse range of Bachelor of Arts programs (Sociology, Psychology, Politics, Economics, International Relations) as well as degree programs in Education, Science, Engineering, Social Sciences, Resource Management, Law, Government, Business, Education, Nursing, Medicine, Dentistry and Architecture.

Figure 1. Distribution of registered students by degree specialization.

OUR RESEARCH APPROACH

With approval from UBC’s Behavioural Research Ethics Board, we have archived all CMS-based student discussions, anonymous student feedback submitted as part of midway and final course evaluations, and all student written work (short written 86

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papers submitted at intervals throughout the course). Each term, and after completing all coursework and receiving final grades, students were invited to participate in our ongoing research study by signing a letter indicating that they consented to our examination of their writing at a later date, provided that all markers of identity be removed. In this chapter, we report on findings from an examination of anonymous student feedback and course-based student discussions from three cohorts. We used a broadly grounded theorizing methodology (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) to look at the student feedback questionnaire responses as well as to examine discussion forum messages posted in response to weekly reflection questions. Categories and codes were generated using NVivo qualitative analysis software. From these endeavours core categories and theoretical themes emerged and it is the result of studying these and reflecting on them in the light of previous studies in the field and of existing literature that we report on below. INVESTIGATING THE NATURE OF THE LEARNING

From Information… We embarked upon teaching such a diverse cohort of students with some trepidation. And, indeed, we have found that students vary tremendously in their academic sophistication and ability to consider ideas critically, in their language skills, in their cultural and religious worldviews, and in their disciplinary training. Nevertheless, we have found that, across the board, students report a range of positive outcomes as a result of their participation in the course. Such feedback reaches us via anonymous responses to midway and end-of-course course evaluation opportunities, and through spontaneous statements in course-based asynchronous discussions about the value of the course. Students report that the ideas presented and discussed in the course are often new and engaging, offering them new insight and new understanding of global complexity. I have found myself easily spending days following links and thinking about the issues and reading/writing - I’m not sure if this is a “bad” thing (I’m really enjoying all the reading and research etc!), but certainly it has been a challenge to balance with other subjects. They describe how course discussions and materials challenge them to think critically. I have been exposed to ideas and concepts that I’ve never really addressed in much detail before & have found this confronting, challenging and very rewarding I think a lot of this learning has come from having to figure out where my stance is and not just being told “here are some theories, write a paper and regurgitate them” Students frequently comment on the importance of being able to express ideas freely in online discussions. Reflecting Peter Elbow’s 1997 contention that it is not 87

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the ‘product’ of writing but the process that contributes to understanding the ideas under study, some students have indicated the value of writing in this course: I am finding it easier to articulate my thoughts on these issues now that I have to write papers on it. They also regularly note that the course makes meaningful connections with the socalled ‘real world’ in a way that is valuable. The course itself is fairly ‘revolutionary’ in the way we have to actually think about what we learn and then apply it to the ‘real world’ - something not common in most undergraduate courses. These phenomena might nevertheless be considered to fall within the realm of what Kegan (2000) calls “informational learning”. Such learning, he notes, is aimed at “increasing our fund of knowledge, at increasing our repertoire of skills, at extending already established cognitive capacities into new terrain” (p. 48). In this kind of learning, students bring new content into their established ways of knowing, or frames of reference. …To Transformation? A range of additional comments suggest to us, however, that many students feel that participation in this course has offered them a learning experience that challenged their existing frame of reference, their current ‘ways of knowing’. Often, students flag these moments with statements of surprise or shock: As I read this week’s readings I was blown away but the control that Big Media had over the perceptions and values that are held by the population. The examples that were given were both informative and shocking. Holy. If everyone lived the way I do, we would need five earths. That is appalling and really quite sad on my part… Importantly, their continuing discussions circle around change: how their experience had changed their perspectives, how their learning had inspired them to make changes in their own lives and choices, and how they felt newly empowered as agents of change in a wider global context: this course is (although indeed in baby steps) making a difference. By getting even a small group of people to think about the issues (namely us), it is educating us to make real changes. I know I am changing the way I do things and think because of this course. More importantly, I am also discussing these issues with friends and family who don’t do this course, which means a flow on effect, eg in how we understand the media, in what we consume, in how/ whether we donate etc. ‘Good Citizenship’ and Problem-Solving Conceptually, “global citizenship” may be characterized as confused, at best, and “citizenship education” is often regarded with some suspicion, as a politically 88

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motivated ploy to either bolster nationalist agendas or emphasize the virtues of obedience to authority (see, for example, Westheimer & Kahne, 2004). We do not believe that our students emerge either brainwashed or obedient, but with new perspectives on their roles as capable agents of social change. How, then, might we best characterize the learning experiences that they report? To our surprise, we have found that educators in an entirely different field are grappling with this same question: the decidedly face-to-face realm of ‘service learning’ (programs that link academic study with community service). Reporting on thousands of interviews with students who have undertaken service-learning projects, Eyler & Giles (1999) note that students speak with passion and enthusiasm about their experience and “it is clear that they believe that what they learned from service learning differs qualitatively from what they often derive from more traditional instruction”. As we observe in our own data, their students valued “the connecting of their passion to their learning; when the personal and intellectual are connected, they can go beyond cramming for tests…Because they are learning and applying information in complex real-world contexts, they believe that the quality of their understanding is increased” (p. 2). Eyler & Giles (1999) suggest that ‘expert citizens’ are, in fact, ‘expert social problem solvers’ who have acquired the ability to recognize the complex systemic factors underlying social (and, I would argue, global) issues and make provisional decisions or commitments even while acknowledging that information is incomplete and that uncertainty exists. “At the heart of citizenship” they argue, “is the ability to solve ill-structured problems” (p. 157). Rather than characterizing ‘good citizenship’ as an affective or behavioural phenomenon, then, these authors lay heavy emphasis on problem-solving skills, and argue that good citizenship is a cognitive phenomenon that demands higher order thinking and reflective judgment. The utility of this model is that it illuminates potential connections between pedagogy and notions of ‘transformative learning for social action’ which are routinely dismissed as “fluffy feel-good stuff” by skeptics (Eyler & Giles, 1999, p. 1). Meaning-Making Structures and the Development of Reflective Judgment Because a core goal for our course is to assist learners in becoming better global citizens, we examined our data for evidence that participation in this virtual class might be developing or honing the kinds of skills that Eyler & Giles (1999) argue are features of expert citizens: problem-solving and reflective judgment. A model of reflective judgment developed by King & Kitchener (1994) (Table 2) explicitly correlates the development of reasoning and critical reflection skills in adults to stages of cognitive development. Building on the work of Piaget and others, these authors propose that understanding (or, to paraphrase Eyler & Giles (1999), the ability to identify and grapple with complex ill-structured problems) is constrained by an individual’s capacity to interpret experience: what many refer to as the individual’s existing cognitive structure, or meaning-making framework. King & Kitchener (1994) have characterized cognitive structures as increasingly sophisticated epistemological stages. 89

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Table 2. Stages of reflective judgment and related core problem-solving skills. (Taken from King & Kitchener, 1994, pp. 110–111) Reflective Judgment Stage Stage 1: What a person believes is true Stage 2: A person can know with certainty either directly or based on authority Stage 3: In some areas knowledge is uncertain and justification is based on what feels right at the moment. Stage 4: Knowledge is uncertain because of situational variables. Stage 5: Knowledge is contextual; people know via individual contextual filters. Justification is context-specific. Stage 6: Knowledge is constructed by comparing evidence on different sides of an issue or across contexts. Justification involves explaining comparisons. Stage 7: Knowledge is an outcome of an inquiry process generalizable across issues. Justification is probabilistic; evidence and argument are used to present the most complete understanding of an issue.

Core Problem-Solving Skills Person is unable to distinguish between well-structured and open-ended or illstructure problems.

Identifying: person distinguishes wellstructured problems with “right” answers from open-ended problems fraught with uncertainty. Framing: person looks beyond the personal perspective; articulates the larger context; makes legitimate qualitative interpretations from different perspectives. Resolving: Person uses relevant principles for making sound judgments across perspectives; provides well-founded justification. Readdressing: person coordinates identifying, framing, and resolving skills into a process that moves towards better solutions or more confidence in a solution as the problem is addressed over time.

Each cognitive stage, they argue, reflects an individual’s current meaning-making framework: their understanding of what knowledge ‘is’, and how it is justified. As adult learners mature, they move from epistemological structures in which knowledge is believed to be certain and knowable, to structures in which knowledge is understood to be constructed in context, and the outcome of continuous processes of inquiry. Young learners tend to justify knowledge through personal belief, or by reference to authority, whereas mature reflective learners understand justification to be probabilistic, and make use of evidence and argument to work through complex problems and reach tentative solutions. This model offers us one way of organizing and assessing our data, and certainly we have identified examples of students operating at different stages of reflective judgment. In Eyler & Giles study (1999), few college-level students were found to operate at the lower stages 1 and 2 levels of “pre-reflective judgment”. Similarly, we see little evidence of this stage of pre-reflective thinking in our students’ writing, although one student regularly supported statements about global citizenship with reference to religious texts. We did, however, notice an almost wishful casting around for that level of certain knowledge that has been lost. Here, a student asks hopefully for sources of ‘true knowledge’: I guess what I want to discuss is if we can ever have a piece of writing that does tell us the ‘truth’? How can we enforce that we are filtered true information? 90

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And finally, how do we hold those who are in power responsible for filtering true information? Occasionally, students invoke ‘the authorities’ as the people or institutions that ought to be ‘managing’ complex and ill-structured global problems, effectively arguing that “something ought to be done”. More commonly, our students evince what King & Kitchener (1994) call ‘quasireflective reasoning’ as they grapple with real uncertainty, or with multiple sources of conflicting information. In particular, stage 5 of King & Kitchener’s reflective judgment scale (Table 2) describes the stage at which many learners both acknowledge and become mired in the relativism of multiple valid sources of information: But of course, my understanding/belief of what constitutes a global citizen could be / probably is different from that of many of you in the course, and as such, will affect how you classify the above mentioned individuals. The concept of global citizenship is different for each individual, it’s about what you want it to be or wish it to be Less frequently, but with excitement, we noticed students beginning to demonstrate the understanding that knowledge can be constructed by comparing evidence on different sides of an issue, or through consistent processes of inquiry. I guess what I am asking is not so much about the symptoms of nationality but more about the underlying causes. WHY did nationalism evolve? What were the benefits? If it killed the participants, or even made their lives worse, like all things negative nature would have selected against it? How do adult learners develop reflective judgment? What triggers their progress from one cognitive ‘stage’ to the next? King & Kitchener (1994) describe moments of ‘cognitive dissonance’: the point at which the learner’s existing meaning-making structures can no longer make meaning from new information, and the learner is forced to develop a new framework to accommodate the greater complexity and uncertainty of knowledge he or she faces. In our course the subject materials provide complex ill-structured problems global issues such as poverty, access to healthcare, climate and the environment. The class provides the students with a virtual community from within which they are required to face and make sense of these realities. Simultaneously classmates with their varied backgrounds and disparate value systems offer alternative views thereby providing the triggers for ‘cognitive dissonance’ and a questioning of assumptions. Students respond to the uncertainty in different ways as they negotiate around and realign their individual understanding towards new knowledge or understanding. Here two students have been reading new material about how to understand culture, Posted by [student one] After reading the Singer article, and also the Campbell quote, I feel unsatisfied… []… I don’t know why I have such a problem with this, just gut instinct, but maybe the answer will come to me as discussions progress, so please let me know what you all think. 91

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Posted by [student two] … Personally, I am finding the same problem with this module. I don’t quite know where to draw the line when it comes to culture and identity…. []…Basically, “culture” is like the word “nation”. The discussion begins be accepting that there is no concrete definition, and the discussion ends with the same conclusion. Those are my thoughts on it. Furthermore classmates and occasional virtual guest experts regularly offer commentary on their lived realities in other parts of the world that challenge assumptions or illuminate unknowns. Such moments of encounter with different meaningmaking structures also trigger, we believe, the cognitive dissonance that push our learners to question assumptions and begin to deconstruct and reconstruct their worldview. The following are examples of such encounters from the many in our data. In this thread a Canadian and an Australian student articulate surprise at the very different approaches each brings to thinking about global citizenship. Posted by [Anglo-Australian student] ...Been trying to get my head around some of the material we’ve been looking at this week - the concepts seem huge to me...explicitly turning my mind to the issues of global citizenship and the obligations that attach to this has been challenging and exciting...here are some of my reflections based on some of the questions we’ve been asked to address... [extended analytical commentary follows] Reply from [Indo-Canadian student] ... You analyzed everything beautifully and the questions raised are very interesting...In answer to [your] questions about virtues and institutions I can only refer to [my] Baha’i faith...In it one of the attributions of an evolving world civilization is referred to as a mechanism that promotes the ability to think and decide... Reply from [Anglo-Australian student] …How interesting the Baha’i faith is - to be honest I hadn’t heard of it before, but after reading a bit from the website you referred us to I was really taken by the proactive & political agenda it pursues...Do you really think that a religion could facilitate a system of global citizenship?... In some instances, public online debates between participating guest experts serve to problematise and complexify issues that are often represented simplistically in the mass media. In this thread, for example, a specialist in international health with many years of experience in the developing world, and an IMF economist committed to economic solutions, both respond to a student’s questions about child poverty 92

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Posted by [Anglo-Canadian student] …The issue of Child Labour is one that I have grown a keen interest over the past few years….Why is government funding for education in many developing countries low? Perhaps because they are all indebted to richer countries, and can not afford to increase their funding to other important social sectors, such as education…? Reply from [internationally experienced medical doctor] …Firstly, one of the reasons that countries spend less than they should on education is because they are hobbled by enormous debt payments. A typical developing country might spend about 10 % of its available budget on health but highly indebted countries often spend 30% of budget on debt servicing… Reply from [IMF economist] …I can’t agree that debt payments are the main factor hobbling spending on education in developing countries. Much of the debt service due on existing debt was/is not being paid or is almost entirely being cancelled under the HIPC and MDRI debt relief program. In many cases debt service payments are being entirely cancelled. So debt is not the proximate cause of lack of funding for education… Both guests clearly demonstrate their expertise and passionate commitment to social justice, but fundamentally disagree with each other about the roots of poverty. Such moments of dispute serve to highlight for students the complex and illstructured nature of global problems. Disorienting Dilemmas While models of the development of reflective judgment may usefully focus attention on the cognitive impact of the learning challenges that our students encounter, the enthusiasm and passion of the feedback generated by our students suggests that we need also pay attention to their affective experience in our course, and to the kinds of personal and identity transformation that many report. A key theoretical framework that more explicitly connects ‘academic learning’ and processes of critical reflection to learner motivation and action is transformative learning theory (Mezirow, 1991). As an approach to understanding how education can bring about social change, this theory is “directed at the intersection of the individual and the social” (Tennant, 1993, p. 36) – the same intersection that we have targeted in designing and teaching our online course. Transformative learning, as originally formulated by Mezirow, is a process in which learners participate in rational discourse about and critical reflection on, their experience, in ways that permit transformations of perspective. Perspective transformation, says Mezirow (1991). …is the process of becoming critically aware of how and why our assumptions have come to constrain the way we perceive, understand, and feel 93

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about our world; changing these structures of habitual expectation to make possible a more inclusive, discriminating, and integrating perspective; and, finally, making choices or otherwise acting upon these new understandings (p. 167) Mezirow (1991) calls learners’ experiences of cognitive dissonance ‘disorienting dilemmas’: challenges to stereotypes, challenges to personal values, opportunities for empathy with others, or surprising new information (Eyler & Giles, 1999). In transformative learning theory, disorienting dilemmas are not simply moments of cognitive development, but are the trigger for dramatic processes of transformative change. Here, one of our students clearly articulates such a dilemma, in the context of learning more about global warming: …I just finished reading an article on globeinvestor.com… it describes a 5.5 billion dollar exploration project that Imperial Oil is proposing. The project has generated plenty of backlash because of its estimated 3.7 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year…What really scares me and is even more ironic, is today I received an offer from Imperial Oil to start work in their treasury department… Numerous studies have confirmed the process of transformative learning that Mezirow developed in his original 1978 study. Triggered by a disorienting dilemma, learners routinely enter a process of self-examination in which they commonly express feelings of guilt or shame, and subsequently embark on a critical assessment of their earlier assumptions as they struggle to explore the roots of the disorientation they experience. We observe our students describing similar feelings and experiences on encountering deeply challenging ideas: After reading this week’s module, I feel very ashamed of myself. Reading the articles and then all of your thoughts and opinions has certainly induced considerable thought and deliberation, as I found myself constantly reviewing my own thoughts and perceptions. As Mezirow has described, disorienting dilemmas, such as those that our students encounter in course content, appear to force learners to question their existing assumptions about themselves. The Role of Reflection: Transforming Disorienting Dilemmas into New Understanding Processes of collaborative critical reflection permit learners to work through later stages of the transformation process. Thus learners come to realize that they are not ‘alone’ and that their discontent or confusion is shared; participants debate/explore options or solutions, and share new information with each other in the process. Critical reflection might be considered to be the core activity through which learners 94

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resolve the dilemma they have encountered. Brookfield (2000) goes as far as to suggest that the myriad forms of critical self-reflection that have been identified in transformative learning processes can be grouped together under the classification of ideology critique, as formulated by thinkers from the Frankfurt School of Critical Social Theory. The asynchronous discussion forums of virtual classrooms offer a platform for critical reflection that has the potential, we believe, to take students far beyond what can be achieved in traditional time-limited face-to-face (f2f) class discussions. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we observe that reflection is a key feature of the processes of assimilation and adjustment that our learners undergo as they grapple with our course material. Indeed, one of our students identifies the centrality of reflection to the learning experience in our course: … the format of the course is not mere learning but it is REFLECTION. You are forced to reflect upon yourself and contextualize the learning experience. Basically I think that this course achieves well what ought to be the main goal of University; trigger critical thinking. This course allowed me to consolidate knowledge and relate to it. Very useful! Moreover, we have found that student reflexive endeavours (observed in extended discussion board exchanges) cannot fully be understood by simple comparison with f2f classroom reflection. Online, for example, in the restricted social cues environment, we routinely observe that students seem to involve all those around them in their reflection. They appear to ignore individual differences like age, gender or religious differences that in the f2f context we might have expected to raise barriers to interaction. Similarly, we find that in the online classroom, students seem prepared to reveal details of how their personal reflections have evolved and to lay open their personal histories and insecurities in a new way. It appears to us that, in this online setting, ideas offered by any other participant can be reviewed and deliberated upon as part of the learning process. This is in contrast to what we have observed in many of our f2f classes where it seems that preconceived assumptions about ideas generated by others in the discussion are triggered in response to social or visual cues. This can lead, in the f2f context, to new ideas being dismissed if found wanting by these criteria. At its most simple level we note for example, a ‘conversation’ that one of us had with a student regarding the practice of living in Uganda as a foreigner. This discussion involved exchanges about emotional responses to the experience at a level that almost certainly would not have arisen face-to-face when both parties would have had the ‘benefit’ of visual cues. Such an exchange would, we believe, have been powerfully inhibited by the realization on the part of the student of the considerable age difference and recognition of the status and power relations between them as instructor and student. In effect, we believe that the reflective discourse facilitated within the structured online discussion forums in this course provide students with what Mezirow and others have characterized as a ‘conceptual tool’ for perspective transformation. 95

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Virtual Transformative Learning? Eyler & Giles (1999) note that learners tend to avoid disorienting dilemmas because they challenge fundamental assumptions, but suggest that the “powerful emotional component of community involvement…may make dissonance harder to ignore” (p. 141). These observations emphasize the importance of collectivity and communication in the process of critical reflection. The literature on the learning of service learning also lays great emphasis on the role of the embodied physical encounter with others. Parks Daloz (2000), for example, reports from her study that meaningful educational encounters with ‘different others’ are critical to perspective transformation and development of a real commitment to social action. In principle, online learning can facilitate a wider mix of interpersonal and cross-cultural encounters over a shorter time span (and at lower cost) than traditional international exchanges and service learning activities. But can a virtual classroom offer learners the kind of community, collectivity and ‘encounter with others’, that can bring about transformative change? Some educational theorists would argue that it cannot. From Dewey (1966) to Dreyfus (2001), a range of educational theorists have stressed various aspects of experiential and ‘lived’ encounters which they feel must be included in learners’ experiences of learning in order to ensure change. Most famously, Dreyfus has argued vehemently that only through processes of risk-taking and vulnerability can learners experience the transactional authenticity required for learning that goes beyond “mere ‘competence’”. Mezirow and many others engaged in research on transformative learning agree that trust, solidarity, security and empathy are vitally important features of the ‘authentic’ engagement with others’ that learners must experience as they try to make sense of disorienting dilemmas. In relationships of trust, learners have the freedom to dissent, to try out new points of view, and experiment with new roles. Dreyfus argues, however, that “true mastery”, real-world action and moral commitment call for an affective intensity in learning that can only be achieved through embodied presence (as summarized in Land, 2004). If our learners (and tutors) are ‘disembodied’, is there no possibility for them to meaningfully engage with their international classmates and reflect critically on their learning in a ‘safe’ context? As disembodied learners, is their opportunity to consolidate their knowledge through embodied re-enactment denied? We examined our students’ writing and feedback for evidence of their reaction to learning in a virtual space. Perhaps not surprisingly, students repeatedly speak about the impact and value of their ‘online encounters’ with international classmates. Clearly, these interactions held meaning for our students: Being able to interact with people and being exposed to different opinions and cultural ideas from people around the world. Greatest learning experience I’ve ever had. Students repeatedly describe their surprise at the feeling of community created in this online course. Importantly, their comments demonstrate that the course space 96

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became for many a place where they felt able to take risks in their learning and make mistakes, or express dissent. They indicate that course discussions facilitate the development of trust, solidarity, security and empathy that transformative learning theory insists is necessary for ‘trying on another point of view’. Initially I was very hesitant in everything I wrote, I didn’t want to sound like I didn’t know what I was talking about. But, I have started to realize that isn’t so bad, as this is a course, and I’m supposed to be learning. On the other hand, a number of students make comments juxtaposing this virtual classroom with their “real classes”, referencing the commonplace notion that what is ‘virtual’ is not ‘real’. As in Bayne’s study (2004), some students indicated a wish for more sensory input – pictures, real-time communication, physical meetings – and one or two implied that the online learning experience was ‘lacking’ something. As we continued to investigate student writing for evidence of feelings of disembodiment, however, we increasingly encountered incidences of ‘body speech’. Repeatedly, students wrote about “speaking” and “listening” and “hearing from each other”; about ideas being “eye-opening”; about the value of multiple voices; about “seeing” new paths through complexity; about “digesting” new knowledge and “grabbing on” to new abstractions. What is going on? A clue, we feel, is contained in this student’s reflection, midway through the course, on his struggle to adapt to the virtual classroom: My idea of classroom has been sitting at a lecture hall and talking to classmates and instructor face to face, so in many occasion I find the course unreal and difficult to incorporate into real situation [our emphasis] We contend that this student and others are reporting on their gradual adaptation to the new forms of embodiment that exist in virtual learning spaces. Initially, they seek out (or report the lack of) familiar embodied patterns of learning and interacting. As the course continues, their increasingly frequent use of ‘body speech’, reflects, we feel, a new comfort with the embodied habits and practices of the virtual classroom. It takes time and practice to ‘incorporate’ oneself online, to arrive at the understanding that this student demonstrates: Sometimes flexibility may act as a temptation for me to work on some other urgent things instead of involving my whole self here [our emphasis] That is to say, it is not ‘virtuality’, but the everyday student problem of time management, that sometimes prevents total involvement of her ‘whole self ’ in the learning environment. CONCLUSIONS: REINTEGRATION AND COMMITMENT TO ACTION

Our students repeatedly intimate to us that something about “Perspectives on Global Citizenship” is ‘different’, and that it had had an impact on them unlike any other course: challenging their preconceptions, revealing surprising information 97

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about the world, giving them a new sense of agency, and inspiring them to get involved in ‘social change’ projects big or small. What makes the difference? We concur with Dreyfus and others who have argued that “true mastery”, realworld action and moral commitment can only be achieved through an embodied educational encounter. We simply believe that it is inaccurate and misleading to argue that online learners are ‘disembodied’. On the contrary, our students demonstrate vividly their adaptation to new embodied practices of the virtual classroom; moreover, they clearly describe ways in which they have translated inspiration from the virtual classroom into embodied practices in their local physical contexts. As Lévy has argued, the ‘virtual’ is not opposed to the ‘real’ but is simply a different mode of reality (cited in Poster, 2001) – one in which powerful learning experiences can take place. Course content that challenges students to reflect not only on global challenges but on their own roles and responsibilities creates incidents of shock, surprise and self-examination that we feel resemble the ‘disorienting dilemmas’ identified by Mezirow as triggers for transformative learning. Concurrently, the heavy emphasis on critical reflection as the core activity in this course provides learners with a key transformative tool, and a mediated space for constructive engagement with difference: different cultures, different worldviews, different disciplinary perspectives. The conscious construction of a respectful and thoughtful online community encourages students to experiment with new forms of critical reflection. Although they enter this course demonstrating varying capacities for reflective judgment, students become more practiced at identifying and grappling with complex ill-defined global problems – making connections, identifying causes. Critical reflection, in turn, permits students to transform moments of disorientation into new levels of understanding. The final steps in transformative learning, as characterized by Mezirow (1991) and others, take place when learners integrate their new perspectives into their identity or self-image, and begin to implement this new understanding of the world through personal choices or action. It is routine in this course that students begin to re-define themselves as “global citizens”, and to write about the responsibilities or behaviours they believe this entails or even “forces them to live up to”. Importantly, the new shared identity and sense of community that these students develop and write about may well be vital in helping them to stave off the sense of isolation and “radical pessimism” (Brookfield, 2000) that deep investigation into global problems can induce. A number of our students have later reported to us that their virtual learning experience in our course has prompted them to take decidedly embodied new actions in the world. Many of these are minor: greater attention to recycling, taking the bus more frequently than driving. But some are significant: I have signed up to volunteer for a group that supports young, teenage mothers (one girl had a baby at 12, her own mom is a heroin addict). They are living in poverty and just need a support system 98

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Although transformative learning theory cautions that true ‘transformation’ does not occur all the time, or even frequently, we have observed that a number of our students complete “Perspectives on Global Citizenship” not just informed, but also transformed. NOTES 1 2 3

http://www.trek2000.ubc.ca/ http://www.universitas21.com Full course details and a detailed Syllabus can be obtained from the UBC Distance Education course catalog at: http://olt.ubc.ca/distance_learning/courses/course_catalog/?CA=31281

REFERENCES Bayne, S. (2004, December 5–8). The embodiment of the online learner. In R. Atkinson, C. McBeath, D. Jonas-Dwyer, & R. Phillips (Eds.), Beyond the comfort zone: Proceedings of the 21st ASCILITE conference. Perth. Retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/perth04/ procs/bayne.html Brookfield, S. D. (2000). Transformative learning as ideology critique. In J. Mezirow & Associates (Eds.), Learning as transformation (pp. 125–148). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Burbules, N. C. (2002). Like a version: Playing with online identities. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 34(4), 387–393. Dewey, J. (1966). Democracy and education. New York: Free Press. Dower, N., & Williams, W. (Eds.). (2002). Global citizenship - A critical reader. Edinburgh: University Press. Dreyfus, H. L. (2001). On the Internet. London: Routledge. Elbow, P. (1997). High stakes and low stakes in assigning and responding to writing. In M. D. Sorcinelli & P. Elbow (Eds.), Assigning and responding to writing in the disciplines. San Francisco: JosseyBass. Eyler, J., & Giles, D. E., Jr. (1999). Where’s the learning in service learning? San Francisco: JosseyBass. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. Ramos, Trans.). New York: Herter and Herter. Kegan, R. (2000). What “Form” transforms? A constructive-developmental approach to transformative learning. In J. Mezirow & Associates (Eds.), Learning as transformation (pp. 35–70). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. King, P. M., & Kitchener, K. S. (1994). Developing reflective judgment. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Land, R. (2004, December 5–8). Issues of embodiment and risk in online learning. In R. Atkinson, C. McBeath, D. Jonas-Dwyer, & R. Phillips (Eds.), Beyond the comfort zone: Proceedings of the 21st ASCILITE conference (pp. 530–538). Perth. Retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org.au/ conferences/perth04/procs/land.html Mezirow, J. (1978). Education for perspective transformation: Women’s’ Re-entry programs in community colleges. New York: Teachers College at Columbia University. Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative dimensions of adult learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Parks Daloz, L. A. (2000). Transformative learning for the common good. In J. Mezirow & Associates (Eds.), Learning as transformation (pp. 103–124). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Poster, M. (2001). What’s the matter with the internet? Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Roman, L. G. (2003). Education and the contested meanings of ‘Global Citizenship’. Journal of Educational Change (Special Issue, Guest Edited by Fazal Rizvi), 4(3), 269–293. Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. London: Sage.

