Different voices, different bodies: presence–absence in the digital university
Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: The move to digital, and now hybrid, education has defamiliarised teaching practices and unsettled experiences of what it means to be and to engage at university. In this article, I examine what new questions evolving teaching and learning practices provoke with regards rethinking notions of the body, and concepts of presence and absence. Interweaving theories of performativity, of strangeness, and of agency as a cutting together/apart, I explore a specific example of online course design, a Small Private Online Course. I consider the dispersed and fragmented subjects and bodies that evade enclosure within the course, and the ontological implications for thinking about how subjects, bodies and materialities are cut, performed and made strange: what it means to ‘be online’. I suggest that such a rethinking is necessary if we are to meaningfully conceptualise engagement, and to move beyond limited, but durable, assumptions that pervade contemporary discussions around digital learning.
Source: Learning Media and Technology
Author: Karen Gravett
Institution: University of Surrey
Language: English
Subfield: Information Systems
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4310278143