Learning, technologies, and time in the age of global neoliberal capitalism

Though diverse in nature, the articles in this collection discuss both socio-cultural and temporal transformations linked to technology and learning and can be classified into three broad themes. The first theme is interested in temporal experiences within time and learning; the second theme is about practical implementations of these concerns, and the third theme inquires into relationships between our understanding of time and human nature. In many articles, the boundaries between these themes are blurred and fluid. Yet, this general classification does indicate the present state of the art in studies of time, technology and education

A matter of trust and identity: some university teachers’ responses to the increased use of information technology in their working environment

This is a qualitative study into university teachers’ responses to e-learning technology (eLT), situated within the debate about how greater use of eLT might affect universities’ role in Society. The context is the increased use of eLT in Higher Education and its promotion by various stakeholders. Its effect on students has been well researched but less may be found relating to teachers. The movement may therefore be insufficiently informed about eLT’s effect on university teachers, leading to potentially negative consequences. My methodology, inspired by Kvale’s traveller/researcher metaphor, is based on interviews and thematic analyses of their transcripts. Participants’ reactions to the technologies they use are explored in semi-structured, in-depth interviews where the interviewees describe their feelings on a range of issues related to their use of eLT. Through these conversations I find that, whilst most of the interviewees see themselves as technophiles, they are nonetheless experiencing issues which could adversely affect their teaching. I group these into three themes: control, privacy and knowledge ownership and explore how they may be interrelated through underlying ‘meta-themes’ related to teachers’ feelings of identity and trust. I also discover that many of these feelings are not overt, even to the teachers concerned, but only become apparent in certain circumstances. The implications are that critical decisions about technology and teachers’ wellbeing, if taken only on the strength of surveys or structured interviews, may be ill founded and lead to unwelcome consequences. I conclude that teachers’ responses to eLT need to be understood from a plural perspective, including considerations of trust and identity, if eLT-based practices are to be successfully introduced into Higher Education. If teachers lose their trust (in their students, management or peers) and question their professional identity, their ability to give of their best to their teaching may suffer, with potentially detrimental effects on the sector

Digital natives: imagining the millennial in contemporary fiction

Generational labels, e.g. ‘millennial’, provide a shorthand for conceptualising social change over time. The notion that a particular generation are ‘digital natives’ offers representable solidity for writers seeking to depict how today’s digital media technologies shape individuals and societies in increasingly complex, obscured, and unpredictable ways. Synthesising literary and media theory, this thesis examines how recent novels construct, complicate and subvert techno-generational frameworks for representing social change. Chapters offer analyses of Jonathan Franzen and Nathan Hill’s fixations on digital natives from self-consciously ‘elder’ perspectives; Tao Lin and Olivia Sudjic’s use of ‘flat’ aesthetics to represent the affective perspectives of the ‘digital native’; Natasha Stagg and Tony Tulathimutte’s efforts to apprehend emergent material relations in digital platform capitalism; and Tommy Orange’s enunciation of an indigenous digitality. Acknowledging limitations in popular use of the term, this thesis approaches the ‘digital native’ as a performative identity. Literary engagements with techno-generational frameworks do not only reflect pre-existing realities but play an active role in producing new social identities. They demonstrate that debates over generational labels in contemporary cultural discourse—particularly among those who might otherwise be described as ‘middle class’—produce models of social identification that frame a fast-changing and increasingly digital socioeconomic milieu

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2007 Annunal Edition

This bibliography lists citations of English-language articles, books and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet. Most sources have been published from 1990 through 2007; however, a limited number of key sources published prior to 1990 are also included

Virtual potentialities : teenagers’ stories about social media

Social media – and particularly social media as accessed through smartphones – transform certain aspects of spatio-temporality. Features such as continually editable ‘stories’, content which is initially ephemeral but may be screenshotted and saved, and dynamic, shifting, global networks of users all contribute to an arena in which multiple possibilities for what may happen are always present. This thesis conceptualises this spatio-temporality as ‘virtual potentialities’, and uses that as a conceptual framework to explore how forty-seven UK teenagers navigate gender in social media, focusing specifically on Snapchat and Instagram. It draws on data collected from interviews and observations across four UK youth clubs, mapping the stories teenagers told about their social media practices, and how these are gendered, and gendering. These stories are analysed thematically across chapters focusing on: bodies and self-representation; intimacy and relationships; and risk management practices. In doing so, this thesis argues that social media must be understood as environments of ambivalence and contradiction, where teen users’ agency and vulnerability exist in tension with each other. Whilst factors such as the power and motivations of social media companies, or the nefarious intentions of social media strangers, may act as minor disciplining forces on teen social media users, by far the most powerful such forces are other social media users