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Leah P. Macfadyen Science Centre for Learning and Teaching The University of British Columbia, Canada Anne Hewling Information Literacy Unit, Library and Learning Resources Centre UK Open University

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8. NEGOTIATING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE Narratives from the Have and the Have-Nots

INTRODUCTION

The digital divide is believed to intensify existing forms of privilege and exclusion. In spite of decades of governmental investment in Information and Communications Technology (ICT), this problem persists. Arguably, this is because we have not yet understood it well enough. Although ‘access’ is generally thought to be central to the digital divide, recent thinking has rendered this notion problematic. It is now felt that we should develop a better understanding of what ‘access’ might mean to different groups. For this reason, in this paper, we have used a new approach to study experiences of the digital divide – the Biographic Narrative Interpretative Method (BNIM). BNIM elicits narratives from participants, and then uses these to try and construct an understanding of the phenomena they have experienced. For this particular chapter, we selected one student who was actively engaged with a business course delivered in a blended learning format (lectures, seminars plus online activities), and one student who made no effort to engage with the online materials, exploring their respective narration of how they negotiate their access to the online materials. We suggest these students could be at opposing sides of the digital divide, i.e. an archetypal ‘have’ and a ‘have not’. A contrast is revealed in the nature of the material spaces used for learning. One student is has a life lived with privilege, power and personal space. This context of controlled physical spaces enabled him to spread out and to work and to shut out the world. The other student struggled to control his own learning space, having to negotiate the physical space of a new country with an unfamiliar transport system, and the learning space constituted by a technology that renders him powerless and unable to contribute. The interpretation of the interview also offers an insight into the role of the assistance of a more experienced friend, and how this can offer a conceptual framework to help to explain how this man eventually came to succeed on his own terms. It is already well established that the traditional conception of the digital divide as a problem of access is an over-simplification; what this study shows is that even when open access facilities are provided, the disadvantaged are not as well placed to take advantage of this as those who already hold social advantage. The “flexibility” offered by Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) does not solve access issues either, but instead adds new spaces (e.g. the home) where these issues must be negotiated. This study suggests that the BNIM method offers a richness and depth R. Land and S. Bayne (Eds.), Digital Difference: Perspectives on Online Learning, 101–113. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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of interpretation which leaves us feeling we know much more about how an individual student perceives the world in terms of the digital divide, and how the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ experience access to ICT in ways that replicate the unequal power structures of society. After briefly situating this work in the wider research literature, our methodology is described and its relevance to this problem demonstrated. Two contrasting cases are used to highlight the conceptual complexity of ‘access’. The chapter concludes by identifying implications for research and policy. THE LITERATURE CONTEXT

The digital divide exists. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) refer to the divide as the gaps in access to information and communication technology, which, “to some extent is simply a deepening of existing forms of exclusion” (OECD 2002: 11). This is seen to be a growing concern in a society that has been positioned as a “knowledge economy”, and is something seen as having implications across the educational system (Peters & May, 2004). Thus, arguably, the divide should be of concern to government policymakers, as without policy interventions, ICT will intensify societal divisions, and thus increasingly marginalize those who are, “unemployed, poor, housebound, disabled, less educated, members of ethnic and cultural minorities - and in many countries, women” (OECD op. cit.). This politicises access to technologies. Concern at the international level is mirrored nationally. The UK Government produced the ‘Harnessing Technology’ (2005) document, which outlined the relevance and strategic importance of ICT to the so called ‘UK PLC’ and emphasised the importance of a knowledge society in fuelling economic prosperity. Government policy, and e-learning policy, has a pervasive impact on all levels of education and it is therefore an issue of concern as to how these polices will affect those within Higher Education. Burns et al., (2006) argue that the student stakeholder voice is completely silenced in UK Governmental policy documents setting the policy agenda for the education sector. As Beetham and Sharpe (2007: 5) point out, ‘as more and more jobs demand information literacy, higher education has become a goal for 50% of the young population in the UK, rather than the 5% who attended a generation ago.’ In the USA, similarly, there is concern over access to ICT. The US Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Strategy (NITA) commissioned the first of three reports back in July 1995 (Carvin 2000) to identify categories of online access throughout the USA. The final report in 1999 concluded that access had soared for people in all demographic groups and geographic locations. However, the digital divide between the information rich and information poor had, according to final report, not only persisted but widened. The power of new technologies as an agent for economic and political change has consequences in both political actions and discourse (Loader 1998). Indeed, access to higher education is politicised, classed and dependent upon previous education. And when the students do arrive in higher education, the curricula reflect a ‘hidden’ agenda, where many kinds of socialisation are covert, replicating 102

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forms of societal subordination, discrimination and hegemony that benefit some at the expense of others (Margolis et al., 2001). Ehrensal (2001: 99) argues, “That is, consent is first created in people’s heads and then reinforced by the playing of the game. The game is played in an arena in which all of the players know the rules long before they hear the starting whistle”. In addition, there are issues relating to socio-economic status, employment status, household types, gender, geographical location, age, income, ethnicity and disability (BeCTA, 2001; Warschauer, 2002). Nor is the problem fundamentally one of possessing technology – even those who own technology use it in differentiated ways, for social, psychological economic or pragmatic reasons (Selwyn, 2004). Instead, there are complicated patterns of differentiated use between different groups. For example, in Hargittai’s study in the USA (2002), the ability of people to find online information was influenced by experience with technology and negatively influenced by age (but apparently not influenced by gender). Moreover, if the digital divide is rethought in terms of literacy, rather than of use or access, it becomes clear that even the performances of skill studied by Hargittai oversimplify the situation. Prinsloo (2005), writing about “the way in which these limited skills were embedded in wider ways of social and individual being”, calls instead for studies of the way that introducing technology disrupts local practices and values – arguing the necessity of such work for understanding what inclusion and exclusion might actually mean in specific cases. Indeed, there is no reason to assume that high levels of use (such as those stereotypically associated with “haves”) are in any way “normal”, except that they happen to be common among many of those who have framed the debate in the first place (Potter, 2006). Clearly the effects – and causes – of exclusion are not simple. Although the debate is often framed in simplistic terms, neither economic status nor access to technology adequately explains the situation. Indeed, initiatives that provide increased access to technology – such as the “hole in the wall” project for street children in India, or initiatives to promote a 1: 1 computer ownership ratio (one lap-top per child) – can cause as many problems as they solve by interfering in successful social practices (Warschauer, 2002). Current research into the digital divide advocates that technologies are not valueneutral, and can only be understood when placed “within a wider political context of an unequal and changing pattern of power relationships” (Loader, 1998: 7). An issue in the digital divide, then, is how these power relationships play out within the education system. “Students….tend to experience HE as a series of struggles propelled by discourses of derision, over-assessment, increasing participation in paid employment and, perhaps, those e-learning initiatives designed to liberate resources rather than support staff or empower students” (Lillis 2001, Sinfield et al., 2004). Are the inequalities of society replicated in the classrooms of our universities? Recognising the complexity of the digital divide/s has led researchers to call for new types of study to be undertaken – ones that explore peoples’ patterns of use and seek to understand them (e.g. Selwyn, 2004; Potter, 2006). This paper seeks a richer understanding of the digital divide from the student perspective. The tradition we will frame the work within is the phenomenological approach, where the meaning 103

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of the lived experiences of individuals is explored (Cresswell 1998: 51). In the next section, an approach will be explored which is designed to support such enquiry. STUDY METHOD

Biographic Narrative Interpretative Method (BNIM) draws upon the ‘gestalt’ German school of thought from the early 20th century and is used to draw out the “stories” or narratives of interviewees’ lives (Wengraf 2001). What is of interest to the researcher is what the interviewee selects to tell us, and the way in which the story is told. The interview is structured such that the interviewee has the time and space to develop their own narrative contribution. The interview transcripts are then interpreted through a microanalysis of the lived life, with the aim of encapsulating the ‘part’ of the transcript, as representative of the whole interview. Thus, the BNIM starts from the ‘deliberately narrow position’ that interview data are only about a single research conversation that occurred at a particular time and place. The BNIM approach, Wengraf (2001) suggests, limits counter transference, which is the emotional reaction of the interviewer to the interviewee’s subject matter. The BNIM has a key advantage for interviewing participants known to the interviewer as it can, in part, address issues of power relationships. Thus, this particular interview method recognises that power relationships do exist, and sets out a robust framework within which the researcher invites the participant to set the agenda. By staying silent yet demonstrating empathy, the interviewer encourages narrations of the participant’s choice. The interview method of three ‘parts’ enables the researcher to stand apart from the interview emotionally enabling the examination of power as a topic in its own right. Each session (interview) is divided into three ‘parts: the first is introduced by a single question aimed at inducing narrative (SQUIN). In the second part of the interview, the interviewer paraphrases key themes back to the interviewee and elicits further explanation. The final stage of the interview is where the interviewer’s agenda is explicitly raised. I asked specifically about the student’s experience of online learning. In this research, at the beginning of the interview, participants were invited to talk around carefully constructed open-ended questions. These are carefully worded to induce narrative, or as Wengraf (2001) explains, to elicit a ‘story’ which may offer an opportunity for more interpretative analysis. In the BNIM method, the interview analysis focuses upon the ‘story’, and these narratives typically account for around 30% of the whole interview. The approach draws upon aspects of ethnography such as use of description and a high level of detail; telling a story “informally” as a storyteller; exploring cultural themes of roles and behaviour; description of “everyday life”; and finally interpreting through a format that is descriptive (case study of each person; analysis and interpretation). The full context of the interview and interviewee are considered through both interviewee and ‘researcher-self’ (Coffey 2003: 131, cited in May) where the personal narrative of the researcher has formed part of what has been told, collected and (re) presented in the research and writing process. The transcriptions are complete to give the fullest possible potential for 104

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analysis So, for example, pauses, participant’s “errms”, “ahs” and so on are included, as it may be possible to derive rich interpretation from extracts following a point in the interview where time has been used by the participant to frame an exact response. The Wengraf method of identifying text ‘chunks’ was followed by sorting text into ‘description’, ‘argumentation’ ,’reporting’, ‘narrative’ and ‘evaluation’. The narrative extracts were the focus for interpretation. CASE STUDY ONE: CHARLES – POWER, PRIVILEGE AND PERSONAL SPACE

Charles is a white, middle class student in his early thirties. A feature of this analysis is his strong identity of self. Our interpretation of the interview transcript led us to conclude that he is confident in his abilities both as a worker and as a student, confidently transferring skills from one arena to the other. In terms of negotiating his own time and space to study, he is able to work hard and effectively in the comfort of his own home, where he can shut out the world. Middle class values of deferred gratification and the commercial values of the professional in industry can explain in part his determination to succeed and his view of the educational process as a series of tasks to be undertaken. His language reflects the neo-liberal notions of success and reward of the individual. A key feature of his narrative was a constant comparison of himself with other learners, placing himself in the ‘top 10%’ of the classroom. He uses terms that classify the other students in his class by ‘success’ or ‘failure’ on a sliding scale. For example, when talking about forming online groups for an assessment, he comments, ‘then the lower end of the group would be excluded from that I think.’ Our interpretation of this comment, given his tone and expression concluded that this meant that the students he would place at the lower end would not be capable of forming an online group. He is satisfied with his own group, because, as he comments, ‘the top 10% would be able to form themselves into sensible groups who could work together’. He is aware of his privileged position, and explains that he is at a little bit of an advantage, because he is working and has the money to buy text books, “even when they’re not essential.” There is a sense of privilege from the resources Charles has access to in his home environment, and privilege is a recurring theme. Charles can be described as an independent learner as he shows confidence in approaching the learning materials on his own. He displays “white middle class” self assurance in his own abilities in negotiating with the lecturer an alternative teaching mode that is not available “by strictly following rules”. He displays independent learning characteristics by minimal contact with the lecturer, only checking when there is a query he is concerned with – these were mainly to do with how high marks could be gained for the module assessment. However, he knows that there is still untapped support from the lecturer should this be needed. This approach suggests an economy of effort, which reflects the business world in which Charles operates. Charles talks about others with an emphasis on difference – mainly the differences he perceives in himself vis-à-vis the other students. It was interesting seeing the difference in general world view between the younger and older students…some younger students were a bit naïve I think. 105

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He explores issues of teaching and learning in a similar vein: the seminar it’s notionally an hour long and by the time everyone gets in gets settled and you end up getting put in groups where you have 5 people and 3 of them aren’t interested. Noticeably Charles does not see himself as one of these implicit timewasters, and wouldn’t categorise himself as a non-interested participant. Throughout the interview, he uses scores to categorise “good” and “bad” learners, thus drawing upon the competitive business arena and applying this to his learning forum. He has high expectations himself, and is intolerant of others. Charles is pragmatic and determined to succeed in the group coursework for his studies. A significant incident is narrated when, as part of the course, he is required to work with two other students on a piece of work. Power and control of the situation is initiated by Charles and accepted by Andrew, another part-time student attending the class on a day release basis. These two students accept they must have the third person, who clearly does not have their experience of work. The response initiated by Charles is to collude with Andrew to perform well, despite having the third group member. They are content to let the third student have a free ride so the ‘group’ succeeds. They choose to model the world of work’s team working approach to solving the perceived problem of including the young student. The “task” must be accomplished at any cost. Other options were of course possible – a mentoring or coaching relationship may have been beneficial to the triad, or encouraging the young student to share in the views and experiences of the working students. He is able to draw upon his work experiences to ensure he is able to gain the high grades he considers he deserves. Charles himself sees value in setting goals and working hard to achieve these goals. In terms of utilising ‘hard’ commercial skills that would be valued in the workplace, he can be seen in his studies to be ruthless in his quest to succeed, as his comments on group work illustrate. By rationalising he is thus able to justify to himself, and to his colleague, the ruthless exclusion of the third (younger student) from the group assessment process. The third person, to be honest, it was, its difficult really without being critical but he was young and he didn’t have a clue. We decided between us that actually there’s no real contribution to either pieces of work. He had a free ride….and no disrespect I can’t even remember his name, but looking at practical examples both assessments have to use a company as a case study. I used mine and Andrew used his. It’s difficult to bring a third party into that and have them make a sensible contribution because they don’t know anything about the way companies work ….and the small amount we did sort of get him to pull together earlier on, was always late. I find it easier to do a piece of work on my own. Despite trying to justify this solution by saying “without being critical” and “no disrespect,” Charles goes on to be both extremely critical and extremely disrespectful, claiming that the third group member “hasn’t a clue” and has no idea “about the way companies work.” The young student is disempowered and left with very little option 106

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but to go along with the older, more experienced group members. The young student, however, does not try to change the arrangements, and may indeed see value in tagging along as a non-performing third, as the reward would be a share in the good marks on the basis of the work of the other two group members. Materially, Charles has negotiated space and time in the home, a settled environment within which to study. He has access to a laptop computer, and here is a feeling of physical space where notes can be spread out “as far as you can see”. He feels free to make a mess at home. Internet access is also evident, as Charles would not select to work in an IT room at university, nor a quiet study area designated for student writing. Later in the interview, Charles talks about how he works independently. There are clues to a privileged existence – his educational needs almost colonise his home life in terms of time and space. Here we have an example: When you’re at home you just get home from work, sit down and say this where I need to be by the end of tonight and you just sit down and you do it until its done and if it takes an hour or it takes to 4 in the morning depending how close your deadlines are, then that’s what you do and you just get down and focus and you can block the rest of the world out. University space is definitely not of equal value to Charles, as he comments, Whereas in the university, the IT rooms are generally …quite noisy and there’s no space to spread out and I’m a very messy worker. I sit there with my lap top in front of me and there’s paper as far as you can see, in every direction. His use of home space and time means that he is able to set his own parameters for study time, and has all the necessary resources to assist him. The home space does not have to be negotiated, and Charles is able to use his time to meet his own needs first. There is no evidence of a partner or family sharing this space, and it is noticeable in the transcript of the interview that Charles only talks about work and study - these concerns frame the world that he constructs. Family and friends of Charles possibly share his values, as there are no concerns shared about having free time to work on his studies. There is a sense of privilege that echoes back to his perceptions of his power in terms of the rest of the world, issues of power, authority and control. CASE STUDY TWO: KWAME - STRUGGLES IN AN ALIEN WORLD

The following case follows the experiences of a black male student from Ghana, who came to the UK to study a one-year postgraduate diploma. As Kwame tells his story, we find this is one of overcoming challenges, and finding alternative strategies to solve his problems without engaging with those he perceives as ‘in authority’. He uses friends and family to help him make sense of an alien new world – coming from Ghana to study in the UK, he finds settling into UK life difficult. By starting classes late, Kwame explains his difficulty in making sense of the online component of the learning. In this interview, he puts a high value on the technological drivers 107

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of the course, and this is reflected through his explanations of his country, and their need to move forward with technology. It is reflected also in his previous study experience – Kwame has (on paper) computing and IT skills, but the explanation of how this is taught in higher education in Ghana (in large classes of 70, where students were offered theory but limited access to machines) offers insights into how important he personally values access to this scarce commodity. Finally, this interview offers an insight into the role of the assistance of a more experienced friend, and can offer a conceptual framework to help to explain how this man has come to succeed on his own terms. This interview was unique, in that when the opening question was asked, the response from Kwame immediately, with no pause for thought came straight back: It was horrible.(pause) It was very, very horrible because I didn’t know anybody in this country (pause). It was just a family friend I know in Milton Keynes and you can imagine coming down from Milton Keynes to London as a new guy, the whole thing looked very strange and confusing. So basically the first week I found myself keeping on asking people a lot of questions. I didn’t know anything at all. So in the first weeks it was horrible and I also came late (pause). I was a bit late, about 3 weeks late, so when I came the programme had already started so I had to force myself into the programme. He illustrates his experiences when asked, “Can you give me any examples about, you said you had a very horrid experience, is there anything particular where you really felt ‘I could just pack up and go home now?’”. Yes, why I can’t synchronise transport. I don’t know the transport system and where I was living was very far from the university so that was the first thing and apart from that the system, especially the computer system in Ghana, it wasn’t like that (rushed speech).So when I came here and everything was about a computer and everything was about the technology. It was quite new to me so that was a bit of a problem Kwame uses very emotive words in this extract. I ask him about his first couple of weeks ‘here’ which could be interpreted either as the UK or the university, and he talks about ‘horrid’ in terms of space – a long way from the university; in terms of not knowing anyone; in terms of starting the class late. He talks about ‘forcing’ himself into the programme, and this seems to be very difficult for him. You came with the international purchasing, this online programme, I didn’t know it. (pause) It was a new thing to me. I knew the answer but how to communicate it, it was a difficult problem. Kwame talks here about his dilemma – he knows the answer, but not how to communicate this in the online environment. It is interesting that he internalises this as his own problem, and does not expect the tutor to work with him to solve this problem that is clearly impacting on his chances of a successful outcome to his studies. This can in part be explained by his previous education, consisting of large classes, tutors explaining theory and not having resources to practice what is being taught. 108

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His expectations of the tutor are minimal – “You even gave me a sheet to go and look at and I used that one.” When he remains baffled and confused by the course, he does not approach the tutor again, but instead solves his problem by finding a friend within the class, another male black African student attending in very similar circumstances. The friend acts as a coach, by talking to him on the telephone while Kwame is on the Internet accessing the course. It is significant that this friend doesn’t have to be physically present to provide the support he needs - the reassurance provided is valuable, even though there is a physical space dimension between where Kwame is staying and the friend’s location in London. The technology itself is enabling him to resolve his technological problems – having broadband and being able to access the telephone at the same time. As Kwame emphasises: ...access to technology is a huge issue. This is a really significant extract, as our interpretation of this quote is that within these few words, Kwame is conceptualising the need for both his country (Ghana) and also his own need to succeed using IT. It is not just about IT for one teaching module, but IT for life – he realises that being computer literate is important in life chances and choice, and, unknown to the tutor, is working through alternative strategies to enable him to word process essays for all his classes. Using internet sources for research he sees the computer not just as passive in terms of seeking information, but as active in that he is now using it within a social context of ‘talking to people’. In Ghana we did not have seminars…I didn’t know how to handle everything so I had to keep quiet and listen to people, how people deal in class and stuff like that before I finally got myself involved in it. Our interpretation of the interview transcript led us to conclude that Kwame is an intelligent man with the commitment, drive and ability to succeed. However, in a large group, he is silenced – by the online course, which he cannot access; by the other students, who speak out in the lectures and seminars and ask questions of the tutor in a way he finds disrespectful; by the seminar time, where students are expected to work together in small groups: It’s very simple to use if you know. We know it in Africa, in Ghana that it was good but we don’t have it. These two extracts illustrate the significance of the power and influence of the computer, and can be interpreted as emphasising both the importance of the computer for him, Kwame, as an individual, but also for his own country. The power of those that ‘have’ and ‘don’t have’ access links into whole theories of globalisation, economic and political power and control. Hence time and space dimensions for Kwame in the home environment represent to him the freedom to work as he chooses, and the technology (PC and internet access, plus mobile telephone) enables him to access his friend and mentor when it suits him. 109

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In terms of self-confidence Kwame, as the interview is coming to a conclusion, proudly announces: ‘and I have my own computer now’. This is a key achievement for him, and he is obviously delighted that he has moved from the status of ‘have not’ in terms of power and control of the online environment (and hence power and control in other aspects of his life) to being a person that ‘has’. Here he acknowledges this by stating, ‘it is very simple to use if you know’, and the knowing, for Kwame, is the achievement. DISCUSSION

What these cases reveal are the local and specific practices that defined students’ engagement. As expected, this was not a simple matter of access to technology; instead, these accounts reveal that engagement (including engagement with technology) was shaped by the students’ existing dispositions and social connections. We can conceptualise Charles in terms of his strong work ethos. He is used to negotiating with employers, his lecturers and his partner/friends/family in order to gain space and support to study now for reward in the future. He has a ‘good’ educational profile in that he enters the university with standard ‘A’ levels. Skills that he has developed in the workplace are evident in his attitude to study – time management skills, handling deadlines skills, a focus on the task, shutting out the rest of the world. Kwame was also passionate about working hard, but his experiences were markedly different. Kwame narrates his experiences of education as a story of exclusion, alienation and difficulty. He has bridged the traditional divide (access), as he is studying at university, and has access to various online resources. However, the frustration of having the theory of how to use a computer, and the practicalities of finding that he is unable to transfer the knowledge and skills is evident. It takes time for Kwame to find his feet at the university, and a higher education system where modular teaching lasts for eleven weeks is not sufficient. Charles quickly achieves what Kwame struggles throughout the narrative to accomplish: a connection between established social practices and this new context (the taught course). It was not until Kwame established friendships that he could draw upon to help him take control of his use of technology that the divide between the two began to close. Power relationships are evident in Charles’ account of his experience of the course. He views the lecturer/student relationship as a partnership, and sees communication as the key to the learning experience, not the online medium. He comments: in terms of the way the material was structured I didn’t really miss having the face-to-face lectures because we had a reasonably good communication process anyway. There is an expectation of the teacher providing material for the student. He is more willing to take the risk of using technology online because he can “fall back” on phone/email if problems arise. His power thus comes from a match between resources and approaches he has already mastered and those that are encouraged by 110

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the module. Although he has to take a risk when engaging with a new form of learning and teaching, his risk is minimal and is managed. Indeed, the module was designed with flexibility in mind, as it is offered to day release students as well as undergraduate students. The tutor is thus complicit in allowing Charles to use success gained elsewhere (in the world of work) in order to be successful on this module. Charles becomes powerful in this module because the tutor is sanctioning and valuing the kinds of approach (the business approach) he has already mastered. He is confident enough to ‘play the system’ to his advantage, even to the extent of excluding and rejecting the contributions from other students. The online experience suits Charles and his style of working and he values the autonomy he has to study in his own time and in his own space. One of the most striking aspects about Kwame’s interview, in contrast, is the huge inequality in who has access to computers in the polytechnic in which he studied in Ghana. In his own words, We did computers in the first year and that was theory. So you can imagine and then when I finished the first year, the whole of the second year, no access to a computer, the whole of the third year no access to a computer and then when I finished it, I was about to come here, then we got computers. So all the things we were doing were manual. So when I came here the computer system was quite different and then how you enter the university you have to go and log into the system. All these things were a problem for me. Unlike Charles, who was confident enough to use other forms of communication when he had problems, Kwame’s attempts to build a relationship with the tutor and with fellow students were hampered by his technical problems. Simple advice about other possibilities for discussion would have transformed his engagement during the module. Although he has clearly articulated wants and needs the university modular schemes and compulsory core modules take no cognisance of these. Kwame scraped through the course, incorrectly labelled as a disengaged student; and he succeeded despite the absence of assistance the tutor may have offered him. CONCLUSIONS

