spaces, places and technologies: can we know, value and shape policy to provide what students need...
DESCRIPTION
Values can be espoused; they can be enacted; but they can also be represented in the way that structures and systems are created (Feenberg, 1999). Students’ engagement with Higher Education is shaped in important ways by the spaces in which they study, the resources they work with and the materials they produce, things that are widely overlooked in educational research (Fenwick, Edwards & Sawchuk, 2011). This lack of scrutiny limits our ability to understand the values of higher education, and how they vary not only by discipline but also setting – which is an issue, since technologies (including resources and designed spaces) are so much more durable than talk or action in the way that they shape society (Latour, 1999). In this paper, we report on a research project that explored sociomaterial aspects of students’ experiences of learning. 12 students (3 each of PGCE students, Masters’ students, Doctoral students and Masters’ students studying at a distance) undertook multimodal journaling over a period of 9 months to document the ways in which they used resources, technologies and spaces to be ‘digitally literate’, in order to achieve success in their studies. In addition to generating images, videos and field notes, the students were each interviewed three or more times to generate accounts of their studies. The analysis of this dataset showed how markedly different ‘success’ was, in terms of resources and practices, to different students. It demonstrated that the phrase, “the student experience”, is misleadingly singular: students’ experiences varied considerably. It also revealed where and when their learning was or was not valued. Examples of such situations will be provided, to show how the configuration of spaces, technologies and other resources affects students’ ability to succeed in their studies, and what individuals did to overcome these. Finally, we will illustrate how these issues relate to institutional policy making, looking at an example of how evidence about student experience does (and does not) link through to institutional action.TRANSCRIPT
Spaces, places and technologiesCan we know, value and shape policy to provide what students need to support their digital literacy practices?
Martin Oliver & Lesley GourlayInstitute of Education
Values and technology
Theorising technology and valuesDesign is socially relative: it incorporates social terms of reference
Where design prefers particular groups, social injustice arises
Dominant technical codes, and the over-determination of action: managerial control
‘Room for maneuver’ as necessary and desirable in designs
Feenberg (e.g. 2010)
The ‘margin of maneuver’
Power expresses itself in plans which inevitably require implementation by those situated in the tactical exteriority. But no plan is perfect; all implementation involves unplanned actions in what I call the “margin of maneuver” of those charged with carrying it out. In all technically mediated organizations margin of maneuver is at work, modifying work pace, misappropriating resources, improvising solutions to problems and so on. Technical tactics belong to strategies as implementation belongs to planning. (Feenberg, 1998: 113)
How can we work with this?
What is the evidence base on which we are designing our IT infrastructure, training programme, curricula, etc?
To what extent does this evidence show what students actually value?
Not just whether they like some broad category of provision we have designed
Not just selections from a list of our guesses
Not just what they say they value
Developing a sociomaterial account of studying
Sociomateriality
Humans, and what they take to be their learning and social process, do not float, distinct, in container-like contexts of education, such a classrooms or community sits, that can be sits, that can be conceptualised and dismissed as simply a wash of material stuff and spaces. The things that assemble these contexts, and incidentally the actions and bodies including human ones that are part of these assemblages, are continuously acting upon each other to bring forth and distribute, as well as to obscure and deny, knowledge.
(Fenwick et al, 2011)
Universities and textual practices
Removing the agency of texts and tools in formalising movements risks romanticising the practices as well as the humans in them; focusing uniquely on the texts and tools lapses into naïve formalism or techno-centrism.
Leander and Lovvorn (2006:301), quoted in Fenwick et al (p104)
Reflexive relationship between textual media and knowledge practices in higher education (Kittler 2004)Need to explore ramifications of devices & digitally mediated semiotic practices on meaning making
The research
Digital Literacies as a Postgraduate Attribute?• JISC Developing Digital
Literacies Programme • Focus groups / multimodal
journalling in year 1PGCE, taught Masters, taught Masters (Distance), PhD
• Case studies in year 2:Academic Writing Centre
Learning Technologies Unit
Library
Moving on from taxonomies
“Digital literacy defines those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society.” (Beetham, 2010)
Four-tier framework:Access
Skills
Social practices
Identity
…towards digital academic practice • Academic practices are
overwhelming textual• These are situated in social
and disciplinary contexts• Textual practices are
increasingly digitally mediated
• These practices take place across a range of domains
• Students create complex assemblages enrolling a range of digital, material, spatial and temporal resources
Why it’s not all about technologies
Complex resourcesNeither all ‘institutional’, nor personal
Office tools (primarily Microsoft, plus Google docs and Prezi)
Institutional VLEs (Moodle and Blackboard)
Email (institutional, personal and work-based)
Synchronous conferencing services (Skype, Elluminate)
Calendars (iCal, Google)
Search engines and databases (including Google, Google Scholar, library databases, professional databases such as Medline, etc),
Social networking sites (Facebook, Academia.edu, LinkedIn) and services (Twitter)
Image editing software (photoshop, lightbox)
Endnote
Reference works (Wikipedia, online dictionaries and social bookmarking sites such as Mendeley)
GPS services
Devices (PCs at the institution and at home, laptops including MacBooks, iPhones, iPads, Blackberries and E-book readers).