Recognising that the digital divide is more complicated than a simple division between those who have access to technology and those who do not is only a starting point. This situation calls for different kinds of research, which will illuminate individuals’ experiences of inclusion and exclusion. In this paper a research methodology has been described and demonstrated that is able to explore these issues. Close analysis of students’ narratives about their learning experiences reflected many of the key themes from the literature. Power, the changing role of the tutor and the relationship between technology and flexibility all feature strongly in the accounts presented here. What was novel, however, was the important of controlling spaces for learning. These accounts showed how easily Charles was able to colonise new spaces for study (at home, online) using principles from his work in industry. Further, Charles presented himself as a work-oriented character being competitive 111

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in his approach to group tasks with ‘others’; we see him challenging the inclusive approach modelled by the lecturer. He is in no way apologetic about this; there is a confident honesty in this interview, and this leaves us feeling we know much more about how he perceives his world. Kwame, by contrast, felt powerless to even operate the online environment, let alone to bypass it. It was not until a friend supported him in learning how to use this resource that he began to feel able to contribute his voice to the ongoing module discussions. The irony here is that the online learning materials had been created to support the widening participation agenda; yet in these cases, it was the traditional ‘good’ student who thrived. Kwame, with his unconventional background, simply experienced this well-intended development as another set of barriers that delayed his participation in the course. It was only because he established a friendship and explained his needs to this friend that his engagement with the module altered. Despite government strategies encouraging widening participation and the utilisation of e-learning in creative ways – and despite extensive internal audit systems and paper trails – when students arrived (late) there were no practices in place to take account of them or their needs. Even the e-learning initiative, designed to help the student, became another barrier to be overcome. Despite the fact that Kwame has a very clear, articulated motivation for engaging with new technology – for himself, for his wider community, for his country as a whole – the university was unprepared to take account of his specific wants and needs. His identity is lost within the institution, the course and online- ‘In the new hyperreal world, an individual is de-historicized and de-centred …deprived of all materiality and referent … the individual no longer exists’ (Mraovic 2005; p. 11). Education cannot change societal inequality. Simply providing e-learning – no matter how well intentioned – is insufficient to address the problems that students are experiencing. Further studies are needed that can reveal more about how individuals experience and cope with their engagement in formal education. With such accounts, it will begin to be possible to develop new pedagogical approaches, and perhaps new policies, which respond to students’ needs in a better-informed way, and hearing the student voice clearly is a starting point. REFERENCES BeCTA – British Educational Communications and Technology Agency. (2001). The ‘digital divide’: A discussion paper. Internal review document. Retrieved from http://www.becta.org.uk/page_documents/ research/digitaldivide.pdf Beetham, H. & Sharpe, R. (Eds.). (2007). Rethinking pedagogy in the digital age: Designing and delivering e-learning. London and New York: Routledge. Burns, T., Holley, D., & Sinfield, S. (2006, May). The silent stakeholder: An exploration of the student as stakeholder in the UK Government e-learning strategy. 2005 paper presented to the International Corporate Social Responsibility conference, Idrine, Turkey. Carvin, A. (2000, November/December). More than just access fitting literacy and content into the digital divide equation. Educause Review. Retrieved from www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm00/ articles006/erm/0063.pdf Cresswell, J. W. (1998). Qualitative inquiry & research design choosing among five traditions. London: Sage. 112

NEGOTIATING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE Department for Education and Skills. (2005). Harnessing technology: Transforming learning and children’s services. HMSO. Ehrensal, K. N. (2001). Training capitalism’s foot soldiers. In E. Margolis (Ed.), The hidden curriculum in higher education. London and New York: Routledge. Hargittai, E. (2002). Second-Level digital divide: Differences in people’s online skills. First Monday, 7(4). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_4/hargittai/index.html Holley, D., (2008). Using biographic narrative to explore students’ experiences of online learning. In P. Frame & J. Burnett (Eds.), Using Auto/biography in learning and teaching (pp. 53–58). SEDA Paper 120. Holley, D., Sinfield, S., & Burns, T. (2006). Social Responsibility Journal, 2(1), ISSN 1747-1117. “It was horrid, very very horrid”: A student perspective on coming to an inner-city university in the UK (pp. 36–42). Holley, D. (2007). Using Biographic Narrative Interpretative Method (BNIM) to see your class through the student’s eyes. In P. Frame (Ed.), Forthcoming SEDA: Using biography in your teaching. Lillis, T. (2001). Student writing, access, regulation, desire. London: Routledge. Loader, B. (Ed.). (1998). Cyberspace divide: Equality, agency and policy in the information society. London and New York: Routledge. Margolis, E., Soldatenko, M., Acker, S., & Gair, M. (2001). Chapter 1 Peekaboo. In E. Margolis (Ed.), The hidden curriculum in higher education. London and New York: Routledge. Mraovic, B. (2005). The crises of representation in knowledge-based societies: Why is accounting a social service? Social Responsibility Journal, 1(1 & 2), 11. OECD and Centre for Educational Research and Innovation with the National centre on Adult Literacy (NCAL). (2000). Schooling for tomorrow: Learning to bridge the digital divide. Peters, M., & May, T. (2004). Universities, regional policy and the knowledge economy. Policy Futures in Education, 2(4), 263–277. Potter, A. (2006). Zones of silence: A framework beyond the digital divide. First Monday, 11(5). Retrieved from http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_5/potter/ Prinsloo, M. (2005). The new literacies as placed resources. Perspectives in Education, 23(4), 87–98. Selwyn, N. (2004). Reconsidering popular and political understandings of the digital divide. New Media and Society, 6(3), 341–362. Sinfield, S., Burns, T., & Holley, D. (2004). The disciplining of education: New languages of power and resistance. In J. Satterthwaite, A. Atkinson, & W. Martin (Eds.), Outsiders looking in or insiders looking out? Widening participation in a post 1992 university (pp. 137–152). Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books. Warschauer, M. (2002). Reconceptualizing the digital divide. First Monday, 7(7). Retrieved from http:// www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_7/warschauer/ West, L. (1996). Beyond fragments. London: Taylor & Francis. Wengraf, T. (2001). Qualitative research interviewing. London: Sage Publications.

Debbie Holley London Metropolitan University London, UK Martin Oliver London Knowledge Lab Institute of Higher Education, London, UK

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9. E-LEARNING, CONSTRUCTIVISM, AND THE DISAPPEARANCE OF DIFFERENCE Pedagogies of Productivity in the Modern Workplace

INTRODUCTION

One of the most noticeable trends in the workplace today is ‘e-learning’, which is frequently upheld as the panacea for adult education and training needs. Industry Canada (2005) makes the following observations: 1) The global training market for government and industry is valued at US$300 billion; and, 2) The World Bank’s education portfolio stands at US$8.5 billion for projects in 86 countries. Higher education institutions, governments, industry, and a global constituency of adult learners are demanding and anticipating online training experiences, “that have a positive impact on individual and organizational performance” (Industry Canada, 2005). The projections for e-learning are optimistic to say the least. Honey (2001) asserts that, “e-learning is the process of learning from information that is delivered electronically…It leaves us, the learners, to identify relevant information, convert it into something meaningful and apply it appropriately” (p. 201). This is a widely held sentiment in the more normative stances on e-learning in the workplace (Baldwin-Evans, 2004; Gasco, Llopis, & Gonzalez, 2004; Harun, 2002; Industry Canada, 2005; Newton, Hase, & Ellis, 2002; David Pollitt, 2005a; David Pollitt, 2005). Nevertheless, workplaces are transforming. Workers are finding themselves part of a global workforce comprising people who are socially, culturally and demographically very different from themselves; differences that can drastically influence workplace relationships and operations (Bierema, 2002; Industry Canada, 2002a). More and more, employees may differ in their views of what their jobs are and are not, what comprises productivity and efficiency, and what decision-making criteria are relevant. Some may have skills considered redundant yet others may be underemployed (Livingstone, 2001). How adults are educated and trained in such a context must also evolve to address an ever more complex profile of workers’ learning needs. Newton, Hase, and Ellis (2002) also caution: Thus, the widespread rhetoric of promises for more flexible access to training and the subsequent rapid adoption of these goals by governments…and industries have not been accompanied by an understanding of the factors that contribute to effective implementation of online learning…. (p. 157)

R. Land and S. Bayne (Eds.), Digital Difference: Perspectives on Online Learning, 115–130. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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Is e-learning the answer for workplace adult education and training needs? To look beyond the current enthusiasm and towards a more informed attentiveness about elearning is an important and necessary step. With this in mind, I take a more engaged look at e-learning for adult education and training in the workplace. I see the instrument of e-learning as well as its epistemologies and pedagogies as pertinent for such a discussion. The term ‘e-learning’ consists of two elements: ‘e’ and ‘learning’. The ‘e’ is garnering the majority of the debate so far, generating research and discussion that focus almost exclusively on hardware and software (Ally, 2004; Bednar, Cunningham, Duffy, & Perry, 1992; DeRouin, Fritzsche, & Salas, 2005; Duffy & Jonassen, 1992; Salas, Kosarzycki, Burke, Fiore, & Stone, 2002). Interestingly, the instrument of e-learning as it is currently deployed in the workplace is heavily based on a modernist and westernized standpoint. It epitomizes a homogenized, normalized and universalized solution. It speaks to economics and technology; cost savings; hardware and software. Little or no recognition is afforded the changes in work, a diverse workforce, and alternate registers of workers’ learning needs. Where epistemology and pedagogy are concerned, I deliberate constructivism and carry-out a focused critique of this set of psychological theories about knowledge and instruction as they are gradually more integrated through e-learning for adult education and training in the workplace. Constructivism generally presumes a westernized, rational, and unified subjectivity that is stable and self-determining and not dependent on language, race, discourse, gender or socio-cultural ‘situatedness’ for identity. Some of the chief criticisms levelled at constructivism are its implicit affirmation of modernist values and primary privileging of European and Western ways of learning and knowing. Without a better comprehension of the implications of the constructivist learning theories being deployed through e-learning, simply investing more time and money in hardware and/or software, will not likely yield the gains so faithfully anticipated from e-learning (Gasco, Llopis, & Gonzalez, 2004; Harun, 2002; Pollitt, 2005,2005a, 2005b). Recent studies being done to research adult learning styles as well as cognitive and educational psychology refer to the growing importance of social and cultural contexts for the adult learning needs of a global workforce (Felder & Brent, 2005; Illeris, 2003; Moore, 2005; Munro & Rice-Munro, 2004; Spencer, 2001). Facing an increasingly global constituency of adult learners in the workplace, the instruments, theories and practices of workers’ learning on which e-learning in the workplace is based, is primarily designed for the needs and expectations of a European and Westernized worker. Is this sufficient to answer the learning needs of a diverse constituency of adult learners of different ages, races, genders, sexualities, classes, and languages (Fenwick, 2001b; Korsgaard, 1997)? To answer this question about e-learning, I argue for a more socio-cultural stance on e-learning and further question whether constructivist notions of learning are ready for a world characterized by globalization, social, technological, and economic transformation, multiculturalism and the destabilization of ‘the universal’ with respect to learners, learning, pedagogy, multimodal literacy, and the workplace (Kress, 2003; Livingstone, 2001). I begin by proposing a theoretical framework. I present a 116

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general synopsis of Baudrillard’s views on the virtual and then concentrate on one of the central metaphors of his philosophy: the notion of ‘simulation’ (Baudrillard, 1988, 1994, 2003). Next, I apply this metaphor as a conceptual framework to discern the socio-cultural significance of the present trajectory of technological environments for learning and their effect on socio-cultural ‘difference’ in the changing workplace. VIRTUALITY AND SIMULATION

Baudrillard’s views on virtual reality have been characterized as both fatalistic and deterministic (Kellner, 2005). In terms of his deterministic point of view, Baudrillard does not distinguish between ‘the real’ and ‘the virtual’. He accepts no possibility that where one stops the other begins, or that there might be an express, territorial boundary between the two. For Baudrillard, the virtual by its very nature defies the reification of any such frontier. Inevitably, the virtual supplants the real: The fact remains, that this expression, ‘virtual reality’ is positively an oxymoron. We no longer have the good old philosophical sense of the term, where the virtual was what was destined to become the actual, or where a dialectic was established between these two notions. The virtual now is what takes the place of the real; it is the final solution of the real in so far as it both accomplishes the world in its definitive reality and marks its dissolution. (Baudrillard, 2003, p. 39) Regarding his fatalism when it comes to most matters virtual, Baudrillard adamantly points to what he perceives as society’s relentless obsession with new media and technology (Baudrillard, 2003; Kellner, 2004a). He proclaims: There is a positive fascination today with the virtual and all its technologies. If it genuinely is a mode of disappearance, this would be an - obscure but deliberate - choice on the part of the species itself: the decision to clone itself, lock, stock and barrel, in another universe; to disappear as the human race, properly speaking, in order to perpetuate itself in an artificial species that would have much more efficient, much more operational attributes. (Baudrillard, 2003, p. 41) Baudrillard’s views on virtual reality are founded on two premises. Firstly, the virtual is, in the absolute sense, incontrovertible. “Virtual reality,” explains Baudrillard, “the reality that might be said to be perfectly homogenized, digitized and ‘operationalized’, substitutes for the other because it is perfect, verifiable and non-contradictory” (2003, p. 39). Secondly, since the virtual transgresses boundaries and replaces the real, the virtual ultimately results in a complete absorption of the subject and subjectivity itself. Baudrillard expounds, “we are no longer dealing with value; we are merely dealing with a turning-into-data, a turning into calculations, a generalized computation in which reality-effects disappear” (2003, p. 40). Instead “it is the virtual which thinks us: no need now for a subject of thought, a subject of action; everything happens by technological mediation” (2003, p. 40). Central to Baudrillard’s philosophy and thinking on the virtual is this idea of ‘simulation’ (also known as ‘simulacrum’ with plural ‘simulacra’) which he affirms 117

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as the defining metaphor signifying the break of the postmodern era from the preceding modern era (Baudrillard, 1988, 1994, 2003). Baudrillard posits that whereas modern societies were organized around production, postmodern societies are organized around ‘simulation’. In a world once driven by production, labour provided the energy; in a world of simulation, labour is replaced with signs, codes, models and symbols. In the postmodern era, social reproduction, perpetuated by electronic and digital cultural media such as television, computers, cyberspace, information processing, communication, and the knowledge industries, ‘simulate’ reality (Kellner, 2004a, 2004b, 2005). The corollary to Baudrillard’s postmodern world of simulation is to be found in his notions of ‘implosion’ and ‘hyperreality’. Implosion for Baudrillard signifies the imminent dissolving of boundaries. Identifiers such as economics, politics, race and gender, that once made sense for a modern world based on production and propelled by labour, now disintegrate into one another. Kellner (2005) recapitulates: If modern societies, for classical social theory, were characterized by differentiation, for Baudrillard, postmodern societies are characterized by dedifferentiation, the ‘collapse’ of (the power of ) distinctions… In this situation, differences between individuals and groups implode in a rapidly mutating or changing dissolution of the social and the previous boundaries and structures upon which social theory had once focused. (Symbolic exchange and the postmodern break, par. 17). Hyperreality is the second corollary to Baudrillard’s postmodern vision. Here the media of cultural representation provide experiences more intense and ‘real’ than reality, whereby the symbols, codes, models and images confront individuals in an overwhelming and never-ending barrage of confusion. These are the symbols and images through which individuals come to identify themselves and each other. Kellner (2005) once again captures this moment nicely: In this postmodern world, individuals flee from the ‘desert of the real’ for the ecstasies of hyperreality and the new realm of computer, media, and technological experience. In this universe, subjectivities are fragmented and lost, and a new terrain of experience appears…. (Symbolic exchange and the postmodern break, par. 18) The central metaphor of simulation together with its corollaries of implosion and hyperreality constitute the nucleus of Baudrillard’s view on virtual reality and society in relation to the virtual. The subject in Baudrillard’s postmodern world has lost touch with the real and exists in a perpetual state of disintegration and dissolution. Such an individual can no longer distinguish between what is simulacrum and what is real. Under these conditions, sooner or later, the simulacrum is eventually accepted as the criterion for what is ‘real’, forgetting that the simulacrum never resembled the real to begin with. Here, the conceptual connection between Baudrillard’s fatalism as it evolves from his notion of ‘implosion’ and his determinism as it evolves from his notion of ‘hyperreality’ now become clear. There is no doubt that Baudrillard does have his critics and detractors (Kellner, 2004b, 2005). My goal here is not to defend whether Baudrillard’s philosophies are 118

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credible or not, whether they formulate a formal theory or are simply a collection of ruminations, nor their ultimate significance for the direction of current debates in modern, postmodern, critical, post-structural, and/or socio-cultural theory. Rather, I suggest that Baudrillard’s more dissonant stances on the virtual serve as a useful counterweight to the euphoria regarding e-learning’s promise in the workplace. They also propose a definite consonance between his conceptualizations of virtuality and simulacra and the growing impact of e-learning on subjectivity and ‘difference’ in the workplace. E-LEARNING, THE WORKPLACE, AND THE DISAPPEARANCE OF DIFFERENCE

Baudrillard intended a break from instantiations of a modern critique based on labour by establishing a postmodern critique based on simulation. Yet the infiltration of technology into the workplace, of which the expanding presence of e-learning is one example, now places Baudrillard’s thinking at a crossroads; an intersection where modernist ‘capital’ commingles with a postmodern ‘simulacra’. Even Baudrillard (1988) admits, to maintain power, capital can and does manipulate simulacrum: For, finally, it was capital which was the first to feed throughout its history on the destruction of every referential, of every human goal, which shattered every ideal distinction between true and false, good and evil, in order to establish a radical law of equivalence and exchange…when it wants to fight this catastrophic spiral by secreting one last glimmer of reality, on which to found one last glimmer of power, it only multiplies the signs and accelerates the play of simulation. (Strategy of the real, par. 8) I now apply this framework, comprising of simulacrum, implosion, hyperreality and virtual reality, to e-learning in the workplace. The juxtaposition of a socio-cultural framework based on Baudrillard’s postmodern metaphor of simulation with that of the premier institution of the modern capitalism, the workplace, may prove revelatory when it comes to understanding the workers’ experiences of e-learning. How does capital manipulate simulacra in the workplace and does e-learning represent an instrument of such a manipulation? Have the modern, capitalist mantras of ‘efficiency’, ‘effectiveness’ and ‘productivity’ completely appropriated e-learning along with its constructivist pedagogies and in the final analysis relegated (manipulated?) it into yet one more cost-cutting and resource re-distribution tactic? Is a radical online pedagogy based on ‘difference’ still even possible in the workplace if present circumstances prevail? I contend with these questions next. However, as mentioned earlier, I see the instrument of e-learning as well as its epistemologies and pedagogies as pertinent, and from this standpoint consider the hardware, software and constructivism of e-learning. What is important to note is that even though I engage with each element of this framework separately in relation to e-learning, all of these elements are at work in tandem through e-learning. Just as e-learning is at once hardware, software and pedagogy, virtual reality is simultaneously simulacrum, implosion and hyperreality. In each case, I elaborate on the implications for the worker, and workplace 119

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adult education and training are discussed as they are shaped and interpreted through this metaphorical framework. E-LEARNING AS SIMULACRUM

E-learning as simulacrum implies the disappearance of face-to-face adult education and training in the workplace and its supplanting by hardware. The premise is straightforward: greater variety and functionality in media, distribution, and access of information equates to better education and training. Put another way: all workplace adult education and training needs and solutions are in essence a problem that is hardware and media-centered. Seeing e-learning in these terms means looking exclusively at what channels may be made available for distribution, and ultimately, what technologies are necessary for access; in simple terms, the ‘hardware’. Terms like ‘computer-based instruction’ and ‘web-based training’ indicate the medium of access. For example, Harun (2002) discusses the Continuing Medical Education (CME) application as part of the Telehealth Project of the Ministry of Health of Malaysia. In his discussion, he outlines the approach to achieving the TeleHealth objectives as “simulating real-life simulations as encountered within the patient-healthcare provider environment as closely as possible….” (p. 306). The approach used in Harun’s example included four distinct media of education: just-in-time CME, personal CME, formal and modular distance education. These media were made available for healthcare professionals affiliated with Malaysia’s Ministry of Health. Harun (2002) goes on to describe the advantages of CME including using computer-based training to teach IT skills, as well as providing healthcare information available at the place and time of need; always current and tailored at the point of the need; delivered at low cost with no travel needed; and, with a personalized e-learning management system to support the professional in using the system (pp. 308–309). One of the world’s largest telecommunications companies is Telefonica. With almost 65 million clients in 41 countries (Gasco, Llopis, & Gonzalez, 2004) Telefonica represents a large multinational entity making a re-investment towards e-learning. They revised their training program and invested in a new HR information system. Telefonica identified and differentiated one type of training from another, “by form of communication between teachers and students” (p. 377), as either ‘asynchronous technologies’, ‘synchronous technologies’, ‘learning management tools’, ‘author’s tools’, and ‘learning management systems’. For Telefonica, it was not a question of choosing a type of technology but rather an issue of using different “systems or different techniques of support for its various types of formative actions.” (Gasco et al., 2004, p. 378) What is absent is that neither Harun (2002) nor Gasco et. al. (2004) present any investigation or analysis of the socio-cultural complexities facing professionals, much of which may not be media-centered: when to retrieve information and why; the usefulness of information retrieval with respect to the values and wishes of patients/clients; the impact of motivational subjectivities, socialization and 120

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interaction in the field between professionals and patients/clients; and the varying educational, cultural, and social experiences not only of the patients/clients, but of the professionals themselves. E-learning as simulacrum is about the disappearance of face-to-face adult education and training in the workplace. With an objective of ‘efficiency’, e-learning as simulacrum reveals a homogenizing perception that all adult education and training in the workplace is fundamentally about distribution and access to information; a challenge readily addressed through investment in more hardware and media. The focus is on efficient access and information systems; the efficient storage and retrieval of information. Decisions about workplace adult education and training in the workplace now become about development and/or investment in efficient hardware and media and not about the social and cultural learning needs of a socially and demographically diverse, multicultural, and multifaceted workforce. E-LEARNING AS IMPLOSION

E-learning as implosion is about the disappearance of difference between jobs through software and applications solutions. Again, the formula is simple: the greater the variety in software and applications, the better the adult education and training needs of jobs are met. Put another way: for every job, there are software and application-centered solutions for adult education and training. In most workplace contexts, there are many and varied jobs with divergent social and cultural needs and circumstances. There are dissimilarities both within and between user groups in the same workplace. In any organization, it is not uncommon to have many user communities each with contradictory needs both within and between communities. As such, the debate now turns to the suitability or appropriateness of the software as compared to its intended purposes (DeRouin et al., 2005). Suppose a ‘gap’ exists in a job training scenario. What if no standardized software solution is readily available to fill in the gap? Does the need cease? Does this further imply that adult education and training is not warranted? Conversely, what if standardized software is available for which a workplace training gap was never identified? Does a ‘new’ need now automatically exist? Would all user communities in the workplace have this need? Pollitt (2005), for example, elaborates on the experiences of the training organization at The Ford Motor Company providing an insight into the North American retailer. This group is responsible for the non-technical training needs of Ford’s dealer channel. These channels comprise approximately 225, 000 employees (p. 639). According to Pollitt (2005), the retailer education and training group, the training organization at The Ford Motor Company, conducted a training analysis to determine what was missing from their curriculum. Their analysis focused on identifying missing ‘soft’ skills training such as stress management, change management, diversity, and financial management. The next step was outsourcing their requirements to an outside vendor. The reason to outsource was an obvious choice for Ford’s education and training group. The delivery of the training was identified as 121

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not part of the core competency of the retailer education and training group and therefore Ford purchased the necessary skills in the form of online courses (p. 6.40). Over 100 online courses were made available to employees based on the curricular gap of this user group. E-learning as implosion means the disappearance of difference in jobs and their commingling through codes, symbols, and images of software and applications. It achieves a normalizing of jobs in the workplace. The objective here is the effectiveness of software and applications in accomplishing this normalizing. Only the jobs that are recognized by standardized software and applications are relevant since they are the ones accredited by the availability of a standardized software training solution. Discussions in the workplace now address the effectiveness of software in filling the gap between intentions and outcomes of applications and not the social and cultural learning needs of a socially and demographically diverse, multicultural, and multifaceted workforce. E-LEARNING AS HYPERREAL

E-learning as hyperreal pertains to the disappearance of difference in the epistemologies and pedagogies that result from the homogenizing effects of hardware and the normalizing and prescriptive trends of software and applications. An elearning that is hyperreal presents a pedagogy that is ‘more real than reality’. It is a pedagogy that has lost all referents in the non-virtual world. So when constructivism is incorporated into e-learning, what views does it carry about how adults learn and need to be trained and how are these views inscribed through the homogenizing effects of hardware and the normalizing trends of software? Does constructivism in the virtual resemble in any meaningful way the constructivism of the real? CONSTRUCTIVISM

The coming together of constructivism with e-learning is receiving increased scrutiny and study (Anderson, 2004; Bednar et al., 1992; Duffy & Jonassen, 1992; Gulati, 2004). Yet, despite this growing awareness of e-learning and constructivism, little has been written engaging the basic premises of constructivism and the impact on these basic premises of the transference of constructivism into the virtual. Is the transference of constructivism into the virtual so transparent? Just because e-learning applications utilize the terminology of constructivism, does that make it so? A more thorough explication of constructivism and constructivist thinking is necessary to illuminate this argument of e-learning as hyperreal. According to Fosnot (1996), “Constructivism…construes learning as an interpretive, recursive, building process …It is a psychological theory of learning that describes how structures and deeper conceptual understanding come about” (p. 30). From the constructivist point of view, the learner constructs their own knowledge. The facts that are comprehended by the learner are neither stable, nor self-evident, nor universal, as every personal experience is laden with many ways to conceive and perceive the world. In constructivism, knowledge does not posses any truth 122

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independent of or outside of the learner and the end goal is not to find the one correct fact, or answer. The objective is instead to welcome the various and manifold roles that learners play in their own interpretations of their inner and outer worlds (Gulati, 2004; Phillips, 1995). A FOCUSED CRITIQUE

There are six fundamental concerns to keep in mind about constructivism. Appreciating how these concerns are affected by the mixture of constructivism with e-learning is crucial to this discussion: 1. Constructivism is about ‘action’ and the constructing of learning through actions. A closer look at this notion of ‘action’ determines that there are essentially four categories or classifications of ‘distinct action’ that appear representative of the varied sites for ‘active’ learner involvement in their own learning. These actions are: self-reflection (Bruner, 1973; Fosnot, 1996, p. 13); problem solving (Fenwick, 2001a; Fenwick & Parsons, 1997; Ochoa & Robinson, 2005); collaboration (Hirtle, 1996; Jaramillo, 1996; Vermette & Foote, 2001); and, participation (Fenwick, 2001a; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Stein, 1998). These are the four basic ‘actions’ around which most constructivist thinking and theorizing revolves. 2. Constructivism ponders both epistemology and pedagogy and the entire gamut between the question of what knowledge is and how people learn. The breadth of scope that this entails is considerable. Constructivism accepts ‘context’ as a key part of learning and essential to the question of what knowledge is and how people learn. However, it is important to note that not all constructivist thinkers agree on just how much importance to place on ‘context’ in the process of learning. Some thinkers accept context as paramount and others consider it as peripheral (Baumgartner, 2003; Fenwick, 2001a; Fosnot, 1996; Null, 2004; Phillips, 1995). 3. Constructivism believes ‘experience’ is also an indispensable part of learning. Here too, there are debates as to how to distinguish ‘experience’ that results in learning from experiences that do not and even whether or not such a distinction is possible and what all this means for ‘experiential learning’ (Fenwick, 2001a). 4. Constructivism recognizes the role of ‘interpretation’ in knowledge and learning and encourages a multitude of opinion on distinct actions, epistemology, pedagogy, experience, and context. Constructivism epitomizes a vast body of views and stances each of which is open to further ‘interpretation’ (Bednar et al., 1992). 5. Constructivism’s learner is the idealized modern ‘masculine’ subject a westernized, rational, and unified individual that is stable and selfdetermining and not dependent on language, race, discourse, gender or 123

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socio-cultural ‘situatedness’ for identity. This is the ‘enlightened’ subject that is prone to self-reflection, has the freedom and authority to problem solve, the option and opportunity for collaboration, and access to a community of likeminded equals who are open to ‘his’ participation. This is the learner that is logocentric and can extract ‘himself ’ from context and experience and has complete free will, autonomy and privilege over context and experience to (re)interpret both. This is the learner who also has the power to preserve his interpretation over all others, has a sense of his own self-efficacy and the natural entitlement to actualize his true ‘self’ (Alfred, 2002; Birden, 2003; Flowers, 2003; Folely, 2004; Lee & Sheared, 2002; McLean, 2006). Constructivism is a complex and open system of thoughts, ideas, and intersecting visions. On the surface, such complexity and openness would seem to be an advantage when addressing issues like workplace adult education and training for a global, socially and demographically diverse, multicultural, and multifaceted workforce. However, constructivism is a heavily contested terrain, and given its westernized, logocentric origins, already carries its own ideological standpoint. SkillSoft, a global, constructivism-oriented1 e-learning provider, conducted a study with the employees of some of their clients. The study involved approximately 200 employees from 16 firms located across 14 different countries in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia (Baldwin-Evans, 2004). When asked about the benefits of e-learning, interviewees identified: 1) ‘IT and computer literacy’; and, 2) ‘Personal skills development’, especially, “management, leadership, coaching and mentoring, assertiveness, time management” (p. 271). With respect to motivations for taking training through e-learning, interviews had the following to say: 1) To be more competent and efficient in their current job; and, 2) Training was compulsory and mandated by regulatory bodies or management (p. 269). Still, the study contains conflicting messages. When questioned about barriers to e-learning, SkillSoft reported that interviewees often recounted: 1) Lack of time; 2) Fear of technology; 3) Suspicion about e-learning; 3) Self-motivation; 4) Lack of awareness about options and what was offered; and, 5) A lack of management support (p. 273). Regarding if they actually completed a course, “most of the courses being taken aren’t being completed all at once”, and that, “employees are dipping in and out of courses, skipping the sections they don’t need and only learning what they need to learn at that particular time…course completion is not something they consider to be significant” (p. 271). In terms of where the learning was taking place, the majority of interviewees stated ‘at their desk’. The reasons for what motivates employees to undertake e-learning and what they see as benefits for e-learning seem to reflect the discourse of productivity promoted by e-learning. At the same time, the reasons specified as barriers to e-learning and lack of commitment seems to indicate that productivity as relayed through e-learning is not necessarily resulting in a more ‘productive’ learning experience or workplace performance. Furthermore, Baldwin-Evans (2004) acknowledges that these responses diverge by firm and geographical location, though no specific data or details are provided in this regard, or in relation to differences in 124

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contextual, gendered, racial, social, cultural, and/or other needs of the interviewees (p. 273). As this study illustrates, the complexity and openness of constructivism present a dilemma for e-learning when accessed by a diverse workforce, especially given the homogenizing and normalizing tendencies of e-learning. Can distinct action, epistemology, pedagogy, context, experience, and interpretation in all their complexity and openness, be transferred to e-learning without losing their openness and complexity altogether? Or, does this complexity and openness of constructivism make it susceptible to the homogenizing and normalizing tendencies of e-learning resulting in an ‘ideological’ pedagogy that is anything but open and complex? A PEDAGOGY OF PRODUCTIVITY

As these questions imply, the likelihood of e-learning, with its homogenizing and normalizing tendencies, to authentically deliver constructivist pedagogy, with all its complexity, openness, interpretivism, and multi-dimensionality is quite uncertain. Instead, e-learning as hyperreal results in the disappearance of difference of ways people come to know and learn. It takes distinct action, epistemology, pedagogy, context, experience and interpretation and makes them disappear, and, in their place perpetrates a ‘universal’ paradigm of knowledge and instruction that more readily reflects the homogenizing effects of hardware and the normalizing effects of software. Such pedagogies and epistemologies bear little or no resemblance to the needs of a global, socially and demographically diverse, multicultural and multifaceted workforce. The final culmination of Baudrillard’s (1988) prognostication of how capital can manipulate simulacra now becomes evident. The underlying principle here is productivity. E-learning, presents a hyperreal constructivism that is instantiated at the intersection of the homogenized and normalized where distinct action, context, experience, and interpretation are all also homogenized and normalized. The workplace is a modern, capitalist institution based on modern, capitalist ideology. Constructivism, precisely because of its openness to interpretation and complexity, takes on these traits of modernism and capitalism when applied for e-learning in the workplace. What instead comes forth is a universalized pedagogy of productivity. Popkewitz (1996) presents a compelling argument in his analysis of the malleability of constructivism as it succumbs to such ideology: But the constructivist pedagogies are not neutral strategies to teach ‘problemsolving’; they politicize the body through connecting power/knowledge. There is a shift from the individual defined by having particular sets of competencies, skills, knowledge (such as those for cognitive mastery) to the individual who embodies pragmatic capabilities and dispositions. (p. 40) CONCLUSION: A RADICAL ONLINE PEDAGOGY OF DIFFERENCE

In this chapter, I think about the question of whether or not e-learning is ‘the’ answer for the workplace adult education and training needs of the future. I accept 125

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the instrument of e-learning as well as its epistemologies and pedagogies as pertinent for such an exploration. To question e-learning by focusing just on hardware, or only on software, or to isolate pedagogies from questions of hardware and software would accomplish a premature grasp of the effect of e-learning on socio-cultural ‘difference’ in the changing workplace. A socio-cultural critique of e-learning remains crucial as capital, technology and the social and cultural play out through a workforce that is progressively more global and heterogeneous. Despite the modern, capitalist idioms of ‘efficiency’, ‘effectiveness’ and ‘productivity’, e-learning on its current trajectory may not meet the promises so desperately desired by so many (Baldwin-Evans, 2004; DeRouin et al., 2005; Salas et al., 2002). Recall Honey’s (2001) declaration that, “e-learning is the process of learning from information that is delivered electronically…It leaves us, the learners, to identify relevant information, convert it into something meaningful and apply it appropriately” (p. 201). Yes, ‘information is delivered electronically’. But when Honey maintains ‘e-learning is the process of learning from information that is delivered electronically’ what is the ‘process of learning’ that happens when the information that is delivered is homogenized, normalized and universalized? Remember also Baudrillard’s views on virtual reality, that, “Virtual reality…might be said to be perfectly homogenized, digitized and ‘operationalized’” (2003, p. 39); and secondly, that the virtual ultimately results in a complete absorption of the subject and subjectivity. In this regard, e-learning does not ‘leave us, the learners, to identify relevant information…and apply it appropriately’. The rhetoric of ‘efficiency’, ‘effectiveness’ and ‘productivity’ brings about a fixation on the e-learning solution with a correspondent ‘disappearance’ of difference in modality of instruction, job requirement and methodology of instruction. A paradoxical scenario ensues. Improvements in ‘efficiency’, ‘effectiveness’, and ‘productivity’ are attributed to the e-learning. Conversely, constructivism, despite its complexity and openness, reifies the modern subject - a westernized, rational, and unified individual that is stable and self-determining and not dependent on language, race, discourse, gender or socio-cultural ‘situatedness’ for identity. The ‘constructivist’ employee, who is enlightened, autonomous, empowered, naturally capable, selfdetermining and has the cognitive capacity to accept responsibility and ‘constructive criticism’ for their actions and choices, is determined as obstacle and hindrance to any anticipated gains that are not completely realized or surpassed (BaldwinEvans, 2004; Gasco, Llopis, & Gonzalez, 2004; Harun, 2002; Industry Canada, 2005; Newton, Hase, & Ellis, 2002; David Pollitt, 2005a; David Pollitt, 2005). Nevertheless, I cannot take complete issue with Honey’s perspective, nor fully subscribe to Baudrillard’s fatalism and determinism either. There still exists the potential to ‘convert’ the information delivered ‘into something meaningful’. This movement towards homogenization, normalization, and universalization in e-learning in the workplace is not paralleled in the characteristics and composition of the global workforce that is going to come to typify the workplaces of the future. Europe and the West are experiencing a rapidly aging workforce and a coincident decline in birth rates bringing about a critical shortage of skills (Carliner, 2003; Industry Canada, 2002a; OECD, 2001). Immigration from developing countries will provide 126

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most of the labour in the near future for the industrialized world and they will bring with them an escalating variety of education, skills and talents not previously recognized or understood in Europe and the West (Industry Canada, 2002b). At the same time, transnational corporations primarily based in Europe and the West continue to increase their presence and investments overseas (OECD, 2001). Workplaces are becoming, and will continue to become, more socially and demographically diverse (Bierema, 2002). A vibrant workplace of immense pluralism and multiplicity will transpire. Constructivism’s autonomous and empowered individual will be joined by a socio-culturally ‘different’ Other. These ‘differences’ between workers may produce challenging views on action, learning, context and a divergence of interpretations especially regarding efficiency, effectiveness and productivity. All this will no doubt revitalize the debate of adult education and training in the workplace and the role of e-learning and demand a ‘reappearance’ of difference in modality of instruction, in job training requirement and in methodology of instruction. Moreover, other ways of knowing that are not cognitively or psychologically focused that are equally legitimate for workplace adult education and training, and were once made invisible with the unproblematic adoption of European and Western theories of learning on the international stage, will likely resurface (Alfred, 2002; Birden, 2003; Flowers, 2003; Folely, 2004; Lee & Sheared, 2002; McLean, 2006). Is a radical online pedagogy of difference still even possible? Reality, in this instance, is quite different from virtual reality. What will become vital from a socio-cultural position is the advent of workplace adult education and training paradigmatically theorized for a global and diverse workforce and how this will all play out next to the burgeoning occurrence of e-learning in the workplace. Much depends on the ingenuity of workplaces to transform the homogenization, normalization, and universalization that comprise the current paradigms of e-learning for workplace adult education and training; what’s more, to capture the affect, chaos, and idiosyncrasy of the workplace and inculcate it back into the design of hardware, software and online pedagogy; ultimately, to reintroduce the worker into the ‘process of learning’ as subjective, as different, as human Other, and not a ‘perfected simulation’. NOTES 1

SkillSoft’s website stipulates the following about their Instructional Design Philosophy: “The model draws heavily from adult learning principles that emphasize learner initiative, self-management and experiential learning” (http://www.skillsoft.com/about/instructional_design.asp, Retrieved March 19, 2007).

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REMTULLA Anderson, T. (2004). Toward a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and practice of online learning (pp. 3–31). Athabasca, AB: Athabasca University. Baldwin-Evans, K. (2004). Employees and e-learning: What do the end-users think? Industrial and Commercial Training, 36(7), 269–274. Baudrillard, J. (1988). Simulacra and simulations. In M. Poster (Ed.), Jean Baudrillard: Selected writings (pp. 166–184). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and simulation (S. F. Glaser, Trans.). Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. Baudrillard, J. (2003). Passwords (C. Turner, Trans.). New York: Verso. Baumgartner, L. M. (2003). Adult learning theory: The basics. In L. M. Baumgartner, M.-Y. Lee, S. Birden, & D. Flowers (Eds.), Adult learning theory: A primer (pp. 1–4). Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University. Bednar, A. K., Cunningham, D., Duffy, T. M., & Perry, D., J. (1992). Theory into practice: How do we link? In T. M. Duffy & D. H. Jonassen (Eds.), Constructivism and the technology of instruction: A conversation (pp. 17–34). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Bierema, L. L. (2002). The sociocultural contexts of learning in the workplace. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 96, 69–78. Birden, S. (2003). Critical and postmodern challenges for education. In L. M. Baumgartner, M.-Y. Lee, S. Birden, & D. Flowers (Eds.), Adult learning theory: A primer (pp. 29–34). Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University. Bruner, J. S. (1973). Beyond the information given: Studies in the psychology of knowing. In J. M. Anglin (Ed.), Education (pp. 401–425). New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc. Carliner, S. (2003). The economy-training op connection. T + D, 57(8), 65–66. DeRouin, R. E., Fritzsche, B. A., & Salas, E. (2005). E-learning in organizations. Journal of Management, 31(6), 920–940. Duffy, T. M., & Jonassen, D. H. (1992). Constructivism: New implications for instructional technology. In T. M. Duffy & D. H. Jonassen (Eds.), Constructivism and the technology of instruction: A conversation (pp. 1–16). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Felder, R. M., & Brent, R. (2005). Understanding student differences. Journal of Engineering Education, 94(1), 57–72. Fenwick, T. (2001a). Experiential learning: A theoretical critique explored through five perspectives. Information series no. 385. Retrieved March 4, 2006, from http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ ericdocs2/content_storage_01/0000000b/80/26/30/a1.pdf Fenwick, T. (2001b). Tides of change: New themes and questions in workplace learning. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 92, 3–17. Fenwick, T., & Parsons, J. (1997). A critical investigation of the problems with Problem-based Learning. Retrieved March 4, 2006, from http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2/content_storage_ 01/0000000b/80/26/d2/a2.pdf Flowers, D. (2003). An afrocentric view of adult learning theory. In L. M. Baumgartner, M.-Y. Lee, S. Birden, & D. Flowers (Eds.), Adult learning theory: A primer (pp. 1–4). Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University. Folely, G. (Ed.). (2004). Dimensions of adult learning: Adult education and training in a global era. Berkshire, UK: Open University Press. Fosnot, C. T. (1996). Constructivism: A psychological theory of learning. In C. T. Fosnot (Ed.), Constructivism: Theory, perspectives, and practice (pp. 8–33). New York: Teachers College Press. Gasco, J. L., Llopis, J., & Gonzalez, M. R. (2004). The use of information technology in training human resources: An e-learning case study. Journal of European Industrial Training, 28(5), 370–382. Gulati, S. (2004, April). Constructivism and emerging online learning pedagogy: A discussion for formal to acknowledge and promote the informal. Paper presented at the Universities Association for Continuing Education, London, UK. Harun, M. H. (2002). Integrating e-learning into the workplace. Internet and Higher Education, 4, 301–310. Hirtle, J. S. P. (1996). Social Constructivism. English Journal, 85(1), 91–92. 128

E-LEARNING, CONSTRUCTIVISM Honey, P. (2001). E-learning: A performance appraisal and some suggestions for improvement. The Learning Organization, 8(5), 200–202. Illeris, K. (2003). Workplace learning and learning theory. Journal of Workplace Learning, 15(4), 167–178. Industry Canada. (2002a). Achieving excellence: Investing in people, knowledge and opportunity. Retrieved June 25, 2004, from http://www.innovationstrategy.gc.ca/gol/innovation/site.nsf/ vDownload/Page_PDF/$file/achieving.pdf Industry Canada. (2002b). Knowledge matters: Skills and learning for Canadians. Retrieved March 2, 2004, from http://www11.sdc.gc.ca/sl-ca/doc/knowledge.pdf Industry Canada. (2005). The Canadian education and training industry. Commercial Education and Training. Retrieved September 8, 2005, from http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/incet-ecf.nsf/ en/ok01770e.html Jaramillo, J. A. (1996). Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and contributions to the development of constructivist curricula. Education, 117(1), 133–140. Kellner, D. (2004a). Boundaries and borderlines: Reflections on Jean Baudrillard and critical theory. Retrieved August 15, 2004, from http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/kellner.html. http:// www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/boundariesborderlines.pdf Kellner, D. (2004b). Reflections on modernity and postmodernity in McLuhan and Baudrillard. Retrieved August 14, 2004, from http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/. http://www.gseis. ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/modernitybaudrillardmcluhan.pdf Kellner, D. (2005). Jean Baudrillard. In Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (summer 2005 edition). Retrieved May 10, 2005, from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/baudrillard/#1 Korsgaard, O. (1997). The impact of globalization on adult education. In S. Walters (Ed.), Globalization, adult education and training: Impacts and issues (pp. 15–26). London, UK: Zed Books Ltd. Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. New York: Routledge. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lee, M.-Y., & Sheared, V. (2002). Socialization and immigrant students’ learning in adult education programs. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 96, 27–36. Livingstone, D. W. (2001). Expanding notions of work and learning: Profiles of latent power. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 92, 19–30. McLean, G. N. (2006). Rethinking adult learning in the workplace. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 8(3), 416–423. Moore, J. (2005). Recognising and questioning the epistemological basis of educational psychology practice. Educational Psychology in Practice, 21(2), 103–116. Munro, R. A., & Rice-Munro, E. J. (2004). Learning styles, teaching approaches, and technology. The Journal for Quality and Participation, 27(1), 26–32. Newton, D., Hase, S., & Ellis, A. (2002). Effective implementation of online learning: A case study of the Queensland mining industry. Journal of Workplace Learning, 14(4), 156–165. Null, J. W. (2004). Is Constructivism traditional? Historical and practical perspectives on a popular advocacy. The Educational Forum, 68(2), 180–188. Ochoa, T. A., & Robinson, J. M. (2005). Revisiting group consensus: Collaborative learning dynamics during problem-based learning activity in education. Teacher Education and Special Education, 28(1), 10–20. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. (2001). Education policy analysis 2001 Competencies for the knowledge economy. Education. Retrieved August 21, 2004, from http://www. oecd.org/dataoecd/42/25/1842070.pdf Phillips, D. C. (1995). The good, the bad, and the ugly: The many faces of constructivism. Educational Researcher, 24(7), 5–12. Pollitt, D. (2005a). E-learning connects cable & wireless with big cost savings. Human Resource Management International Digest, 13(1), 19–20. Pollitt, D. (2005). E-learning delivers management skills to Ford’s North American dealers. Training & Management Development Methods, 19, 6.39–36.42. 129

REMTULLA Pollitt, D. (2005b). ScottishPower goes DIY with e-learning. Training & Management Development Methods, 19, 6.33–36.37. Popkewitz, T. S. (1996). Rethinking decentralization and state/civil society distinctions: The state as a problematic of governing. Journal of Education Policy, 11(1), 27–51. Salas, E., Kosarzycki, M. P., Burke, C. S., Fiore, S. M., & Stone, D. L. (2002). Emerging themes in distance learning research and practice: Some food for thought. International Journal of Management Reviews, 4(2), 135–153. Spencer, B. (2001). Changing questions of workplace learning researchers. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 92, 31–40. Stein, D. (1998). Situated learning in adult education. Retrieved March 4, 2006, from http://www.eric. ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2/content_storage_01/0000000b/80/2a/2b/04.pdf Vermette, P., & Foote, C. (2001). Constructivist philosophy and cooperative learning practice: Toward integration and reconciliation in secondary classrooms. American Secondary Education, 30(1), 26–37.

Karim A. Remtulla University of Toronto Canada

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10. BEYOND DIFFERENCE Reconfiguring Education for the User-Led Age1

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, various observers have pointed to the shifting paradigms of cultural and societal participation and economic production in developed nations. These changes are facilitated (although, importantly, not solely driven) by the emergence of new, participatory technologies of information access, knowledge exchange, and content production, many of which are associated with Internet and new media technologies. Such technologies are now frequently described as social software, social media, or Web2.0, but their impact is no longer confined to cyberspace as an environment that is somehow different and separate from ‘real life’: user-led content and knowledge production is increasingly impacting on media, economy, law, social practices, and democracy itself. Education is a further key area for such changes, as educators stand to lose their privileged position as expert practitioners and theorists in a user-led environment. In many domains, the collaboratively compiled knowledge of users is now (or is at least believed to be) virtually on par with that of expert scholars (as indicated for example in Nature’s comparison of scientific information in Encylopaedia Britannica and the Wikipedia; see Giles 2005); similarly, peer-based advice and instruction as accessible through user-led environments is beginning to encroach on and replace formal training and education. In spite of their very different interests, groups such as the users sharing DIY project advice at Instructables.com (Bruns 2008: 157–8), the kitesurfers collaboratively designing improvements to their sporting equipment (von Hippel 2005), and the Pro-Am astronomers acting as an important support base for mainstream astronomy (Leadbeater and Miller 2004) each engage in highly effective informal learning and knowledge creation practices, for example. At the same time, however, there is a growing need for education to address and problematise the process and practice of user-led content creation itself, in order to help participants develop a more informed, self-reflexive, and critical perspective on their own practices as information seekers, users, and providers, and to enable a wider range of participants to engage successfully in user-led environments. This educational imperative demands a more thorough and systematic understanding of these user-led environments. In spite of the different objectives and objects of user-led activities (from software design through knowledge management to creative collaboration), it is nonetheless possible to discern an increasingly sophisticated set of common principles which govern many such environments. R. Land and S. Bayne (Eds.), Digital Difference: Perspectives on Online Learning, 133–144. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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Such principles provide both the point of departure for educational critiques of userled content creation, and a framework for future reconfigurations of educational practices themselves as they pursue a more authentic, realistic approach to enabling learners to develop the capacities which they will require as participants in userled environments. (Additionally, it is crucial also to recognise that educators and learners can no longer afford to ignore these participatory, user-led spaces: a software designer without the skills to participate in open source projects, a scholar without the capacity to contribute to a joint research management wiki, or a creative practitioner without the ability to engage in a collaborative creative online community are increasingly at risk of being left out of the core professional and intellectual networks in their disciplines.) In the process of investigating and describing the underlying principles of such environments, however, it also becomes increasingly obvious that it is no longer sufficient to describe participants in these collaborative endeavours simply as ‘users’; instead, they act in a hybrid role of user as well as producer, or for short, as produsers (Bruns 2008). BEYOND ‘USERS’

International marketing and consumer relations watchdog Trendwatching.com have identified a new ‘Generation C’ (for ‘content’, in the first place) as successor to X and Y (2005). While previous generational groupings had also been decried as the ‘Generation We’ – interested mainly in their own advance and pleasure in work and life, with scant regard for the common good or an equitable distribution of resources and knowledge –, Generation C is said to be distinctly different: most notably, it is the generation responsible for the development and popular success of open source software, legal and illegal music filesharing, creative content sites such as YouTube or Flickr, citizen journalism, social networks like MySpace and Facebook, and the massively multi-user knowledge management exercise, Wikipedia, among others. Indeed, one consequence of such efforts (as well as a necessary prerequisite for their sustainability) is that this Generation C exhibits a strong preference for the establishment of a knowledge commons over a proprietary hoarding of information, and (though not inherently anti-commercial) tends to support those corporations who work with users and are seen to be strong contributors to the common good rather than profiteering from it. (Notably, some such corporations and other organisations, from open source companies to the Wikimedia Foundation, have now emerged from Generation C’s favourite environments.) Any description of a new ‘generation’ of participants in global knowledge creation is necessarily overgeneralised and flawed, of course; certainly, Generation C should not be understood as composed of participants of uniform age and socioeconomic background. It is instead a loose but significant grouping of participants who (on average, and perhaps implicitly rather than explicitly) share a set of common aims and practices; Generation C is defined by shared attitudes and aptitudes rather than necessarily by a common demographic profile. Yet even correcting for such caveats and the inevitable boosterism found in semi-promotional sites such as Trendwatching.com, it is nonetheless evident that there does exist a broad and 134

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influential stream of information and knowledge users who no longer follow the existing rule books that had been developed during the mass media age with its one-to-many flows of information. Time Magazine’s recognition of this coalition of active content creators and collaborators as ‘Person of the Year 2006’ (under the collective pronoun ‘you’, no less, suggesting an almost universal spread of this phenomenon throughout its readership; see Grossman, 2006) adds further support for a description of this movement as a significant new social force; it is particularly poignant that this recognition comes from a flagship publication of one of the largest ‘traditional’ mass media empires of the present day, TimeWarner. Generation C’s activities span a wide variety of social, economic, and intellectual domains. While perhaps most notable at a few key hotspots (such as open source, Wikipedia, the blogosphere, Facebook and YouTube) which are now well-recognised, the fundamental social, technological, legal, and organisational principles of such environments are in the process of being appropriated and mainstreamed across wide swathes of the World Wide Web under the moniker of ‘Web2.0’, and have found application (if not yet universal acceptance) in the context of virtually any form of human intellectual and creative endeavour accessible through the Web. Concomitantly, the permissive intellectual property frameworks which form an inalienable basis of such user-led, collaborative knowledge work have spread alongside the technological frameworks – open source or creative commons licences no longer find their application mainly in software development or creative work, but now govern information and knowledge as diverse as government records, satellite photographs, academic research, and legal contract forms. Fundamental to the work of most such user-led content creation communities is a reconfiguration of traditional production/consumption models. Even recent models of knowledge production in late capitalism have maintained a relative disconnect between producers and consumers – in such models consumers were enabled to act as ‘citizen-consumers’ (Hartley 2004; CCi 2006) or expert ‘prosumers’ (Toffler 1971), whose preferences and feedback would inform the development of new consumption commodities, but they were still largely unable to participate directly in the production process. This applied even where production was concerned with the creation of essentially informational, intangible, digital goods, which unlike physical goods required no special production machinery or elaborate distribution systems. (Systems which are largely responsible for the producer/distributor/ consumer trichotomy of the industrial and mass media age.) The relative impotence of letters to the editor in traditional newspapers, or even of discussion fora on newspaper Websites, when compared to the direct involvement of readers as reporters and commentators in fully-fledged citizen journalism projects, underlines this point, as does a comparison of the closed editorial processes of Britannica and the open editing of Wikipedia or an investigation of the level of involvement in directing the future development of software packages which is afforded users of commercial as compared to open source software. In each of these new alternatives to traditional content creation models, participants are no longer readers, audiences, users, or mere consumers – they have the ability to become active producers of content, and are often able to do so on an 135