A taxonomic list would be problematicTime specific (and rapidly dated)
Unfeasibly long
Containing much that’s irrelevant for individuals
Digital literacy as a kind of coping
Personal and situated, not monolithic and general
“The student experience”
No evidence that the student experience is singular
Marked differences in experiences and priorities across the four groups
PGCE, MA students, PhD students, Online masters’ students
Coping with whiteboards and staff room politics of access; using the VLE to access materials; library databases; using the VLE to create a sense of community (…and Skype behind the scenes…)
Professional, personal, study
Orientations
Yuki: ‘curation’
For example when I attend a lecture or a session I always record the session, and it’s after the session, but sometimes I listen to the lecture again to confirm my knowledge or reflect the session...when I, for example we’re writing an essay and I have to...confirm what the lecturer said, I could confirm with the recording data. (Yuki Interview 1)
Sally: ‘combat’
I was like bullied into it by people saying, oh, you’ll be left behind if you don’t use Facebook. So yes, that was when I got into it, so... And then... so now I would say Facebook, I’m not the most... like I said to you in the focus group, I’m a bit uncomfortable about the whole kind of like Big Brother aspect. (Sally Interview 1)
I feel like, also that Google is equally watching you. You know, they’re all watching you, they’re all trying to sell you things, and the thing is not, I don’t so much mind being bombarded with advertising as I mind having things put about me on things like Facebook that I don’t want. You know, I don’t want my friends to spy on me, I don’t want my friends to know what I listen to on YouTube. (Sally Interview 1)
Faith: ‘coping’
In my school, I… we had… our staff room was equipped… one, two, three, four, five, six, seven… seven computers now we can use and only one of them attached with a printer. So, actually we’ve got six PGC students over there, so it’s, kind of, everybody wants to get to that computer where you can use the printer. Yes, so in the end I found actually I can also use the printer from the library in the school.
So, six student teachers tried to use other computer. So, it, kind of, sometimes feels a bit crowded. And when the school staff want to use it, well, okay, it seems like we are the invaders, intruders?
Spaces
Yuki
Japanese, female in her 40s, MA student
For me the most important thing is portability, because I use technologies, ICT, everywhere I go, anywhere I go. For example of course I use some technologies, PCs and laptops and my iPad in the IOE building, and in the IOE building I use PC, I use them in PC room, in library, and for searching some data or journals. In the lecture room I record my, record the lectures and taking memos by that.
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ActivityMap out where you undertake your work
Now discuss…
Are spaces associated with particular times or patterns?
Which spaces do you feel in control of? Where do you feel supported?
Are there spaces where you avoid undertaking certain kinds of work? Why?
Identity
Managing the separation and integration of personal, professional and study places
Email accounts
Social network profiles
etc
One of the challenges of undertaking an online course is that most probably you will do this alongside ‘other’ activities such as a job or other. As a result you end up with multiple email addresses and different folders, files and docs in your computer. I am finding that one needs to be very organised and a practical thinker in order to: retrieve the information you need, navigate between one and in the other. (Lara email)
ActivityWhat identities are you having to manage?
Where on your map do you do these? (Do they stay where you want them?)
Texts
Yuki’s booksFrom print to digital and back again
“The bathroom is a good place to read”
Digitally connected texts in a very embodied setting – neither ‘virtual’ nor ‘real’ (Jurgenson 2012)
ActivityPick a text, and trace…
Where did it come from?Where did you take it? When did it become digital, and when printed?What did you turn it into?
Wrapping up
Research summary
Complex, constantly shifting set of practices
Permeated with digital mediation
Strongly situated / contingent on the material
Distributed across human /nonhuman actors
Texts are restless, constantly crossing apparent boundaries of human/nonhuman, digital/analogue, here/not here, now/not now
How we have acted on the evidence
Reshaping policyIT User Group: increasing diversity through representation from the four student groups
Desktop/hardware provision: describing academic work to ensure policy reflects practice
Developing practiceDevelopment of synchronous audio conference support for academic writing
Development of adaptive library resources (LibGuides)
Project blog: http://diglitpga.jiscinvolve.org/wp/
Project webpage: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/developingdigitalliteracies/DigLitPGAttribute.aspx
Project contacts:Lesley Gourlay ([email protected])Martin Oliver ([email protected])
ReferencesFeenberg, A. (1999) Questioning Technology. London: Routledge.
Feenberg, A. (2010) Between reason and experience: essays in technology and modernity. London: MIT Press.
Fenwick, T., Edwards,R. & Sawchuk, P. (2011) Emerging Approaches to Educational Research: Tracing the Sociomaterial. London: Routledge.
JISC (2012) Digital Literacies as a Postgraduate Attribute? http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/developingdigitalliteracies/DigLitPGAttribute.aspx [Accessed 30 June 2012]
Jurgenson, N. (2012) When atoms meet bits: Social Media, the Mobile Web and Augmented Revolution. Future Internet, 4, 83-91.
Kittler, F. (2004). Universities: wet, hard, soft, and harder. Critical Enquiry 31(1): 244-255.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.