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ad hoc, on-the-fly basis. They occupy a hybrid, user-and-producer position which can be described usefully as that of a produser (see Bruns 2006, 2007, 2008). The difference between user and produser models should not be underestimated – rather than representing only a quantitative increase in participation, it is a qualitative shift from mere interactive engagement with content and information, which does not in itself produce new or alter existing content to a significant extent, to what Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, has called ‘intercreativity’ (1999). The process of produsage necessarily alters and extends available content, usually leaving a permanent trace of the changes made. (This is true even when produsers are unaware that they are acting as produsers rather than mere users – examples for such unconscious produsage models include Last.fm, where a myriad of personalised online ‘radio stations’ are prodused from a correlation and comparison of users’ listening patterns on their iPods and PC media players, Amazon, where through the course of their browsing users produse new connections between related items which are then available to other visitors to the site, and even Google, where through the PageRank system the links made by content providers on the Web produse a new order of search results.) Whatever specific environment these produsers operate in, then, their produsage can be seen to exhibit four fundamental aspects: – Open Participation, Communal Evaluation – produsage proceeds from the assumption that, if sufficiently large and varied, an inclusive community, managing its own processes, can contribute more than a closed team of producers, however qualified it may be. – Fluid Heterarchy, Ad Hoc Meritocracy – produsers participate as is appropriate to their personal skills, interests, and knowledges; leadership roles change as the produsage project proceeds. – Unfinished Artefacts, Continuing Process – content artefacts in produsage projects are continually under development, and therefore always unfinished; their development follows evolutionary, iterative, palimpsestic paths. – Common Property, Individual Rewards – to enable the collaborative produsage process, all contributors must necessarily permit community use, adaptation, and further development of their intellectual property (at least on a non-commercial basis); their reward for participation is the status capital they gain through participating. Mutatis mutandis, these observations apply for the collaborative software development in open source as well as for the distributed knowledge management of the Wikipedia; they describe the participatory multi-threaded storytelling of massively multi-user online roleplaying games (MMPORGs) as well as the intercreative sharing of creative work in Flickr, ccMixter, and YouTube. (As the latter examples indicate, some such spaces can also be used simply for more traditional forms of content publication and distribution, of course; this does not undermine the produsage model, however, but rather points simply to the flexibility of some produsage spaces. Indeed, the ability to work with these spaces along traditional 136

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production models is likely to be what initially attracts users uninitiated into produsage, yet the growing realisation of what is possible beyond such older models may be what keeps them involved.) Produsage, then, can be seen as the core user-led activity of Generation C. Originating in good part from open source and similar environments, it also has historical connections to pre-commercial models of scientific research and other ideals of open intellectual engagement in academia as well as the civil society beyond. Produsage fundamentally departs from the standard production models of traditional, mainstream media enterprises, which are built on a real or artificially imposed scarcity both of production materials and resources and of distribution systems and spaces: where, for example, the costs of physically compiling, printing, and distributing a major encyclopaedia did require the strict editorial selection of topics and an update frequency measured in years, a produser-driven, Web-based encyclopaedia project can both cover even esoteric or (in traditional eyes) fanciful topics in great detail, and provide instantaneously available updates as soon as new information comes to hand. (As a case in point, Wikipedia’s main advantage over Britannica is that it is faster and broader in its coverage, and that neither of these attributes are necessarily inversely related to the quality of its content.) The effects of this shift are multiple: they include an explosion in the amount, breadth, and depth of available content on a wide variety of topics, from a growing number of sources; an increase in the number of perspectives available on any one topic, and subsequently also growing discussion, debate, and (in a number of cases) deliberation of and between these divergent views; an acceleration of (continuing) updates to the available information and knowledge on virtually any field of human endeavour; and the emergence of a wide variety of opportunities for users to become active produsers of such informational resources, by making their own contribution to these ongoing endeavours. These developments can be seen as a threat as much as they represent an opportunity – the opportunity for participants to have a more active voice in fields which are of interest and importance to them is balanced by the threat of losing direction in an ever-increasing maelstrom of thoughts, opinions, information, and knowledge available from a widening range of (more or less reputable) sources. Information overload combines with a growing uncertainty about the credentials and trustworthiness of individual contributors – but it should also be noted that the very communities of produsers which may be seen as generating such threats are also increasingly deploying ever more sophisticated means of safely and reliably identifying quality contributions and contributors. TOWARDS USER-LED EDUCATION: THE C5C

Assuming (on the basis of good and growing evidence; see also Benkler 2006; Jenkins 2006; Lessig 2004) that Generation C and its produsage-based forms of intellectual engagement constitute a significant paradigm shift in the late capitalist period, it is incumbent for tertiary education to engage with and address this shift. This must take place on two distinct but related levels: on the one hand, it is important that graduates leave university equipped for successful participation in produsage 137

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environments – requiring if not an entirely different, then at least a significantly altered set of literacies and capacities which enables them to avoid the threats while grasping the opportunities. On the other hand, and in order to develop such capacities in an organic fashion, it is necessary that universities themselves explore ways to model the processes of produsage in their learning and teaching environments (and beyond). Traditional and rigid teacher/learner, staff/student, university/client dichotomies are counterproductive in the co-creative, collaborative process of produsage, which – as noted above – thrives on a fluid and heterarchical (rather than hierarchical) organisation of participants. Indeed, to the extent that a teacher/learner dichotomy still exists, it can be seen as a further example of the outdated scarcity-based production model described above: the dichotomy stems from a time when the information and knowledge available from teachers did indeed constitute a scarce resource, but (due in no small part to the emergence of the Internet as a major information source) that time has passed. (On this point also see Todd Richmond’s work on viral university education, reported in Rheingold 2006.) It is beyond the scope of this article to sketch out this pedagogy in any detail – but it is possible here to outline the five pillars upon which it is founded (and which in turn are based on the fundamental characteristics of the new processes of produsage which are common to Generation C). What has already become obvious from the discussion above is that for effective and successful participation in produsage processes, Generation C graduates will require a set of capacities which, while not entirely new, nonetheless sets a number of new priorities. These graduate capacities can be summarised as collaborative, creative, critical, combinatory, and communicative capacities – or in short, as C5C (also see Cobcroft et al., 2006). – Creative: not to be misunderstood as pertaining purely to artistic creation in a narrow sense, creative capacities are crucial to Generation C. Produsage itself is fundamentally concerned with content (art, information, knowledge) creation; while the development of creative capacities in this broad sense has of course been an aim of education virtually throughout the ages, what is important for our present context is a focus especially on the development of creative capacities which can be exercised successfully in the collaborative environments of produsage (as exemplified inter alia in the technological environments gathered under the Web2.0 banner). Crucial to this form of creative capacities, then, is particularly the ability to act as collaborative co-creator in flexible roles, or in short, as one amongst a number of creative produsers rather than as a self-sufficient creative producer. To the extent that the reasons for this are not yet already selfevident to contemporary learners, it may also be necessary to provide the motivations for engaging as active content creators in produsage environments. Such motivations are both economic (given the significant shifts brought about by the rise of produsage, the ability to participate in such environments is increasingly sought after by employers and governments), social (open collaborative content development in areas such as knowledge management, journalism, software development, research, and creative 138

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work can create high-quality but freely accessible resources which are of benefit to overall society), and individual (in the online environment, nonparticipation increasingly equates to invisibility, while sustained and constructive participation enables the accumulation of positive social capital and thus generates significant career opportunities). – Collaborative: as noted above, collaborative engagement under variable, fluid, and heterarchical rather than hierarchical organisational structures and in shifting roles is fundamental to produsage processes. As societal as well as workplace processes move towards a greater embrace of produsage principles, collaborative capacities therefore become all the more crucial. In this context, it is as important to be able to collaborative effectively as it is to know when, where, and with whom to choose to collaborate, and under what circumstances not to do so. Further, collaborative capacities also require an advanced understanding of the consequences of collaboration – that is, of questions pertaining to intellectual property and other legal rights in a collaborative environment. (Additionally, of course, it is important also to develop the specific skills to collaborate within the major technological environments of produsage – such as blogs, wikis, or immersive 3D environments –, but such skills are subject to rapid change as the technologies themselves continue to change. It is by now well recognised that rather than to focus on building expert skills in using specific systems, teachers should ensure that students develop a life-long personal interest in updating their technological skills.) – Critical: as a corollary to collaborative capacities, critical capacities are exercised in establishing the appropriate context for engagement in produsage processes. This requires a critical stance both towards potential collaborators and their work (in order to identify the most beneficial of all possible collaborations) and towards one’s own creative and collaborative abilities and existing work portfolio (to gauge whether a potential collaboration would constitute a good fit of styles, abilities, and experience). Additionally, a critical eye is also needed in identifying the appropriate venues and conditions for effective collaboration – and further, during the collaborative process itself, critical capacities are indispensable in the giving and receiving of constructive feedback on the ongoing collaborative process and the artefacts it produces. Finally, and just as importantly, critical capacities are also crucial to an engagement with the outcomes of produsage processes at times when one acts mainly as user rather than active contributor – only well-developed critical capacities enable users to discern whether a particular piece of information is to be trusted, to look beyond the surface to examine the sources for that information and the process of its produsage (such as, for example, the edit history of a Wikipedia entry), and to compare the relative merit of multiple perspectives on the same issue as they may be expressed in one or a number of related produsage artefacts. Such capacities were already highly important during the mass 139

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media age, but were frequently underexercised as a result of a sometimes misplaced trust in the quality of established media brands. However, the recent proliferation of media alternatives, to which produsage processes have contributed significantly, has further increased the central importance of a healthily critical stance towards all available information, whatever the source. – Combinatory: produsage is fundamentally based on an approach which deconstructs larger overall tasks into a more granular set of distributed problems, and therefore in the first place generates a series of individual, incomplete artefacts which require further assembly before becoming usable and useful as a whole. As a result, information and knowledge as generated through produsage processes is itself distributed and inherently incomplete. To effectively participate in and benefit from the knowledge space generated by the collective intelligence (Lévy 1997) of produsage communities, therefore, those engaging in and with produsage and its artefacts require enhanced capacities to combine, disassemble, and recombine these specific artefacts in their pursuit of personal understanding. Beyond the pursuit of knowledge itself, combinatory capacities are also required for active participation in produsage processes: produsage in many contexts also proceeds from the reappropriation, reuse, and remixing of existing content in new combinations which themselves create new meaning and new understandings of knowledge. Learners must therefore develop the capacities to identify and harness individual chunks of existing information which may be constructively employed in this fashion, as well as the capacities to undertake such recombination and redistribution of information and knowledge through the shared collaborative environments of produsage projects. – Communicative: inasmuch as communication underpins every social and communal human endeavour, it is necessarily already implicitly embedded in the other capacities outlined here. However, in addition to overall, generic communicative capacities it is particularly important to develop an explicit focus on effective and successful communication between participants within the collaborative environments of produsage – this addresses for example the communication of ideas generated in exercising one’s own critical capacities (that is, an ability to be constructively critical), as well as communication between participants about collaborative, creative, and combinatory processes (what could be described in other words as metacollaboration). Such communicative capacities are not necessarily a natural outcome of general communicative development, but may need to be fostered specifically in order to enable graduates to act effectively and successfully as members of Generation C. Once again, while this might also require the development of a more in-depth understanding of communicative processes within specific produsage environments, it is important not to focus all too specifically on current communications technologies employed by produsage communities, as these are subject to change. 140

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TOWARDS GENERATION C EDUCATION?

As noted at the outset, the idea of ‘Generation C’ is necessarily a blunt tool – an overgeneralisation which (like other ‘generation’ constructs previously) nonetheless contains and condenses some very important observations about the gradual paradigm shift from production to produsage. The fundamental characteristics of produsage as they have been described here, at any rate, are likely to remain intact for the foreseeable future; they are related not to short-term changes in tools and technologies but to a long-term shift towards networked organisational and communicational structures which is by now very well recognised as heralding the emergence of a networked information economy (Benkler 2006), a network society (Castells 2000), or a convergence culture (Jenkins 2006). Inevitably the extent and speed of this paradigm shift must remain unknown at this point, but early indications certainly point to fundamental changes in the information, knowledge, and creative industries, which (as is by now well established – see for example Howkins 2001) themselves account for very significant components of the economy in most developed nations. But the implications here are not simply economic in nature, as the concept of the knowledge industries inextricably weaves together economic development and knowledge advances: Generation C and its produsers are just as crucial in opening up new environments for the development of ideas as they are in creating the potential for new economic activity (also cf. Benkler 2005, whose concept of commons-based peer production is closely related to, but remains more grounded in conventional production processes than what we have described here as produsage). Beyond ‘content’, then, the rise of Generation C also points to a number of other consequences, as Trendwatching.com notes: ‘Creativity, Casual Collapse, Control, and Celebrity’ (2005, no page). Of these, creativity and control are perhaps the most obvious in our present context: they confirm the central role of creativity (understood broadly) to the produsage process, and conversely the need to strike a balance between collaboration in produsage projects on the one hand, and the need to control one’s own rights to intellectual property on the other hand. These observations also further highlight the importance of critically controlling the who, where, when, and how of one’s involvement in collaborative processes. By comparison, celebrity may be less relevant to the present discussion, other than to note again that the social capital stemming from recognition for one’s contributions to the produsage process (at least amongst peers, and perhaps also on a wider stage) can be a significant motivation for participation in produsage, and must be identified as such – indeed, peer and public (rather than merely teacher) recognition for constructive contributions to collaborative processes can also be usefully employed in education as an important motivating factor. It is the idea of ‘casual collapse’, however, that must be of greatest concern for the educational context. A casual collapse of established hierarchies and institutions is the typical outcome of a paradigm shift – and produsage- and Generation C-driven casual collapses can already be observed in Encyclopaedia Britannia’s rear-guard battle with Wikipedia, the news industry’s struggle with citizen journalism, and the software industry’s gradual transition towards open source-based business models. 141

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Journalism, for example, for the most part still refuses to come to terms with a changed mediasphere in which information is already available to audiences, and where the role of the journalist shifts from that of a gatekeeper of information to one of gatewatcher (Bruns 2005), guiding users through the available wealth of information to the most important and insightful sources. Educational systems, too, are under increasing threat from a Generation C whose produsage activities can no longer be contained through the artificial scarcity imposed by traditional production and accreditation processes. On the one hand, access to scholarly sources and academic debate is now more than ever before available at the touch of a button, from outside the system; on the other hand, participants on the outside of traditional institutions (some of them academics frustrated by the internal machinations of the ivory towers and their commercial partners) are increasingly seen to collaborate to produse and publish quality information and knowledge resources of their own. Traditional teacher/learner apprenticeship-style education may no longer have a future: tertiary education’s competitive advantages now lie squarely in its ability to provide a strong combination of systematic overviews and deep knowledge of specific disciplines, and in its ability to provide a targeted course of study aimed at developing those C5C capacities which are crucial to successful participation in produsage environments. Similar to the situation in journalism, educators must learn to become guides through a wealth of always already available information, rather than hanging on in any way to long-outdated notions of the teacher as controlling what information and knowledge students do or do not encounter. Indeed, tertiary education overall must work to understand this shift in order to avoid entering into a process of casual collapse; it must engage in produsage itself rather than subscribing to ever more outdated models of knowledge production. Happily (encouraged by drives towards constructionist learning and authentic assessment), some such changes have been in train for some time (and to some extent predate and prefigure the rise of produsage as a major trend), but a complete adoption of this mindset throughout tertiary institutions has yet to be achieved. Finally, however, an even larger challenge may yet lie ahead for educational institutions. As the experience in other sectors of the knowledge economy has shown, produsers are rarely content with working as contributors of content, information, and knowledge into conventionally structured knowledge industries; rather, in areas as diverse as software development, journalism, encyclopaedic publishing, and creative practice (and well beyond, though as yet less visibly so) their collaborative efforts have led to the development of structures which are parallel to and in competition with the traditional leaders of these industry sectors. It is likely that in the education sector, too, growing trends towards produsage will lead to experimentation with the establishment of entirely produsage-based educational institutions. While for now, absent official accreditation, such projects may still appear esoteric and fanciful, the establishment of the ‘Wikiversity’ as an official project of the Wikimedia Foundation (also in association with the Wikibooks project for the collaborative authoring of textbooks) could be seen as a portent of future developments (Wikiversity 2007). 142

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Responding to such developments, educational institutions may be as ill-advised to rely on their official status and brand recognition as Encyclopaedia Britannica was in its dismissal of Wikipedia as a temporary fad unable to compete with its centuries-old brand. Further, experience from other sectors appears to indicate that a defensive campaign aimed at undermining the new model’s credibility is likely to backfire; instead, institutions would be better advised to develop proactive strategies aimed at embracing the creative potential inherent in produser communities. While it is far too early to describe in detail the shape that such an embrace could take, it is possible to imagine a more permeable, flexible academic environment which builds the capacities of learners entering produsage communities, and provides authentication and accreditation for the content and participants emerging from produsage environments. While the suggestion here cannot be to leave behind traditional scholarly and educational practices in academia altogether, in pursuit of new models which have not yet been proven to provide a qualitative improvement of outputs for the academic system, there is strong potential for a combination of traditional and new approaches which would place less emphasis on the in-house development of skills, capacities, and knowledges, or the in-house production of new research outcomes (kept increasingly out of public circulation as institutions pursue opportunities to commercialise their intellectual property), and which would instead shift its attention more to providing the service of quality assurance for both internal and external content creation activities, in the process profiting from the growth of publicly available knowledge and communally held intellectual property which such activities generate. That shift from production to service, in fact, is entirely consistent with similar transitions occurring in many other industry sectors affected by the rise of produsage. It is a change from which academia might gain a great deal of new insights. NOTES 1

A different version of this article was published in my book Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage (New York: Peter Lang, 2008).

REFERENCES Berners-Lee, T. (1999). Weaving the Web. London: Orion Business Books. Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Bruns, A. (2005). Gatewatching: Collaborative online news production. New York: Peter Lang. Bruns, A. (2006). Towards produsage: Futures for user-led content production. In F. Sudweeks, H. Hrachovec, & C. Ess (Eds.), Proceedings: Cultural attitudes towards communication and technology 2006 (pp. 275–284). Perth: Murdoch University. Bruns, A. (2007, September 15–18). The future is user-led: The path towards widespread produsage. Paper accepted for PerthDAC conference, Perth, Western Australia. Retrieved March 6, 2007, from http://snurb.info/files/The%20Future%20Is%20User-Led%20(PerthDAC%202007).pdf Bruns, A. (2008). Blogs, Wikipedia, second life, and beyond: From production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang. Castells, M. (2000). The rise of the network society (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.

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BRUNS CCi. (2006). The uses of multimedia: Citizen consumers, creative participation and innovation in Australian digital content. Retrieved January 15, 2007, from http://www.cci.edu.au/hartley/index.php Cobcroft, R., Towers, S., Smith, J., & Bruns, A. (2006). Mobile learning in review: Opportunities and challenges for learners, teachers, and institutions. In Proceedings of the online learning and teaching conference 2006. Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology. Retrieved November 25, 2006, from https://olt.qut.edu.au/udf/OLT2006/gen/static/papers/ Cobcroft_OLT2006_paper.pdf Giles, J. (2006, March 28). Internet encyclopaedias go head to head. Nature. Retrieved January 14, 2007, from http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html Grossman, L. (2006, December 13). Time’s person of the year: You. Time Magazine. Retrieved January 25, 2007, from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html?aid=434 Hartley, J. (2004). The “value chain of meaning” and the new economy. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 7(1), 129–141. Howkins, J. (2001). The creative economy: How people make money from ideas. London: Allen Lane. Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York: NYU Press. Leadbeater, C., & Miller, P. (2004). The Pro-Am revolution: How enthusiasts are changing our economy and society. London: Demos. Retrieved January 25, 2007, from http://www.demos.co.uk/ publications/proame-conomy/ Lessig, L. (2004). Free culture: The nature and future of creativity. New York: Penguin. Lévy, P. (1997). Collective intelligence: Mankind’s emerging world in cyberspace (R. Bononno, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Perseus. Rheingold, H. (2006, October 25). Todd Richmond on open educational resources. DIY Media Weblog. Retrieved March 6, 2007, from http://weblogs.annenberg.edu/diy/2006/10/todd_richmond_on_open_ educatio.html Toffler, A. (1971). Future shock. London: Pan. Trendwatching.com. (2005). Generation C. Retrieved September 26, 2005, from http://www.trend watching.com/trends/ GENERATION_C.htm Von Hippel, E. (2005). Democratizing innovation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wikiversity. (2007). Retrieved March 6, 2007, from http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Main_Page

Axel Bruns Queensland University of Technology Brisbane, Australia

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11. APPROPRIATION OF MOBILE PHONES IN AND ACROSS FORMAL AND INFORMAL LEARNING

INTRODUCTION

As our title suggests, this chapter looks in some detail at one specific aspect of the use of mobile technologies, appropriation, which we consider to be central to our ability to understand fully the potential of mobile devices, particularly in relation to the interface between formal and informal learning. Definitions of ‘mobile learning’ are manifold but tend to revolve around the mobility of the technology or the mobility of the learner with a clear change in emphasis of late from the former to the latter. Some commentators also point to the importance of the increasing mobility of information. With Sharples, Taylor & Vavoula (2007, p. 225) we view mobile learning as “the processes of coming to know through conversations across multiple contexts among people and personal interactive technologies”. We find it appealing because in it the technological dimension remains secondary. Instead of an emphasis on transfer of content and information, knowledge creation through dialogue and situated social interaction is foregrounded. We deem the nature and role of appropriation in mobile learning to be important as, arguably, the user’s relationship to any technology they use has a bearing on the extent to which the potential afforded by the technology is harnessed. Reportedly (see e.g. Vincent, 2005), some users have developed a very strong emotional attachment to their phones, which might, for example, allow them to develop a high degree of familiarity with the functionality of the device. This, in turn, can provide a useful foundation for using the device as a tool for learning. Another reason for seeking a greater understanding of appropriation, therefore, lies in how it can inform the design and evaluation of mobile learning opportunities. At the ICE 3 Symposium in March 2007, Cook (2007) started to explore the contexts for the appropriation of new mobile communications/content generation devices. This work was followed up with case study research by Cook, Pachler and Bradley (2008a) on the use of high-end mobile phones for off-site and on-campus mobile learning in Higher Education. Two dominant themes emerged from our cases: affective issues, and phone usage in and across a learner’s formal and informal practices. Following the logic inherent in our chosen methodological approach, grounded theory, we are now embarking on a process of building our perspectives from the bottom up. Consequently, in this chapter we start to engage in theorising R. Land and S. Bayne (Eds.), Digital Difference: Perspectives on Online Learning, 145–158. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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and conceptualisation of a more traditional kind. We explore the notion of the appropriation of mobile phones for learning conceptually and by drawing on various illustrative cases. We are particularly interested in the appropriation of mobile technologies in the life worlds of users. The notion of ‘life worlds’ has its roots in phenomenology and philosophy, is associated with the work of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, and denotes the world as experienced in the perceptual subjectivity of everyday life (e.g. see Husserl, 1982; Heidegger, 1978). Our focus is on personal uses and identity. As such, we will only review the literature on appropriation selectively here in order to inform our conceptions and to provide a stimulus for discussion and further work. We deliberately do not discuss the notion of appropriation in relation to technological determinism. For example, we do not explore the role of user agency in the context of the processes of technological influence on social change. Therefore, we deliberately leave to one side a considerable body of work that could otherwise be seen as relevant. Support for our focus on the life worlds and meaning-making of users of technology can be found in the recent report on student experiences funded by JISC (2007) (see also Conole at el, 2008). The study found that students place greater value on technologies they have ‘discovered’ or selected for themselves. The importance of ownership, personalisation and appropriation of technologies is one of the overarching themes which emerge from the data. It therefore seems timely to explore these issues conceptually. We seek conceptual clarity around the notion of appropriation in the belief that any academic field needs a sound ontological and definitional basis and that, in order for the field of mobile learning to develop, clarity about key concepts and their meaning are a pre-requisite to scholarly debate. A typology of appropriation could, for example, form a useful checklist for designing and analysing appropriation. As part of our emerging ontology the typology can also provide a useful basis for community debate about the types we identify. Furthermore, the definition, typology and stages could be used to plan the means for bringing the life worlds of learners who are at a distance to school and society (see the case of Cyrill below) closer to the activities that schools and other educational establishments value. Brodie (in Fensel, 2004, p. vi) defines ontology as “a community-mediated and accepted description of the kinds of entities that are in a domain of discourse and how they are related. They provide meaning, organization, taxonomy, agreement, common understanding, vocabulary, and a connection to the ‘real world’.” Appropriation, in our view, while being a central concept in understanding the use of mobile devices in learning, remains a largely ill-defined notion that is mostly used in a manner that lacks reflexivity. We argue that one of the defining differences between technology-enhanced learning to date, including e-learning, and the use of mobile devices relates to the fact that learners themselves mostly own the mobile devices. An exploration of these issues seems desirable given that 3.3 billion people, more than half the world’s population, now subscribe to a mobile-phone service (The Economist, 2008, p. 3). This, in our view, has a number of significant implications, in particular in terms of motivational and affective factors as well as identity building, which are known to 146

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play a significant role in the learning process (see also Pachler, Bachmair, Cook & Kress, forthcoming; Stald, 2008). Appropriation, broadly speaking, is seen as a process of making technology your own for purposes of identity formation, social interaction, meaning-making and entertainment. Appropriation is thus the process of users/learners making technological tools their own and harnessing their functionalities for their own purposes by making them fit personal, interpersonal and social requirements, rather than using them necessarily only in accordance with designed-in functionalities. In this view, appropriation is characterised by learner agency. Specifically, we define appropriation as the processes attendant to the development of personal practices with mobile devices and we consider these processes in the main to be interaction, assimilation and accommodation as well as change. This view draws on the notion that the context of appropriation is emergent and not predetermined by events; centrality is placed on practice, which can be viewed as a learner’s engagement with particular settings, in which context becomes ‘embodied interaction’ (Dourish, 2004). Piaget (1955) described learning and perception as a constant effort to adapt to the environment in terms of assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation means that a learner takes something unknown into her existing cognitive structures, whereas accommodation refers to the changing of cognitive structure to make sense of the environment. In this chapter, building on the definition set out above, we will explore the notion of appropriation theoretically and conceptually. This exploration leads us to propose stages of appropriation and a typology of appropriation that has three levels. These in turn enable us to discuss the importance of appropriation in and across informal and formal learning with mobile devices. NOTIONS OF APPROPRIATION

In the following, we examine socio-cultural and technological perspectives of appropriation conceptually and theoretically, leaving aside, for example, its use in legal contexts (i.e. if you ‘appropriate’ a phone in a legal context you steal it). These strike us as most relevant in the context of mobile learning. In so doing, key questions for us are: What are the key characteristics of appropriation? To what extent is the effective use of technology premised on the ability of the individual - in the context of their life world as well as their worlds of work/school – to envision possible uses? Within what socio-cultural traditions, values and codes of behaviour is appropriation situated and how is it constrained and/or enabled? Through what stages, if any, does appropriation develop? And, what are the implications for learning with mobile devices? Cultural tradition plays a considerable part in conceptions of technology and how it is being used. This is noted by Stald (2008, p. 149), for example, who, on the basis of an empirical study of the mobile phone practices of teenagers argues that several sets of conditions affect the adaptation rate and the common as well as unexpected uses in different national and cultural contexts: they include 147

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cultural factors (traditions, norms, trends), social aspects (legislation/ regulation, needs, norms), and practical constraints (access, economy, infrastructure, work/ study/home distance). Our view of mobile technologies as cultural resources for meaning-making and the ‘production’ of culture frames the potential and actual uses of mobile phones in certain ways – we see them to be fundamentally bound up in socio-cultural practices rather than as independent from them. The contingency on social settings informs a differentiation into personal, interpersonal and systemic types, as different patterns of use can be observed and distinguished in all of them. Bachmair (2007), for example, powerfully demonstrates media preferences according to social milieu. In addition to the existence of the above socially contingent perspectives, we need to understand the frames that govern the actions of individuals as they create meaning in varying social and cultural contexts. If mobile devices can be understood as being modal and socially contingent, i.e. something that may be used in a particular way in one context but in a different way in another, we still need an account of learner agency in relation to the act of appropriation in different settings. For us, the issue of agency is central (see e.g. Bachmair, Pachler & Cook, forthcoming). We would also argue that we need more narratives, or cases as we call them (Cook, Pachler & Bradley, 2008a), if we are to truly understand how users/learners select, appropriate and implement technologies and tools to suit their own social learning context. Bakardjieva (2005) and Dourish (2004) both point out that people often find ways of using technology that are unexpected or unanticipated. For example, the adoption patterns of SMS messaging has taken on a form of use that was not anticipated by the designers of SMS, which was originally envisaged as being used for voice mail alerts or for telemetry. Even when the general patterns of technology usage do conform to expectations, “the meaning of the technology for those who use it depends on how generic features are particularised, how conventions emerge, and so on” (Dourish, 2004). Thus, specifying the functional design of a mobile phone in the abstract is one thing; understanding how specific groups of people will make use of particular functions is quite another. Users, not designers, determine the meaning of the technologies that they use, through the ways in which they incorporate them into practice. Technologies like computers and mobile phones are already steeped in the achievements of earlier users; however, by incorporating them to our own situation, we actively select, ‘appropriate’ and implement them within the context of our own circumstance. For example, consider the computer interface versus what we do with the computer in our everyday lives. Computers and software, by-and-large, have originally been developed for work-related activities and as productivity devices; however, over time, in response to developing genres of use, they have become appropriated for entertainment, education, socializing, etc. By engaging in appropriation of technology, users/learners can give technology a new, possibly peculiar spin that others may adopt later: “users are active participants in the emergence of ways of working” (Dourish 2004). Appropriation, therefore, is an action on tools (e.g. making blogging work to suit our own needs), whereby learners negotiate and evolve systems of 148

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practice and meaning in the course of their interaction with other users (e.g. learners, tutors, etc.), technologies and information structures. The way in which the ‘meaningfulness’ of a technological artefact arises is, therefore, related to its use within ‘systems’ of practice over a period of time. Jones & Issroff (2007) have reviewed recent work on technology appropriation, which they define in terms of user agency as “the process by which technology or particular technological artefacts are adopted and shaped in use”. Different approaches to mobile phone appropriation are discussed by Carroll, Howard, Vetere, Peck & Murphy (2002), and by Waycott (2004, 2005). Bar, Pisani & Weber (2007) provide another interesting examination of the appropriation of mobile technology. Rather than dwell on the literature on technology appropriation, however, we want instead to report on findings by Stald (2008), who carried out a series of empirical studies of 15–24 year-old Danes and their mobile phone use. In our view, these illuminate the personal and interpersonal levels of the socio-cultural arena. Stald’s work clearly demonstrates the importance of appropriation of mobile phones in young people’s lives, in particular in relation to (learning about) identity, although she does not use the term appropriation as such. Stald rightly notes the affordances of mobile phones – again not a term she actually uses – for establishing social norms and rules at a personal and interpersonal level. According to her, the identity of young people is fluid in that they are “constantly negotiating who they are, how they are that identity, and with whom they are that identity” (p. 143). (The) mobile itself provides signals about the user’s identity or at least their self-presentation. The use of language, spelling, their actual way of interacting in dialogues, and the use of additional communicative elements and services also reveal things about the user’s ‘personal settings’. (p. 161) The mobile phone, according to Stald, is “a learning tool for dealing with living conditions in modern society” (p. 144); “we use the mobile phone to carry our social and personal life with us as we move” (p. 145) and “it supports the testing of cultural, social, and individual codes and makes ongoing, mutual reciprocity possible” (p. 146); “we are constantly negotiating our mutual understanding of the situations in which we find ourselves” (p. 145). The ability to use mobile phones effectively in accordance with perceived needs can, therefore, be seen to be increasingly important, particularly for young people, as communication through mobile phones is also about the maintenance of relationships and “express(es) codes of dominance, levels of interconnectedness, types of relationships, and so on. It can serve as an important means of mutual social confirmation and trust in each other” (p. 155). Stald’s work is also interesting in so far as she brings the socio-cultural and technological arenas into a fruitful relationship with each other by introducing the metaphor of a ‘shell’ for the mobile phone, which can be appropriated by users by way of choice of telephone number, skinning and the personalisation of ringtones and backgrounds, a device that encapsulates and protects, “which encloses their social life and networks, emotional experiences, personal information and so forth” (pp. 150). The technical arena can usefully be conceived from the starting point of the designed functionality of the device as intended by the manufacturers. Thus the 149

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ability to hold music on our mobile phone is a technical provision. However, such an affordance leads to the notion of the owner of the phone seeing the device as part of their personal life-world as they start to use the device to build their own identity (we return to this issue below). STAGES OF APPROPRIATION

In the following, we will discuss possible stages of appropriation within the broader socio-cultural context. Carroll et al. (2002) examined the role that mobile technologies play in the lives of young people, albeit not in relation to identity. Instead, their focus was directly on appropriation, which they define as “the way in which technology or technological artefacts are adopted, shaped and then used by young people”. Clearly, there is overlap here with our definition of appropriation given in the introduction, although what is missing, we think, are the key contextual notions of agency, identity and informal learning. Carroll et al.’s (2002) work is, however, of further interest because it attempts to delineate a model of technology appropriation with direct reference to mobile phones. In doing so, the authors draw on data collected from various studies in order to elaborate on a conceptual model determining the factors involved in appropriation across various stages. It is also worth noting that, unlike Stald, they approach their work from a design perspective and are interested in appropriation in terms of the transformations of ‘technology-in-use’ compared with that envisaged by its designers, what they call ‘technology-as-designed’ (p. 1778). In particular, they are interested in the factors that result in the integration of technology into the users’ everyday lives as well as any barriers. Their findings suggest that successful appropriation in the socio-cultural sphere is contingent upon critical mass in a social group (p. 1780). In essence, Carroll et al.’s appropriation model (p. 1781) suggests that in the first instance, at stage 1, the question is whether there exists a sufficiently strong ‘pull’ of the so-called ‘attractors’ designed into the technology – such as usability, convenience, fashion and cost – to make potential users want to experiment with the technology. At the second stage, certain appropriation criteria come into play, such as leisure use, social and information management or lifestyle organisation, which determine whether the initial interest in the technology leads to appropriation or disappropriation. In other words, does the technology add any value? The final, third stage relates to reinforcement through social use in groups, with power and identity being listed as higher order reinforcers, and fragmentation being thought to lead to disappropriation. Our proposal is to conceive of these three stages in terms of exploration (Stage 1), adaptation, accommodation and assimilation (Stage 2) and change (Stage 3). ‘Exploration’ is characterised by the process of finding out about the functionality and potential of the devices; accommodation and assimilation are the incorporation of the devices into the user’s life worlds and (social) practices; and ‘change’ we view as modifications to personal and social practices on the basis of the affordances of the technology as well as the pushing back of the boundaries of existing 150

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socio-cultural norms in relation to the use of the technology. We agree with the assertion in the literature that stages of such a model should be viewed as being non-linear, cyclical and recursive (see e.g. Carroll et al., 2002; and Jones & Issroff, 2008). We also want to stress the agency of the user/learner underpinning the process of appropriation, i.e. of making technology their own for purposes of identity formation, social interaction, meaning-making and entertainment. Once a technology is appropriated and integrated into the lives of young people, its use is reproduced or reinforced through reference to these higherorder drivers. As long as the technology fits with the needs and lives of young people, its use will be reinforced and stabilised; it may become a mundane part of their everyday lives. At the same time, it will shape their needs and lives, offering new ways of living and interacting in the world. (Carroll et al., 2002, p. 1783) In short, young people adopt a lifestyle rather than a technology perspective (Carroll et al., 2002, p. 1784). In their discussion of Carroll et al.’s work, Jones & Issroff (2007) point out that these three stages do not deal with different learning contexts. They also discuss Waycott’s (2005) study, which looked at the appropriation of PDAs in the workplace and as a learning tool using a framework that draws heavily on activity theory analysis. Waycott highlights both technology appropriation and technology mediation, with the latter being the adoption of the technology. The mediation component thus describes a process whereby the PDAs change the activities that they support in our terminology, the users create new use genres to meet a specific social need. Waycott examines some of the past experiences and personal circumstances (i.e. biographical details like time and inclination) with respect to the PDAs. Because of the gap of 3–4 years between the two studies, comparisons are difficult as the devices available were very different, as were the contexts of use (see also Pachler, in press). Nevertheless, as Jones and Issroff (2007) point out, in both models of appropriation, being part of a community and supporting others was seen as being important. Indeed, in Waycott’s study, community knowledge also played a part in participants’ choice of not using PDAs anymore. What is striking, however, is that neither study centrally tackles the issue of identity or relates the stages more overtly to a learning context in which mobile devices are appropriated, which our own study shows forms an important feature (see Cook, Pachler & Bradley, 2008a). TYPOLOGY OF APPROPRIATION

As a result of the above exploration of the literature and following reflections on our own qualitative work (Cook, Pachler & Bradley, 2008a & 2008b), we are proposing the typology of appropriation for users/learners in Figure 1. The typology could, for example, form a useful checklist in designing and analysing appropriation. As part of our emerging ontology it can provide the useful basis for community debate about the types we identify. We view this typology as a systematic classification of 151

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mobile learning appropriation ‘types’ that have characteristics in common. We posit here that there are three types: socio-cultural, interpersonal and personal. Each of the types shown in Figure 1 has various characteristics, which implies some purpose or intention of a mobile appropriation activity rather than the function of some task. However, we want to stress here that there are invariably purposes/ intentions that cannot always be neatly associated with specific branches and that, according to one’s perspective and particular situation and context, different attributions would be possible. For example, ‘media capture’ could easily be featured as a characteristic not only under ‘personal’ but also under other types. However, in an attempt to avoid duplication and complexity, we have listed the various characteristics where we thought there was ‘best fit’. It is also worth noting that the examples of appropriation featured in Figure 1 differ in type, scope and significance and that due to a limit of space it is only possible to discuss them briefly in this chapter. Further work is needed, for example to establish the relative importance and interrelationships between different types within and across our three main categories.

Figure 1. Typology of appropriation.

With the personal type, the bottom right of Figure 1, many users/learners now appropriate mobile devices to perform a number of day-to-day organising functions to support their needs, such as using the calendar, setting reminders and alarms and keeping contact details. Mobiles can increasingly be used for entertainment, for example, playing music, games, listening to the radio or watching TV. Many people now use their mobile as their primary source for capturing media, in the form of photographs, videos and voice recordings. It is extremely common now at any event or occurrence to see people capturing it using their mobile phone. And the mobile is becoming a tool for seeking and gathering information, whether it is accessing maps or the internet, calling someone for information or using learning materials. The number of characteristics appropriated clearly increase with the sophistication of the device and the features it has. One’s mobile phone is an inherently personal device (people rarely share mobiles), and this can be enhanced by personalisation or accessorising a phone to put one’s own personal stamp on it. This is mainly achieved by adding skins or covers and accessories, and by personalising ring tones, operating systems and menus as well as by adding wallpaper. 152

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In the bottom left of Figure 1 is the interpersonal type. Appropriation of mobile devices for some of these characteristics is to be expected as they have been designed primarily as communication tools. Communication for us is more narrowly transactional (e.g. person-to-person messaging), whereas socialising relates to identity building (as discussed above). We communicate in order to find out train times or carry out a work task but we socialise to build friendships and other relationships. Personal networks at all levels can be built and sustained (family, friends, work, college) through keeping in touch by calling, SMS, email, arranging meetings and so on. However, interpersonal activities can be extended by sharing digital media with others, such as photographs, ring tones (via Bluetooth or MMS for example). An interesting example is Jacucci, Oulasvirta & Salvaara (2007), who discuss the contribution of mobile phones in the creation of technology-mediated memories in constructing shared experiences amongst spectators of a rally. This user genre they call ‘active spectatorship’. Distributed cognition is related to the latter, and refers to a branch of cognitive science which puts forward the idea that knowledge and cognition are not confined to the individual but are, instead, distributed over networks. In a context of ubiquitous connectivity, inter alia through mobile devices, we would draw on distributed information in our actions on the world as well as processes of knowledge building and meaning-making of the world. The notions of acting on the world through the use of mobile devices and of distributed cognition leads onto the characteristic of learner-generated context, by which we understand contexts ‘created by people interacting together with a common, selfdefined or negotiated learning goal’. The key aspect of learner generated contexts is that they are “generated through the enterprise of those who would previously have been consumers in a context created for them” (Learner Generated Context Wiki, 2008). As Cook (2007) points out, a ‘mobile learner-generated context’ can be seen as interpersonal activity “conducted by learners who may be communicating or individually reflecting ‘on the move’ and who, in the course of a dialogue with another person or interaction with multimedia resources, raise questions that create a context; when an answer to this context-based question is generated this can give rise to knowledge”. The top-left of Figure 1 shows socio-cultural characteristics, which impact on appropriation in a number of ways. Advertising and peer pressure influence many people’s choice in purchasing particular mobile devices, for example, wanting to have the latest fashion accessory, the latest features, the latest models, and can also influence what they appropriate their devices for. One person’s appropriation can influence another’s. Augmentation of physical spaces through pervasive wi-fi and ‘smart’ buildings is another socio-cultural characteristic of appropriation. Acceptable behaviour refers to social norms surrounding the use of mobile phones. For example it is considered impolite in the UK to hold extended noisy personal conversations or play music through the speakers on crowded public transport; that does not mean to say this practice is not uncommon. Another example is the removal of mobile phones from school children when they enter the school, even though these devices could be used for learning (see Pachler, Bachmair, Cook & Kress, forthcoming, for a discussion). Health and safety issues can have a negative impact on appropriation, 153

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for example fears of radiation might limit use, or use in public spaces might be restricted because of concerns of mugging and theft. However, some people feel safer with their mobile phone, as they can make contact with someone if they need help. One student in a study we recently conducted (see e.g. Cook, Pachler & Bradley, 2008a), for example, noted that she used the mobile phone to talk to a friend when walking home alone at night so she wouldn’t be afraid. The mobile phone, in this example, assumes a very specific role in relation to (perceived) personal safety. EXAMPLE OF APPROPRIATION AND IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION

In this section we address the question: what are the implications for learning with mobile devices? We see a major challenge in finding ways to open up the school’s, or indeed other educational organisations’, cultural practices to new digital media practices that are prevalent outside school. On the one hand we can look for the typical structures of the appropriation of mobile phones in everyday life. On the other, we can look for curricular school structures where these forms of appropriation can be applied. The case of Cyrill (Bachmair, Pachler & Cook, forthcoming; Pachler et al., forthcoming) describes a young man who is at a distance to society and school, but someone who has developed expertise with media convergence; he uses mobile phones to capture content and is engaged in advanced media literacy practices. Although his cultural practices are far removed from the school, Cyrill operates within clear socio-cultural structures, namely a particular socio-cultural milieu (see e.g. Bachmair, 2007). We propose that in the case of Cyrill, who inter alia uses his mobile phone to shoot videos as a critical reflection on his environment and uploads them to YouTube, the appropriation of mobile devices and digital media can be seen to be the result of self-organised informal learning, reflection on learning outcomes, and an interrelationship of agency and practices, to which learning, competences and assessment belong. In this respect the notion of evolving personal practice through interaction, assimilation and accommodation as well as change is helpful to describe what types of activities the school and its agents, i.e. teacher and students, need in order to respond meaningfully to the mobile device phenomenon. Piaget (1955) takes us part of the way with his articulation of cognitive structures and knowledge; however we extend these notions in our typology. For example, on the interpersonal level with notions of learner-generated contexts, we can see that Cyrill is clearly very active in this and other aspects of our typology. A key part of appropriation is that learners are evolving practices and meanings through their interaction. In Cyrill’s case, the evolving practice was engendered through personal, interpersonal and socio-cultural interaction. For example, he is heavily active on various discussion lists using different identities. On one list he engages with fellow ‘underdogs’ via the internet, elsewhere he is featured on a men’s fashion website as someone who is ‘cool’. He is also being pursued by the police because of the nature of some of the material he has uploaded onto YouTube (i.e. on the socio-cultural level he has 154

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transgressed social norms in terms of acceptable behaviour). Because of the situated character of appropriation of the mobile and informal learning as meaning-making, one could recommend in school the creation of learning situations which integrate mobile practices and expertise of the students. In the case of Cyrill, his expertise is well developed to investigate and document social situations, to use the internet for publishing his opinion and to communicate in the written mode of the follow-up communication. His provocative attitude to show his social status as unfairly and inappropriately treated underdog sets up a big barrier to the school if the school insists that they teach him traditional content knowledge through traditional pedagogical means. But, perhaps it would be possible to reconceptualise Cyrill within the school context as a software expert or blog expert for peers? Writing about fringe lifestyle will probably attract him. For example, one could think about the possibility of tasking Cyrill with creating a ‘mobile site’ for the class or the school. We recognised that we have only scratched the surface of one of our questions posed earlier: to what extent is the effective use of technology premised on the ability of the individual, in the context of their life world as well as their worlds of work or school, to envision possible uses? In Cyrill’s case it would be useful future work to use our typology to analyse his case in more detail. Please see Cook, Pachler and Bradley (2008b) for more examples from our other study applied to the typology. SYNTHESIS, CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK

In summary, this chapter explores appropriation from various theoretical and conceptual perspectives. We defined appropriation as the processes attendant to personal practices with mobile devices evolving through interaction, assimilation and accommodation. Furthermore, we argue that there are three types of mobile appropriation: socio-cultural, interpersonal and personal. We examined the sociocultural and technological perspectives of appropriation. A useful conceptual starting point for looking at appropriation for us was one of viewing it as a socially contingent form of cultural transmission and production, where technology is not some external force affecting society, but rather a phenomenon constructed, appropriated and understood by society. Indeed, mobile technologies are a cultural resource for meaningmaking, i.e. for the ‘production’ of culture, and thereby fundamentally bound up in socio-cultural practices rather than independent from them. Specifically, we took the view that users/learners enact or invent ‘genres of use’, i.e. they ‘mobilise’ available cultural tools to respond to a social situation. This can result in people finding ways of using technology that are unexpected or unanticipated; this is technologies-in-use-in-learning-situations (see also Bakardjieva, 2005). Mobile phones provide affordances for establishing social norms and rules at a personal and interpersonal level; for example, the identity of young people is fluid, they are constantly negotiating ‘who they are, how they are that identity, and with whom they are that identity’. The typology we have presented could form a useful checklist in designing and analysing appropriation and can also provide a useful basis for community debate about the types we identify. Furthermore, the definition, typology and stages could 155

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be used to plan the means for bringing the life-worlds of learners, who are at a distance to school and society, closer to the activities that schools and other educational establishments value. By examining learning-specific examples, i.e. cases or genres of use, we are able to find support for our conceptual assertion that mobile devices can be viewed as cultural resources for meaning-making in social contexts. The learner in two examples examined in this chapter (Stald, 2008; the case of Cyrill) is actively engaged in forming their identity. That is to say, the mobile phone is a cultural resource in that it comes with culturally formed ways of usage; the way in which the learner has in the past internalised this usage is also achieved in response to cultural factors. When the learner in our example starts to appropriate the device in practice that is new to them and when they then go on to share this practice with other learners, this interaction in turn evolves the learner’s practice. In this sense, mobile devices are a resource for identity formation and practice evolution. This process may be itself distributed over several different contexts and over a period of time; it is cyclical and not linear. Another learning-specific example can be drawn form our recent study (Cook, Pachler & Bradley, 2008a) which showed how learners incorporated texts from their tutor (study tips) into their practice. Learners would accommodate these texts but as they became used to them they were able to use the approach readily for meaning-making; they could be said to assimilate the affordance of this technical functionality into their socio-technical arena. Thus the notion of agency by the user/learner underpins our notion of the process of appropriation, i.e. of making technology their own for purposes of identity formation, social interaction, meaning-making and entertainment. We are the first to stress that various issues need further investigation. The influence of affective factors in this process needs further exploration. For example, can certain affective dispositions inhibit the types of appropriation we have described here? What is the relationship between identity and affective dispositions? However, we claim that the exploration of the key notion of appropriation in mobile learning undertaken here has taken us an important step further in elaborating what it is to achieve learning from context to context. By examining a learner’s appropriation in terms of our definition, typology and their traversal of the stages we have defined, it should be possible to include in formal learning activities elements of the media literacy skills that learners gain informally outside the school or educational organisation. Our brief exploration of the Cyrill case was illustrative of this potential. And, it is this particular aspect of our work on appropriation that we consider to be an important aspect of future research: in what ways are users/learners making technology their own in formal (as well informal) learning situations? Also, how do the stages of appropriation we delineated play out in this context and, how can they be supported and underpinned pedagogically in order to support emerging learning processes that may be distributed across several contexts? ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Thanks to Claire Bradley for helping to pull out examples of the typology and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper. 156

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REFERENCES Bachmair, B., Pachler, N., & Cook, J. (forthcoming). Mobile phones as cultural resources for learning: An analysis of educational structures, mobile expertise and emerging cultural practices. MedienPädagogik. Retrieved from http://www.medienpaed.com Bachmair, B. (2007). M-learning and media use in everyday life. In N. Pachler (Ed.), Mobile learning: Towards a research agenda (pp. 105–152). WLE Centre. London: Institute of Education. Retrieved from http://www.wlecentre.ac.uk/cms/files/occasionalpapers/mobilelearning_pachler_2007.pdf Bakardjieva, M. (2005). Internet society. The Internet in everyday life. London: Sage Publications. Bar, F., Pisani, F., & Weber, M. (2007). Mobile technology appropriation in a distant mirror: Baroque infiltration, creolization and cannibalism. Retrieved September 11, 2008, from http://arnic.info/ Papers/Bar_Pisani_Weber_appropriation-April07.pdf Carroll, J., Howard, S., Vetere, F., Peck, J., & Murphy, J. (2002, January). Just what do the youth of today want? Technology appropriation by young people. In R. Sprague (Ed.), Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35) (pp. 1777–1785). Maui, HI. Retrieved October 22, 2007, from http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=994089 Conole, G., de Laat, M., Dillon, T., & Darby, J. (2008). ‘Disruptive technologies’, ‘pedagogical innovation’: what’s new? Findings from an in-depth study of students’ use and perception of technology. Computers & Education, 50, 511–524. Cook, J. (2007, March 21–23). Smells like teen spirit: Generation CX. In Ideas in Cyberspace Education (ICE3) Symposium, Loch Lomond, Scotland. Retrieved September, 2008, from http://www. education.ed.ac.uk/ice3/papers/cook.html Cook, J., Pachler, N., & Bradley, C. (2008a, Spring). Bridging the gap? Mobile phones at the interface between informal and formal learning. Journal of the Research Centre for Educational Technology. Special Issue on Learning While Mobile. Retrieved from http://www.rcetj.org/ Cook, J., Pachler, N., & Bradley, C. (2008b, October 8–10). Appropriation of mobile phones for learning. mLearn 2008, Telford, Shropshire, UK. Dourish, P. (2004). What we talk about when we talk about context. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 8(1), 19–30. Retrieved from http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/publications/2004/PUC2004-context.pdf Fensel, D. (2004). Ontologies: A silver bullet for knowledge management and electronic commerce (2nd Rev. and extended edition with a Foreword by Michael L. Brodie). Berlin: Springer. Heidegger, M. (1978). Being and time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell [German original: 1927]. Husserl, E. (1982). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy – First book: General introduction to a pure phenomenology (F. Kersten, Trans.). The Hague: Nijhoff (= Ideas) [German original: 1913]. Jacucci, G., Oulasvirta, A., & Salovaara, A. (2007). Active construction of experience through mobile media: A field study with implications for recording and sharing. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 11(4), 215–234. Retrieved April 7, 2008, from http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/oulasvir/scipubs/jacuccietal_revised_print.pdf JISC. (2007). Learner experiences of e-Learning: In their own words. Retrieved April 2, 2008, from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/intheirownwords Jones, A., & Issroff, K. (2007). Motivation and mobile devices: Exploring the role of appropriation and coping strategies. ALT-J, 15(3), 247–258. Learner Generated Context Wiki. (2008). Retrieved April 9, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Learner_generated_context Pachler, N. (in press). Research methods in mobile and informal learning: Some issues. In G. Vavoula, N. Pachler, & A. Kukulska-Hulme (Eds.), Researching mobile learning: Frameworks, methods and research designs. Oxford: Peter Lang. Pachler, N., Bachmair, B., Cook, J., & Kress, G. (forthcoming). Mobile learning. New York: Springer. Piaget, J. (1955). The construction of reality in the child. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

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COOK AND PACHLER Sharples, M., Taylor, J., & Vavoula, G. (2007). A theory of learning for the mobile age. In. R. Andrews & C. Haythornthwaite (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of e-learning research (pp. 221–224). London: Sage. Stald, G. (2008). Mobile identity: Youth, identity, and mobile communication media. In D. Buckingham (Ed.), Youth, identity, and digital media (pp. 143–164). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Retrieved from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dmal.9780262524834.143 Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory. Procedures and techniques. Sage: London. The Economist. (2008, April 12). Nomads at last. A special report on mobility. Retrieved May, 2008, from http://www.economist.com/surveys/downloadSurveyPDF.cfm?id=10950383&surveycode=UK&sub mit=View+PDF Or Retrieved September 9, 2008, from http://www.economist.com/specialreports/ displayStory.cfm?STORY_ID=10950394 Vincent, J. (2005). Emotional attachment to mobile phones an extraordinary relationship. In L. Hamill & A. Lasen (Eds.), Mobiles: Past, present and future. London: Springer Verlag. Waycott, J. (2004). The appropriation of PDAs as learning and workplace tools: An activity theory perspective. Unpublished PhD, The Open University. Retrieved from http://kn.open.ac.uk/public/ getfile.cfm?documentfileid=9608 Waycott, J. (2005). Appropriating tools and shaping activities: The use of PDAs in the workplace. In L. Hamill & A. Lasen (Eds.), Mobile world: Past, present and future. London: Springer-Verlag.

John Cook Learning Technology Research Institute, London Metropolitan University, UK Norbert Pachler Institute of Education, London, UK (Both authors are members of the London Mobile Learning Group. See http://www.londonmobilelearning.net/)

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12. ‘DIGITAL NATIVE’ AND ‘DIGITAL IMMIGRANT’ DISCOURSES A Critique

INTRODUCTION

This paper takes a critical approach to a discourse still commonly applied in our discussions and understandings of the relationship between practitioners in higher education and the new digital technologies – that of the distinction between the socalled ‘digital native’ and ‘digital immigrant’. We critique this over-simplistic binary from a range of perspectives, highlighting its tendency to de-privilege the role of the teacher, its implicit alignment with an understanding of higher education as market-driven and commodified, and its reliance on a series of highly problematic and dangerously deterministic metaphors. We end the paper with a call for a more carefully critical and nuanced understanding of the effects of new technologies on the practices and subject positions of learners and teachers in higher education. AN EVOCATIVE OPPOSITION

The distinction between the digital ‘native’ and the digital ‘immigrant’ has become a commonly-accepted trope within higher education and its broader cultural contexts, as a way of mapping and understanding the rapid technological changes which are re-forming our learning spaces, and ourselves as subjects in the digital age. Young people have grown up with computers and the internet, the argument goes, and are naturally proficient with new digital technologies and spaces, while older people will always be a step behind and apart in their dealings with the digital. What is more, young learners’ immersion in digital technologies creates in them a radically different approach to learning, one which is concerned above all with speed of access, instant gratification, impatience with linear thinking and the ability to multi-task. Teachers, we are told, have a duty to adapt their methods to this new way of learning – are required, in fact, to re-constitute themselves according to the terms of the ‘native’ in order to remain relevant and, presumably, employable (for example Prensky 2001, Oblinger 2003, Long 2005, Barnes et al., 2007, Thompson 2007). It is no doubt the case that when we work in internet environments, we work with technological spaces which are highly volatile, and which offer us new and potentially radical ways of communicating, representing and constituting knowledge and selfhood (Bayne 2006, Leu et al., 2007, Goodfellow and Lea 2007). Within such potentially disorienting spaces, the rhetoric of the digital ‘native’ allows us to R. Land and S. Bayne (Eds.), Digital Difference: Perspectives on Online Learning, 159–169. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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structure and contain our understanding of their implications, positioning young learners as subjects ‘at one’ with the digital environment in a way which older users – teachers, ‘immigrants’ – can never be. The ‘digital native’ discourse - sometimes nuanced by alternative terminologies: ‘Net Generation’ (Oblinger 2003), ‘Digital Generation’, ‘Technological Generation’ (Monereo 2004), ‘Millenials’ (Howe and Strauss 2000), ‘Google Generation’ (JISC 2008) and so on – pervades our discussions of the challenges of teaching current generations of students, despite its over-simplistic reduction of our understanding to a raw binary opposition. Serious critique of this discourse has begun to emerge in the literature, with several recent studies highlighting the way in which our categorisation of the ‘digital native’ works to homogenise diverse and varied groups of individuals, using generational categorisation to over-determine student characteristics and relations to technology (for example Littleton et al., 2005, Bennett et al., 2008, Stoerger 2009, Jones et al 2010). Our understanding, according to one commentator, should be ‘situated in diversity rather than dichotomy’ (Owen 2004). Krause (2007, 2008), for example, reports on a study of first year students in Australian universities, finding that their experiences and understandings of technology vary significantly according to socio-economic background, age and gender – the ‘assumption of homogeneity is misleading and dangerous’, she concludes (2007: 138). Other studies countering the ‘native’ rhetoric focus on the way in which it overstates the rift between generations in terms of their levels of immersion in technology. Owen (2004) for example, quoting NTIA (1999), notes that the highest levels of usage of the internet at home in the US is among 35–44 year olds. Another study (JISC, 2007) notes that, while use of internet technology, particularly for social networking, is almost ubiquitous among 16–18 year olds, this does not translate into a desire among this group for more technologically-focused approaches to teaching and learning at university. On the contrary, ‘fundamentally, this age group suspects that if all learning is mediated through technology, this will diminish the value of the learning’ (30). And Helsper (2008) warns that the digital natives discourse prevents young people from seeking advice and may cause them to underestimate online dangers. So, while empirical data is emerging which questions some of the blanket claims made in the body of literature which takes the native-immigrant binary as its starting point, it is still hard to come by writing which challenges the fundamental assumptions implicit in this discourse from a theoretical perspective. A notable exception is Selwyn (2009), who argues that “the notion of the digital native should be seen more as a discursive than a descriptive device, employed by those seeking to exert some form of power and control over the shaping of the digital (near) future” (p. 8). However, Selwyn, along with most of the other critical literature, goes on to critique the discourse principally on the grounds of its inaccuracy, and not the ways in which it affects how teachers and learners understand and experience their relationships with technology and each other. Furthermore, a new wave of literature is now drawing on the digital native and immigrant discourse. Palfrey and Gasser’s 2008 book Born Digital emerged from 160

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an ongoing Digital Natives project1, and while their claims may be slightly more nuanced – allowing for a liminal third category of ‘digital settlers’, for example – their reliance on the binary remains fundamental. And it is continuing to ripple through e-learning and internet studies literature and beyond, having made the transition from a poorly supported position paper to a conceptual given in a remarkably short time, in ways that Sheely (2008) usefully traces. Our view is that this is a discourse which – despite its clear limitations – is becoming internalised by many in higher education, and is being too readily permitted to structure our discussions of the effects of technology on teachers, learners and universities. This paper, then, offers a series of theoretical perspectives which aim to problematise the discourse, highlighting its basis in the view of higher education as a commodity, its consistency with managerialist agendas, its tendency to marginalise the role of the teacher, the violence of its hierarchical oppositions, its essentialising dynamic, and the underlying discrimination implicit in its metaphors. HIERARCHICAL VIOLENCE AND THE DE-PRIVILEGING OF THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER

In a traditional philosophical opposition we have not a peaceful co-existence of facing terms but a violent hierarchy. One of the terms dominates the other (axiologically, logically, etc), occupies the commanding position. To deconstruct the opposition is above all, at a particular moment, to reverse the hierarchy. (Derrida 1981, p.41) A useful place to start re-thinking, if not deconstructing, the native-immigrant opposition is to consider the series of binary oppositions which depend upon, and cluster around it. Drawing on the terminologies evident in the large popular literature, and the smaller academic literature on this theme, we might extract the following: native student fast young future multi-tasking image playful looking forward digital action constant connection

immigrant teacher slow old past, or ‘legacy’ logical, serial thinking text serious looking backward analogue knowledge isolation

We would argue that the term ‘occupying the commanding position’ in this opposition is that of the ‘native’ (the ‘future’), with the ‘immigrant’ (the ‘past’) taking the subordinate position. What we then see here is a structurally embedded de161

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privileging of the role of the teacher, aligned with the ‘immigrant’ position – the old, the past, the slow, the backward-looking, the association with modes of knowledge construction becoming ‘obsolete’, and dependent on analogue (print) technologies. The literature does, in fact, regularly posit a one-way determining relationship between the technology and the role of the teacher or institution – technological change is ‘forcing educational institutions to deal with a new population of learners’ (Barnes et al., 2007: 1), and warning that ‘without such efforts, the University as an educational structure truly runs the risk of perversely achieving the very status by which it has so often been stereotyped, a stagnant and disconnected institution…’ (Amirault and Visser 2009, 76). The teacher here is placed in a position which is both subordinate and impossible, within a discourse which situates her as both unable to change, and as being required to change in order to remain a competent, employable professional. On the one hand, she is informed that she is determined, by her age, to have a particular, subadequate relationship with technology based in her status as ‘immigrant’. On the other, she is told that she must adapt her teaching methods and alter her position as subject within the digital in order to continue to function as a professional – to ‘reach’ and teach upcoming hordes of students who are determined differently, as ‘natives’. An impossible barrier is constructed between teacher and students, which both cannot be, and must be, breached by the teacher through her responsibility to change. In the native-immigrant opposition, teachers are equally without agency and in a position where they are forced to perform as active agents in order to maintain their viability as employable, relevant, ‘quality’ academics. So this discourse has a paradox at its heart – a deeply essentialising vision of selfhood as determined by generational positioning (the ‘immigrant’ can never become ‘native’ – ‘You and I are “digital immigrants” and we will never be as good at “digital” as they are’ (Long 2005)) is promoted alongside an imperative to change, to engage with a technology-driven professional development agenda which ‘demands nothing less than an entirely new worker identity’ (McWilliam 2002, p. 292). As McWilliam has argued, such professional development agendas, based in a ‘deficit’ model of the developee’s own state of knowledge, constructs new and unequal power relations between developers and academics, and risks eliminating the space for ‘radical doubt’ needed in order to question the assumptions upon which such agendas are built (p. 298). When teachers are constructed as perpetually lacking and in need of development, their dissent can be delegitimised as symptomatic of their ignorance, backwardness or resistance to change. Any critique of technology, its role in education, or its implementation, as long as it comes from an ‘immigrant’, can be quickly compartmentalised as belonging to a marginalised, illegitimate voice. Possibly valid criticisms of digital ‘ways of knowing’ and of practicing within the academy can be too easily dismissed as luddite expressions of an increasingly irrelevant ‘immigrant’ academic contingent who may be incapable of ‘unlearning’ the ‘old’ ways in order to address the ‘needs’ of the new learners: Some of these shifts [toward the digital] are controversial for many faculty, and all involve ‘unlearning’ almost unconscious beliefs, assumptions, and 162

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values about the nature of teaching, learning, and the academy. Professional development that requires unlearning necessitates high levels of emotional/ social support in addition to mastering the intellectual/technical dimensions involved. (Dede 2005, online) The digital immigrant teacher always speaks from a position of insufficiency – an insufficiency she exposes whenever she is critical or reluctant where she should be willing – indeed eager – to change. Any argument can be dismissed if it is spoken in the accent of the immigrant. This fully reverses the more radical, and ever receding (Davies 2003) positioning of the academic, as the ‘notion of being an educational “professional” is …redefined, with notions of “autonomy” and “the right to be critical” replaced by “disinterestedness” and “accountability”’ (Usher and Edwards 1994, p.113). THE DISCOURSE OF THE MARKET

McWilliam (2002) draws our attention to the basis of ‘professional development’ agendas in an enterprise culture within higher education, of which skills development in the use of technology is a cornerstone. Clegg et al. too (2003) have made a compelling case for the way in which e-learning has been constructed as determined by the unquestionable ‘needs’ of globalisation and the marketisation of higher education, while Fairclough (1993) has demonstrated how higher education has been colonised by a ‘marketized’ public discourse which emerges across its promotional literature and its various constructions of academic and student roles. We can track within the ‘digital native’ literature and discourse an alignment with this vision of higher education as market driven and determined by a culture of enterprise. The need for institutions and individual academics to change (to become more ‘digital’) is regularly justified by referral to student ‘needs’ which come to stand as proxy for market ‘needs’: What do the differing learning preferences and views of technology of the ‘new students’ mean for colleges and universities? There might be few implications if students were passive consumers and did not use their ‘purchasing power’… Colleges and universities may find that understanding – and meeting the expectations of – the ‘new students’ is important to their competitiveness. (Oblinger 2003, p. 42) There is little evidence, in fact, that students do desire more technologically-driven approaches to teaching and learning (McWilliam 2002), and research demonstrates that they often resist and themselves de-privilege the modes of identity construction and teaching associated with e-learning (JISC 2007, Bayne 2005). Across the literature, we see the ‘needs’ of the ‘native’ – for instant access, for customer-service orientated provision, for flexible, modularised approaches – used as justification for the perpetuation of a particular, commodified view of how higher education should be. Unsurprisingly, the ‘native’ discourse – which constructs the teacher as redeemable only through his or her active engagement with a development agenda – is itself one which originates with, and is primarily perpetuated by, developers 163

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themselves. Academics within this model have a duty to constitute themselves as entrepreneurial, flexible, responsive and ‘switched on’. Oblinger, for example, gives us an illuminating instance of ‘good practice’ in meeting the needs of the ‘native’: In many cases, customer service is more than a preference – it is a prerequisite to retention and effective learning…. Rio Salado College has adapted its approach to ensure that learners have the service they need. A ‘beep-a-tutor’ program, available seven days a week, guarantees students that tutors will respond to their question within one hour. With beepers, the tutors receive questions no matter where they are. (Oblinger 2003, p. 42) It is an indicative vision of the effect of ‘native’ (market) ‘needs’ on the role of the teacher – mobile, electronically ‘tagged’, infinitely responsive, quantitatively performance-measured, perpetually on call. The professional status of the teacher is, again, challenged via his reconstruction as a responsive provider of ‘services’ to an increasingly demanding ‘customer’ base of students. We need, it seems, to think more critically about the implications of too thoughtlessly buying-in to the nativeimmigrant discourse, to consider more mindfully what its implications are for the ways in which relations between teacher, student and higher education are constituted and understood. A RACIALISED DISCOURSE AND PROBLEMATIC METAPHOR

In the current political climate, talk of immigrants and natives inevitably evokes complexities and anxieties around migration, integration, and racial and cultural difference in Western society. For example, Prensky’s (2001) knowing asides in the article which remains foundational to much ‘native’ and ‘immigrant’ discourse – ‘like all immigrants’ (p. 2), ‘everything we know about cultural migration’ (p. 3) – and his unfailingly negative descriptions of immigrants (‘heavily accented, unintelligible foreigners’, p. 2), though attributed to the ‘natives’ on whose behalf he claims to speak, depend for their comprehensibility and effectiveness on a culturally specific, and xenophobic, understanding of the nature of the immigrant: the discourse of postwar ideological legitimation of racist practices is a complex rhetorical exercise that seeks to establish the superiority of one’s own culture on the basis of ‘principal otherness’ in which ‘presumed biologicalgenetic differences in the post-war period are replaced by differences between cultures, nations or religions represented as homogeneous entities’ (Van der Vilke, 2003, p. 313). (Charteris-Black 2006, p. 566) To extend the metaphor, digital immigrants are constructed as asylum seekers – unable to remain where they were, barely tolerated or openly ridiculed where they must go, ill-suited and unprepared for life in the new country, sentimental and idealistic about the old: ‘You know [Digital Immigrants] by the lame jokes and warnings about urban myths that they still forward to large cc: lists” (Palfrey and Gasser 2008, p. 4); “they cut themselves off… because the language and cultural barriers are too great” (p. 10).

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The terms ‘digital immigrant’ and ‘digital native’ are now in such common usage that it is easy to forget that they are metaphors which, while evocative, risk fixing us into certain habits of thought. There are traces of many other ideas of migration and immigration which can be read in and through the digital native and immigrant discourse – traces attached to language, cultural meanings, and understandings of power. By exploring some of the alternative and additional meanings these metaphors carry with them, we can make room to interrogate, on their own terms, some of the assumptions surrounding the opposition. First, colonists and missionaries are also immigrants, but ones standing in a significantly different power relation to the ‘native’ than the asylum seeker. Taking a post-colonialist position, the traditionally powerful position of the teacher has something in common with the missionary or colonist. As Fenwick (2000) has commented, ‘all of our histories and therefore our experiences and learning are entwined in some way with colonization. Education itself is a colonizing process.’ (p. 258). Herring (2008) broadens this argument, and argues that there is a systematic othering or exoticisation of young people in mainstream media, research and marketing which constructs a ‘net generation’ and then imposes moral and market-driven imperatives on them and the adults who engage with them. Paradoxically perhaps, alongside the assault on the professional standing of the teacher mounted by much of the native-immigrant discourse described above, the ‘native’ learner’s dependence for knowledge on the ‘immigrant’ teacher, and the teacher’s duty to impart it, is retained in much of the literature, and is not presumed to be problematic: Perhaps the persona of the teacher, the presentation of a voice of authority… cannot be easily substituted: nor is there anything able to substitute them. …the education of the future members of the society is a matter that is too important to be left in the hands of applications that obey the laws of the market rather than genuine educational purposes. (Monereo 2004, p. 39) Rather, this power dynamic becomes a question of translation, of phrasing things so that the natives ‘get it’. ‘Content’ (the teacher’s knowledge) and ‘process’ (the shift toward digital textuality, communication and associated epistemologies) are constructed as remaining separate each from the other, so that the potentially radical effects of the digital on the power relations between teacher and student are limited at the same time as they are promoted as being, in market terms, inevitable. This, then, is another impossible position for the immigrant-as-teacher. Much as she has both a duty to change and no possibility of changing, she also now finds she has both to follow her ‘native’ students as they charge into new, de-stabilising digital territories, and to maintain her authority so that she can play her part in preserving social order in an unchanging educational system. Further, all the metaphors which cluster around the native-immigrant opposition carry with them a hidden assumption. If we ask ‘native of where?’, we begin to see that each demands a territory, a nation-state or a landmass. Indeed, in this discourse the digital is an inescapable realm within which there are, at most, more or less fluent ways of being. 165

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When the digital becomes equated with such geo-spatial metaphors and understandings, then we should ask, with Butler (1993) ‘what kinds of constructions are foreclosed through the figuring of this site as outside or beneath construction itself?’ (p. 28). With no meaningful ‘outside’ to the digital, and therefore a minimal amount of agency or choice about whether or how to create or affect digital spaces, the digital ‘native’ and ‘immigrant’ alike are stranded in a world not of their own making. It simply is, determining and beyond the influence or control of individual learners and teachers. A sense of inevitability and powerlessness around this particular construction of the digital perhaps goes some way toward explaining the relatively uncritical adoption of e-learning by some educators, and its violent but equally uncritical rejection by others. For Clegg et al. (2003), such discourses of determinism offer practitioners in higher education only two options, ‘to embrace the new media enthusiastically or to stand aside and watch its inevitable unfolding’ (p. 39).What point is there in thinking things through if we have no choice but to follow wherever the ‘natives’ lead? In addition to the marketised nature of the discourse already discussed, these geo-spatial metaphors may have a role to play in our understanding of the web itself as commodified: If metaphors selectively structure experience, what consequence does the ‘cyberspace as place’ metaphor have for our experience of the internet? Some legal scholars have argued that treating cyberspace as a place has led to the propertisation of the internet, with ominous results. (Olson 2005, p. 12) Other spatial and territorial metaphors – the virtual learning environment as ‘walled garden’, for example (Cousin, 2005), or the notion of the public web as the ‘wild west’ – also invite particular kinds of understandings of safety and risk, ownership and belonging which are rooted in an offline experience we may wish to avoid replicating in our educational projects. Sandford (2006) claims a more active role for an older generation, suggesting first that rather than ‘immigrant’, ‘digital colonist’ would be a better way to describe a generation who were and are the creators of many of the infrastructures the younger generation is immersed in. He goes on to reject the land metaphor entirely, arguing in favour of a less determining position toward technology: ‘there is no brave new world, no new land to conquer: whatever we have, we built ourselves and we can continue to shape ourselves’ (2006, online). De Saille makes a similar claim, saying that: such discourses… code every expansion of the Web into a perpetual act of conquest over a terrain which simply does not exist, either as an imaginary universe or as a material network, until it is created. (De Saille 2006, p. 5) To reframe this for the discussion at hand: the technologies that mediate online learning and teaching do not spring from nowhere, and to abandon the possibility (responsibility?) we have as learners and teachers of shaping the technologies we use (which will inevitably shape us in turn) is to leave ourselves open to those whose interests may be quite different from ours:

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Once a new territory has been colonized, it is handed over to business interests to loot; and the worst elements of the West are posted there to administer and civilize the natives. (Sardar 2000, p. 733) IN CONCLUSION

Our argument is not that changing media environments have no effect on the way in which we are constituted as subjects, and as learners and teachers. Similarly, each new generation of students asks us continually to re-think our understanding of the project and purpose of education, both online and off. Rather, we argue against the reduction of our understanding of these issues to a simplistic binary which contains within itself the structural de-privileging of the teacher, a marketised vision of higher education, a racialised and divisive understanding of student-teacher relationships and an associated series of metaphors which ‘write out’ the possibility of learner and teacher agency in the face of technological change. As teachers, developers and researchers in higher education, we need to become more critical of a discourse which otherwise promises to over-determine our future understanding of the complex relationships between teacher, learner, technology and higher education. NOTES 1

http://www.digitalnative.org/wiki/Main_Page

REFERENCES Amirault, R., & Visser, Y. (2009). The university in periods of technological change: A historically grounded perspective. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 21(1). Barnes, K., Marateo, R., & Pixy Ferris, S. (2007, April/May). Teaching and learning with the net generation. Innovate: Journal of Online Education, 3(4). Retrieved November 15, 2007, from http:// innovateonline.info/index.php?view=artixcle&id=382&action=article Bayne, S. (2005). Deceit, desire and control: The identities of learners and teachers in cyberspace. In R. Land & S. Bayne (Eds.), Education in cyberspace. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Bayne, S. (2006). Networked learning with digital texts. In Networked learning 2006 proceedings. Lancaster University. Retrieved May 20, 2008, from http://www.networkedlearningconference. org.uk/past/nlc2006/abstracts/pdfs/P13%20Bayne.PDF Bennett, S., Maton, K., & Kervin, L. (2008). The ‘digital natives’ debate: A critical review of the evidence. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(5). Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter. London: Routledge. Charteris-Black, J. (2006). Britain as a container: Immigration metaphors in the 2005 election campaign. Discourse and Society, 17. Clegg, S., Hudson, A., & Steel, J. (2003). The emperor’s new clothes: Globalisation and e-learning in higher education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 24(1), 39–53. Cousin, G. (2005). Learning from cyberspace. In R. Land & S. Bayne (Eds.), Education in cyberspace (pp. 117–129). London: Routledge. Davies, B. (2003). Death to critique and dissent? The policies and practices of new managerialism and of ‘Evidence-based practice’. Gender and Education, 15(1). De Saille, S. (2006). A cyberian in the multiverse: Towards a feminist subject position for cyberspace. In Leeds: Thinking gender conference 2006.

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‘DIGITAL NATIVE’ AND ‘DIGITAL IMMIGRANT’ Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. In On the horizon (Vol. 9, No. 5). NCB University Press. Sandford, R. (2006, December 14). Digital post-colonialism. Flux. Retrieved November 8, 2007, from http://flux.futurelab.org.uk/2006/12/14/digital-post-colonialism/ Sardar, Z. (2000). Alt.Civilizations.FAQ: Cyberspace as the darker side of the west. In D. Bell & B. Kennedy (Eds.), The cybercultures reader. London: Routledge. Selwyn, N. (2009). The digital native – myth and reality. Aslib Proceedings, 61(4). Sheely, S. (2008). Latour meets the digital natives: What do we really know. In Proceedings from ASCILITE 2008. Melbourne. Stoerger, S. (2009). The digital melting pot: Bridging the digital native–immigrant divide. First Monday, 14(7). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/ viewArticle/2474/2243 Thompson, J. (2007, April/May). Is education 1.0 ready for web 2.0 students? Innovate: Journal of Online Education, 3(4). Usher, R., & Edwards, R. (1994). Postmodernism and education. London: Routledge.

Siân Bayne and Jen Ross University of Edinburgh, UK

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Sian Bayne is Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Edinburgh, Associate Dean for digital scholarship in the University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences and co-director of the MSc in E-learning programme. Her research is concerned with the ways in which technological change prompts us to re-think what education is and can be. She is co-founder of the Digital Cultures and Education research group (http://www.education.ed.ac.uk/ dice/) and co-editor of Education in Cyberspace (RoutledgeFalmer 2005). Michael Begg is the eLearning Manager within the University of Edinburgh’s College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, where he is also co-theme leader for Medical Informatics on the MBChB programme. He is a Specialist Subject Advisor for gaming and simulation to the Higher Education Academy’s MEDEV subject centre, and chairs the Scottish Deans Medical Education Group’s educational informatics committee. Michael’s research into narrative, immersion and gaming led to the theoretical foundations of Game Informed Learning and played a key role in the development of the Labyrinth virtual patient authoring environment. Axel Bruns is a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCi) and a Senior Lecturer in the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. He is the author of Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage (2008) and Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production (2005), and the editor of Uses of Blogs with Joanne Jacobs (2006; all released by Peter Lang, New York). He blogs about user-led content creation at produsage.org, and more information on his research work can be found on his Website at snurb.info. Bruns is General Editor of M/C – Media and Culture (www.media-culture.org.au). John Cook is Professor of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) at the Learning Technology Research Institute, London Metropolitan University. He has a crossuniversity role of E-Learning Project Leader. John has been part of research and development grant proposals that have attracted £4 million in competitive external funding. In addition, he has published/presented around 200 refereed articles and invited talks in the area of TEL, having a specific interest in four related areas: informal learning, mobile learning, appropriation and ICT Leadership & Innovation. He was Chair/President of the Association for Learning Technology (2004–06) is the Vice-Chair of ALT’s Research Committee. For more information see http:// staffweb.londonmet.ac.uk/~cookj1/ David Dewhurst is Professor of e-learning and Director of Educational Information Services in the College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine, and was formerly Assistant Principal with responsibility for e-learning at The University of Edinburgh. He is an international figure in e-learning research in the bio/medical domain and 171

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has published widely. He directs a number of educational research projects and has supervised several PhDs in this area. He is Director of the Learning Technology Section whose work recently won a Queen’s Anniversary Prizes for Higher and Further Education (2005) for ‘The Virtual Hospital Online – transforming medical and veterinary education’. Rachel Helen Ellaway is the Assistant Dean Informatics and Associate Professor for Education Informatics at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. Previously she was the educational technology lead for medicine and veterinary medicine at the University of Edinburgh and visiting professor in medical education at St George’s, University of London. Her work has spanned all aspects of technology use in healthcare education with a particular focus on simulation and games and on the psychosocial aspects of technology use in education. Dr Ellaway is a principal author of the OpenLabyrinth virtual patient authoring and delivery system and chair of the AFMC Informatics Resource Group. Her work in developing and implementing profession-focused educational systems was recognised in the award of a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education to the University of Edinburgh in 2005, the first such award given to work involving learning technologies. Debbie Holley is a Principal Lecturer with the Faculty of Education at Anglia Ruskin University. Since joining the Higher Education sector from Industry, Debbie has become interested in the use of technology to facilitate learning. Using and creating a variety of multimedia objects within the Blackboard environment she has successfully engaged students with blended learning. Debbie was part of the Reusable Learning Object Centre of Excellence for Teaching and Learning team, a five year HEFCE funded initiative. In her previous role leading Blended Learning development across London Metropolitan University Business School (LMBS) Debbie worked on a series of multi-media projects to transform the undergraduate curriculum (http://drdebbieholley.com). She was awarded a university teaching fellowship for her innovative work. Ray Land is Professor of Higher Education and Director of the Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement (CAPLE) at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. His research interests include educational development, threshold concepts, research-teaching linkages, and theoretical aspects of digital learning. He is the author of Educational Development: Discourse, Identity and Practice (Open University Press 2004) and co-editor of Education in Cyberspace (RoutledgeFalmer 2005), Overcoming Barriers to Student Learning: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge (Routledge 2006), Threshold Concepts within the Disciplines (Sense 2008) Research-Teaching Linkages: Enhancing Graduate Attributes (QAA 2008) and Threshold Concepts and Transformational Learning (Sense 2010). Leah P. Macfadyen is a research associate in Skylight – the Science Centre for Learning and Teaching – in the Faculty of Science at The University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada. Formerly a researcher in UBC’s Distance Educa172

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tion and Technology unit, she developed the interdisciplinary online undergraduate course ‘Perspectives on Global Citizenship’ in 2005, and now co-teaches it through UBC’s Faculty of Arts. Her research interests include the uses of Internet and communication technologies in science education and in international education initiatives. Hamish Macleod has a background in psychology and biology, and is now a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Edinburgh, having taught for a number years in the University’s Department of Psychology. He has spent some time as a member of the University’s Centre for Teaching, Learning & Assessment (the institution’s educational development unit), but is now primarily involved in teaching on the University’s MSc in E-Learning (http://www.education. ed.ac.uk/e-learning/). He has long standing interests in the uses of information technology, particularly computer-mediated communications, social technologies, and digital games, in teaching and learning, and in the question of what it means for a learner to be “digitally literate”. Claire McAvinia is a Learning Technologist in the Centre for Teaching and Learning at NUI Maynooth in Ireland. Her research interests are in educational technology generally, specifically in computer-assisted language learning (CALL), new literacies, and the emerging ‘cultures of use’ of technology amongst students. She has written and published with colleagues in Ireland and the UK on a range of topics in CALL, e-learning, and educational development, and has taught in related areas at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Colleen McKenna is a lecturer in academic literacies in the Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching, University College London, where she leads the Academic Communication Programme. She teaches and publishes in the area of digital literacies, e-learning, and writing in the disciplines. Martin Oliver is a Reader in the London Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education, UK. His research focuses on the use of technology in Higher Education, particular in relation to the way that people’s roles and practices change when technology is adopted. He is an editor of the journal, Learning, Media and Technology, and is currently seconded part-time to the Higher Education Academy, working on the development of its EvidenceNet service (http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/evidencenet). Norbert Pachler is Professor of Education and Pro-Director of Professional Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. Apart from the application of new technologies in teaching and learning, his research interests include teacher education and development and all aspects of foreign language teaching and learning. He has published widely and supervises in these fields. He is the convenor of the London Mobile Learning Group (http://www.london mobilelearning.net), which brings together an international, interdisciplinary group of researchers from the fields of cultural studies, sociology, semiotics, 173

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pedagogy and educational technology. Books in the field of mobile learning include: Pachler, N. (2007) (ed) Mobile learning: towards a research agenda. WLE Centre: London and Vavoula, G., Pachler, N. and Kukulska-Hulme, A. (2009) (eds) Researching mobile learning: frameworks, tools and research designs. Oxford: Peter Lang; and Pachler, N., Bachmair, B. and Cook, J. (2009) Mobile learning: structures, agency, practices. Springer: New York. Karim A. Remtulla is a doctoral candidate the Department of Adult Education and Counselling Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. His research interests include the long-term social, cultural and pedagogical implications of the internet, globalization, pluralism and the digital divide on adults’ civic engagement, democracy and learning in the workplace and civil society. Scholarly publications include: “The knowledge-based economy and e-learning: Critical considerations for workplace democracy” in Convergence, as well as a chapter in P. R. Carr & D. E. Lund’s Doing democracy: Striving for political literacy and social justice entitled “Democracy or digital divide? The pedagogical paradoxes of online activism”. Karim’s recent book is Socio-cultural Impacts of Workplace E-learning: Epistemology, Ontology and Pedagogy (Information Science Reference, 2010). Jen Ross is an associate lecturer, researcher and PhD student based in the School of Education at the University of Edinburgh. She teaches on the MSc in E-learning programme, and conducts research in the areas of online learning, digital identity, reflective practices and cultural and educational institutions online. Maggi Savin-Baden is Professor of Higher Education Research and Coventry University, and Director of the Learning Innovation Research Group. As someone who has always been interested in innovation and change Maggi’s interest in learning has been the focus of her research for many years. Her current research is focussing on the impact of virtual worlds on learning and teaching. Over the last three years she has been developing the method of qualitative research synthesis and recently she gained funding to develop the use of intelligent avatars for problem-based learning in virtual worlds. To date she has published six books on problem-based learning; and another entitled Learning Spaces (McGraw Hill). An Introduction to Qualitative Research Synthesis (Routledge) and New Approaches to Qualitative Research: Wisdom and Uncertainty (Routledge) were published in 2010. Christine Sinclair is a lecturer in academic practice at the University of Strathclyde. Her main research interest is use of language in relation to student learning and she explores this through direct experience of being a student. This has led her to undertake courses in mechanical engineering and in e-learning to supplement her background in philosophy and education. She is the author of two books for students: Understanding University: a guide to another planet (2006) and Grammar: a friendly approach (2nd edition 2010), both published by the Open University Press. Christine has an ambivalent relationship with her Second Life avatar, Christine Sanders, who 174

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was acquired through participation in the MSc in e-learning at the University of Edinburgh. Cate Thomas was formerly Project Director at Kingston University, Kingston upon Thames in London, UK, where she headed the KUBIS project (Kingston University Business Interaction with SMEs) which promoted online social networking for small businesses. She has recently been appointed as Academic Director for UEA London, the University of East Anglia’s new London base established to enhance the employability of UEA graduates, raise the University’s international profile and foster links with influential government and business communities in the capital.

175

INDEX

A academic writing. See writing accessibility, 64 accreditation, 73–81, 142, 143 Adam, B., 65 adult education, 115, 116, 120, 121, 124, 125, 127 affective factors 'beginner's mind,' 17, 20 embodiment, 5, 32, 33, 97 fear, 7, 19, 20, 23, 124, 154 agency, 98, 146–151, 154, 156, 162, 166, 167 aging, 126 Alexander, B., 63, 73, 74 alignment analysis, 76–78 Amirault, R., 162 Anansi, 17, 18, 25 Anderson, T., 16, 122 animations, 47, 57 Antonesa, M., 58 appropriation, 145–156 archiving, 6, 7 argumentation, 45, 47, 48, 56, 58, 105 Ashworth, P., 19 assessment, 16, 41, 94, 105, 106, 142, 154 assignments, 30, 38, 45, 48, 54, 56–58, 84 assimilation, definition, 147 audience-writer relationship, 45 authority, student-teacher relationship, 19, 22, 167 authorship, 4, 9, 61–63, 66–67 avatars, 30, 40, 41, 50 avoidance, 40, 41

Bakardjieva, M., 148, 155 Bakhtin, M. M., 56 Baldwin-Evans, K., 115, 124, 126 Barnes, K., 159, 162 Barnett, R., 63, 64 Barthes, R., 9 Baudrillard, J., 117–119, 125, 126 Bayne, Siân, xii, 15, 24, 30, 35, 61, 62, 69, 97, 159, 163 Becker, H. S., 80 BeCTA, 103 beep-a-tutor, 164 Begg, Michael, x, 73 beginner's mind, 17, 20 Benkler, Y., 137, 141 Bereano, P., 80 Berk, R. A., 21, 22 Berners-Lee, Tim, 136 Bierema, L. L., 115, 127 Biographic Narrative Interpretative Method (BNIM), 101, 104–105 Birchall, C., 13 Blakemore, C., vii blogging, 38, 45, 148 BNIM. See Biographic narrative interpretative method (BNIM) Bolter, J. D., 45, 46, 58 Bradley, C., 145, 148, 151, 154, 155 brain, effect of internet use on, vii Brodie, Michael L., 146 Brookfield, S. D., 95, 98 Brooks, K., 47 Brown, J. S., 81 Bruns, Axel, xii, 133, 134, 136, 142 Burbules, N., 47 Butler, J., 166 C C5C capacities, 138, 142 Calvin, W. H., 20

B Bachmair, B., 147, 148, 153, 154 177

INDEX

capital, 119, 125, 126, 136, 139, 141 Carliner, S., 126 Carr, N., vii Carroll, J., 149, 150, 151 Carter, L., 47 Carusi, A., 57, 58 Carvin, A. 102 case studies, 47, 104–110 Castells, M., 141 casual collapse, 141, 142 censorship, 4 change, management of, 121 Charteris-Black, J., 164 citizenship, 83–99 Clegg, S., 163, 166 cognitive development, 89, 94 collaborative learning, 62, 67 colonists, 165, 166 communicative skills, 140 community service, 89 constructivism, definition, 116, 122 content production, 133 Continuing Medical Education (CME) application, 120 Cook, John, xii, 145 Corbett, J. M., 81 Corbin, J., 87 Cornford, J., 76 course content, 94, 98 Cousin, G., 166 creativity, 22, 35, 59, 65, 141 critical attention, 18, 19, 25 critical pedagogy, 16, 19 critical thinking skills, 84, 95 culture and learning needs, 115, 116, 121, 122 enterprise culture, 163 curriculum development, 84 Cutting, J., 38

Dede, C., 163 Definition, 4, 15, 40, 41, 92, 145–147, 150, 155, 156 Deleuze, G., 11, 37 Denzin, N. K., 31 DeRouin, R. E., 116, 121, 126 Derrida, Jacques, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 161 devil's advocate, 19, 25 Dewey, J., 24, 96 Dewhurst, David, x, 75 Dickson, M., 47 digital learning and academic culture, 62, 73 and the digital divide, 101–112 attitudes to, vii, 110 literacy, 46, 56–58, 61, 102, 103, 116, 124, 154, 156 digital media, influence on publishing, 48 digital natives, 58, 160, 161 discourse norms face-to-face contexts, 95 Multi-User Domains (MUDs), 54, 55 Second Life ix, 19, 29, 33, 36, 38, 39 wikis, 62 discussion and tutoring style, 15 intercultural communication, 10 disembodiment, and identity, 33 dissonance, 74, 80, 91, 94, 96 distanciation, 68–69 diversity, 83–85, 121, 160 Dolar, M., 3 Dourish, P., 147, 148 Dreyfus, H. L., 36, 96, 98 Dubrovsky, B. J., 15, 19 Duguid, P., 81

D De Saille, S., 166 death, and the digital self, 6, 9, 13, 64

E e-learning definition, 115 in workplace training, 121

178

INDEX

E-portfolios, 35 Edmundson, M., 22 Education access issues, 101, 102 aims of, 83 and politics, 73 efficiency, workplace training, 121, 127 Elbow, Peter, 87 elicitation techniques, 79 Ellaway, Rachel, x, 73 Ellis, A., 115, 126 Ellsworth, E., 19, 40 emails, archiving, 6, 7 embodiment, and identity, 32 engagement, 15, 16, 20, 38–39, 76, 83, 96, 98, 110–112, 136, 137, 139, 147, 163 enterprise culture, 163 equality, 16 equality, in online environment, 3, 48, 62, 108, 110, 112, 139 Eriksen, T. H., 64, 65 essays, definition, 47 ethical issues, 83 exclusion (digital divide), 101 Eyler, J., 83, 89, 90, 94, 96 F face-to-face teaching (f2f), 95 Facebook, 68, 74, 78, 79, 134, 135 fast time, 10, 64, 65, 67, 68. See also speed, and power fear, 7, 19, 20, 23, 124 feedback, 57, 84, 86, 87, 93, 96, 135, 139 Felman, S., 12 Fenwick, T., 165 Flanders, Michael, 21 Fool, 16–20, 22–25 Ford Motor Company, 121 Fosnot, C. T., 122, 123 Foucault, M., 9, 11 Freire, P., 83 Freud, Sigmund, 3, 4, 7

G games, 33–35, 39, 67, 136, 152 Garrison, D. R., 16 Gasco, J. L., 115, 116, 120, 126 Gasser, U., 160, 164 Geertz, C., 30 Generation C, 134, 135, 137, 138, 140–143 genre-switching, 54–56 Giddens, A., 68 Giles, D. E., Jr., 83, 89, 90, 94, 96 Gilovich, T., 21 global citizenship, 83–99 globalisation, 61, 64, 109, 163 Gonzalez, M. R., 115, 116, 120, 126 Goodfellow, R., 45, 56, 58, 159 graduate skills (C5C capacities), 138 Graham, G., 80 Gray, J., 73, 74 group work, 106 Guaterri, F., 37 Gulati, S., 122, 123 H Hargittai, E., 103 Hartley, J., 135 Harun, M. H., 115, 116, 120, 126 Hase, S., 115, 126 hauntings, 3, 6 Hayles, N. K., 63 HE policy, 80, 102 Heidegger, M., 146 Helsper, E., 160 Hemmi, A., 63, 66, 69 Herring, S., 165 Hewling, Anne, x, 83 higher education policy, 102 Holley, Debbie, xi Honey, P., 115, 126 humour, 21, 22, 25, 54–57 Husserl, Edmund, 146 hyperreality, 118, 119 hypertexts argumentation, 45, 47, 48, 56–58 authorship, 62 179

INDEX

I Ideas in Cyberspace Education (ICE) symposia, viii, 78 identity and embodiment, 32, 33 and power, 48, 76, 150 in liminal spaces, 30 redefinition of, 163 Second Life 19, 33, 36, 39 ideology critique, 95 images 49û56, 35, 48, 51, 54, 56–58, 66, 118, 122 immortality, and the digital self, 8 implosion, 118, 119, 121, 122 Industry Canada, 115, 126, 127 informal learning, xii, 134, 145–156. See also collaborative learning information literacy, 58 informational learning, definition, 88 Ingraham, B., 45, 46, 57, 59 innovation, political issues, 75 institutions. See universities intellectual property rights, 9, 141 intercreativity, definition, 136 intercultural communication, 96, 118 international students, 86, 96 internet access issues, 107, 109 and identity, 9 control of, 166 cultural effects, 61 neurobiological effects of use, vii interviews, 31, 46, 89, 124 Issroff, K., 149, 151 Ivanic, R., 47 J Jacobs, J., 73, 76 Jacucci, G., 153 Jenkins, H., 137, 141 Jester, 16–19, 21, 22, 24, 25 JISC, 146, 160, 163 jobs, standardization of, 122 Jones, A., 149, 151 Jung, Carl, 23 180

K Kegan, R., 88 Kellner, D., 117, 118 Kelly, G., 78, 79 King, A., 16 King, P. M., 89, 90, 91 Kitchener, K. S., 89, 90, 91 knowledge economy, access issues, 102 knowledge, restructuring, 24 Kolb, D., 45, 46, 49, 56, 58 Kress, Gunther, vii, viii, 47, 58, 59, 61, 116 L Lacan, J., 3, 6, 8, 11, 13 Land, Ray, vii, ix, x, xiii, 15, 23, 35, 36, 38, 40, 45, 61–69, 73, 83, 96, 101, 115, 133, 145, 159 Landow, G., 45, 61, 62 Lanham, R., 18 Lea, M., 45, 47, 56, 58, 159 Leadbeater, C., 133 learner agency, 146, 148 learner-generated context, definition, 153, 154 learning styles, 116 learning technologists, role of, 80 Lévy, 98, 140 Lewin, Kurt, 20 life worlds, 146, 150, 156 Lillis, T., 45, 47, 103 liminality, 18, 22, 23, 31, 32, 38, 40, 41, 67, 69 Lincoln, Y., 30 Livingstone, D. W., 115, 116 Llopis, J., 115, 116, 120, 126 Loader, B., 102, 103 Long, S. A., 159, 162 LoSchiavo, F., 22 lurking, 29–41 M Macfadyen, Leah, x, 83 Macleod, Hamish, x, ix, 15, 73, 75

INDEX

Maddison, S., 16 Mazzolini, M., 16 McAvina, Claire, ix, 45 McKenna, C., 45, 57 McKenna, Colleen, ix, 45, 57 McWilliam, E. L., 162, 163 metaphor and teaching styles, 166 methodology, 29–31, 87, 102, 111, 126, 127 Meyer, J. H. F., 23, 38, 40, 67 Mezirow, J., 93–96, 98 Miller, P., 133 missionaries, 165 mobile learning, definition, 145, 146, 156 mobile technology, 149 models, 19, 21, 77, 78, 80, 84, 93, 118, 135–137, 141–143, 151, 153 Monereo, C., 160, 165 motivation, 29, 93, 112, 120, 124, 138, 141 Mraovic, B., 112 MUDs. See Multi-User Domains (MUDs) Muller, J. P., 6 Multi-User Domains (MUDs), 52 multimodal documents argumentation, 47, 48 N narrative inquiry, 29–31 Nasrudin (Nasreddin), 19–21, 24 native vs. immigrant metaphor, 164–167 neo-liberalism, 64, 105 Neuberger, Joseph, 14 neurobiological effects of internet use, vii Newton, D., 115, 126 noise, 32. See also silence Nolan, D., 76 noncepts, 15–25 Novello, Don, 65

O O'Reilly, T., 63 Oblinger, D., 159, 160, 163, 164 Oliver, Martin, xi, 101 Olson, K., 166 online experiences and equality, 16 ethical issues, 83 impact on real life, 32 Second Life, 19 online teaching. See teaching methods ontology, definition, 146 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 102 oscillation, 38, 40, 67 Otto, B., 17 Oulasvirta, A., 153 over-engagement, 39–41 Owen, M., 160 P Pachler, Norbert, xii, 145, 147, 148, 151, 153–156 Palfrey, J., 160, 164 Palmer, John, 22 Parks Daloz, L. A., 96 PDP. See personal development planning (PDP) Perkins, D., 23, 39, 67 Perry, W. G., 21, 116 personal construct analysis, 78–79 personal development planning (PDP), 38 personalisation, 146, 149, 152 Perspectives on Global Citizenship (course), 83–85, 97, 99 Peterson, B., 19 Phillips, D. C., 123 Phipps, A., 32 Piaget, J., 24, 89, 147, 154 Piattelli-Palmarini, M., 21 plagiarism, 37 Poe, Edgar Allan, 6, 8, 12, 13 181

INDEX

political alignment analysis, 76–78 Politics, 73, 83, 85, 86, 118 Pollitt, D., 115, 116, 121, 126 Pollock, N., 75, 76 Popkewitz, T. S., 125 portfolios, 34, 35 Poster, M., 3, 9, 98 postmodernism, and virtual reality, 9, 51, 54, 117–119, 126, 127 Potter, A., 103 Power and speed, 11, 61, 64 student-student relationships, 47 student-teacher relationship, 19, 22, 167 preliminal variation, definition, 38 Prensky, M., 58, 159, 164 Prinsloo, M., 103 print culture, 61–62, 64, 68 problem-based learning, 16 problem-solving skills, 89, 90 productivity, 115, 119, 124–127, 148 produsers, 134, 136–138, 141, 142 professional development, 162, 163 public vs. private space, 6, 8–10, 63, 68 publishing, impact of digital media on, 9, 48 Purloined Letter, The (short story), 3, 6, 11–13 Q qualitative research methods, 30 R racism, 164–167 real life (RL), impact of online experiences, 5, 39 reflective learning, 90 reflexivity, 23, 30, 64, 146 reliability, 61, 63 Remtulla, Karim, xi, 115 repurposing, 69, 74 research methodology. See methodology 182

research studies, 87 Richardson, W. J., 6 RL. See real life (RL), impact of online experiences Ross, Jen, ix, xii, 15, 159 Roszak, T., 19 Royle, N., 3, 7 Russell, G., 47 Ryle, G., 30 S Salas, E., 116, 126 Salovaara, A., 153 Sanders, Christine (avatar), ix, 29, 39, 40, 174 Sandford, R., 166 Sardar, Z., 167 Savin-Baden, Maggi, ix, 29 Scarborough, H., 81 schools, 59, 146, 156 Schwebke, Shobhana, 21 Secker, J., 58 Second life, 19, 29, 33, 36, 38–41, 51, 64, 143 Second Wind (avatar), ix, 29, 30, 33, 40 Selwyn, N., 103, 160 seminars, 30, 48, 68, 101, 109 Sennett, R., 76 service learning, 89, 96 Sessums, C., 24 Shakespearean fools, 17, 22 Sharples, M., 145 Sheely, S., 161 silence implications of, 37 Simpson, O., 16, 57 simulations, xi, 65, 117–120, 127. See also virtual (online) experiences Sinclair, Christine, ix, 29, 39 Sinfield, S., 103 SkillSoft, 124, 127 slow time, 64–65, 68 Smith, J. R., 17, 23

INDEX

social media social norms, 149, 153, 155 sound, in multimodal documents, 56, 57 space 'death of geography,' 64 'digital native' metaphor, 159, 166 and access issues, 101 public vs. private, 10, 64, 68 Spark, M., 13 speed, and power, 61, 64 Spender, D., 62 Stald, G., 147, 149, 150, 156 Stambor, Z., 22 Strate, L., 65 Strauss, A., 87, 160 Street, B., 47 stuckness, 29, 32–37, 40, 41, 67 students access issues, 101 attitudes to digital learning, vii feedback, 57, 84, 86, 87, 93, 96 group assignments, 48, 54, 58, 84 learner agency, 147, 148 student-teacher relationship, 19, 22, 167 study space, 65, 68, 105, 107, 110, 111 Suzuki, S., 20 Swain, H., 5, 13 T Tapscott, D., 74 Taylor, J., 145 teaching methods 'top tips,' 25 constructivist approach, 30 critical thinking skills, 18 discussion, 5 face-to-face vs. online, 95 games, 35 influence of technology on, 156 peer teaching, 155 student-teacher relationship, 19, 22, 167

technical competence, importance of, 48–51 Tegano, D. W., 21 Telefonica, 120 TeleHealth project (Malaysia), 120 Tennant, M., 93 Thomas, Cate, viii, 3 threshold concepts definition, 67 time management, 124 time, and speed, 64, 65, 67 Tinto, V., 16 Toffler, Alvin, 20, 135 training, 87, 115, 116, 120–122, 124, 125, 127, 133 transformative learning, 83, 89, 93–99 Trendwatching.com, 134, 141 Trickster, 16–18, 23–25 truth, and authority, 18, 19 Turkle, S., 15, 23 Turner, J., 23, 47 tutoring, 15. See also teaching methods typology, 146, 147, 151–156 U Uncanny, The, 3–4, 6, 7, 8, 13 unfreezing, 21 Universities challenges to, 81 working practices, 76, 79 user-led development, 135 V values, 20, 76, 84, 88, 94, 103, 105, 107, 108, 111, 116, 120, 147, 163 Van Leeuwen, Theo, 58 Vavoula, G., 145 violence (in games), 20, 33, 34, 161 Virilio, P., 61, 64 virtual (online) experiences and equality, 16 ethical issues, 83 impact on real life, 32 183

INDEX

Second Life, 19 virtual learning environments (VLEs), 78, 101 virtual reality, definition, 51, 54, 117–119, 126, 127 Visser, Y., 162 VLEs, 30, 35, 78, 81, 101 von Hippel, E., 133 W Warschauer, M., 103 Waskul, D., 31, 40 Waycott, J., 149, 151 Web 2.0 technologies influence on writing styles, 80 WebGrid elicitation tool, 81 Welsford, E., 18, 19 Wengraf, T., 104, 105 widening participation, 112. See also equality Wikimedia foundation, 134, 142

184

wikis, 5, 15, 19, 62, 63, 66, 67, 74, 78, 139 Willeford, W., 20 Williams, A. D., 74, 84 Winner, L., 76, 80 Wood, Jean, 22 work-life balance, 134 working practices, 76, 79 workplace training, 116, 121, 124, 125, 127 writing and authorship, 9 and humour, 55, 57 argumentation, 45, 47, 48, 56 assessment of, 103 genre-switching, 55 influence of audience, 57 influence of Web 2.0 technologies, 80 Z Zizek, S., 5, 14