Displaced but not replaced: the impact of e-learning on academic identities in higher education.

Challenges facing universities are leading many to implement institutional strategies to incorporate e-learning rather than leaving its adoption up to enthusiastic individuals. Although there is growing understanding about the impact of e-learning on the student experience, there is less understanding of academics’ perceptions of e-learning and its impact on their identities. This paper explores the changing nature of academic identities revealed through case study research into the implementation of e-learning at one UK university. By providing insight into the lived experiences of academics in a university in which technology is not only transforming access to knowledge but also influencing the balance of power between academic and student in knowledge production and use, it is suggested that academics may experience a jolt to their ‘trajectory of self’ when engaging with e-learning. The potential for e-learning to prompt loss of teacher presence and displacement as knowledge expert may appear to undermine the ontological security of their academic identity

A history of the convergence of ethnography, cultural studies and digital media

Book review: A history of the convergence of ethnography, cultural studies and digital medi

Their memory:exploring veterans’ voices, virtual reality and collective memory

This paper focuses on the virtual reality (VR) project Their Memory and details the development and evaluation of virtual reality environments and experiences with respect to its impact on young people (14-35 demographic) with the narratives of veterans in Scotland. As part of the AHRC Immersive Experiences program, Their Memory was created to explore how game design techniques and immersive technology could be used to enhance existing historical research and enrich narratives to bring expansive experiences to hard-to-reach audiences. The project worked directly with the veterans’ charity, Poppyscotland, to create an environment and experience that would resonate with new audiences, and explore documentary and storytelling techniques for the commemoration of war and conflict. The design of the project evolved through co-design sessions with veterans and young people and culminated in the creation of a short, thought-provoking, narrative-driven experience. The VR experience enabled players to connect with the memories of veterans in Scotland and exploring the different conflicts or situations they experienced and how they make sense of them. The project brought together cross-sector expertise to research how immersive experiences can help memory-based organizations in engaging with wider audiences, raise awareness, and diversify current learning outputs. The paper details the design and development of the Virtual Reality project, through co-design, and how this engaged the audience and evolved the experience created. The paper includes a summative evaluation of events conducted with schoolchildren to assess the project and concludes with how the project evidences impact upon audiences and the potential for both technology and the experience

Edging your bets: advantage play, gambling, crime and victimisation

Consumerism, industrial development and regulatory liberalisation have underpinned the ascendance of gambling to a mainstream consumption practice. In particular, the online gambling environment has been marketed as a site of ‘safe risks’ where citizens can engage in a multitude of different forms of aleatory consumption. This paper offers a virtual ethnography of an online ‘advantage play’ subculture. It demonstrates how advantage players have reinterpreted the online gambling landscape as an environment saturated with crime and victimisation. In this virtual world, advantage play is no longer simply an instrumental act concerned with profit accumulation to finance consumer desires. Rather, it acts as an opportunity for individuals to engage in a unique form of edgework, whereby the threat to one’s well-being is tested through an ability to avoid crime and victimisation. This paper demonstrates how mediated environments may act as sites for edgeworking and how the potential for victimisation can be something that is actively engaged with

Learning through social spaces: migrant women and lifelong learning in post-colonial London

This article shows how migrant women engage in learning through social spaces. It argues that such spaces are little recognised, and that there are multiple ways in which migrant women construct and negotiate their informal learning through socialising with other women in different informal modes. Additionally, the article shows how learning is shaped by the socio-political, geographical and multicultural context of living in London, outlining ways in which gendered and racialised identities shape, construct and constrain participation in lifelong learning. The article shows that one way in which migrant women resist (post)colonial constructions of difference is by engaging in informal and non-formal lifelong learning, arguing that the benefits are (at least) two-fold. The women develop skills (including language skills) but also use their informal learning to develop what is referred to in this article as 'relational capital'. The article concludes that informal lifelong learning developed through social spaces can enhance a sense of belonging for migrant women

Sense-making of consumer wellbeing in information technology-enabled services from a relational ontology position

Information technology (IT) built into products and services have become the key drivers for service innovation. How information technology-enabled services (ITESs) affect consumer wellbeing has increasingly become a concern to service scholars. In response to this, transformative service research (TSR) has emerged as a new stream in service research. This paper investigates consumer wellbeing derived from the consumption of ITESs in consumers’ daily lives. A mixed-method approach was employed in our study, including self-reflective reports, in-depth interviews and visual artistic methods. We demonstrated that a relational ontology, drawing on the ‘focal things’ concept (Borgmann, 1984) and sociomateriality (Orlikowski, 2009), could be used as a lens for us to understand consumer wellbeing in ITESs. We used four vignettes to demonstrate how relational ontology can enhance our understanding of consumer wellbeing in ITESs. Theoretically, this paper contributes to TSR by proposing and demonstrating the need to shift or at least extend the extant predominant technology ontology in marketing literature to make sense of consumer experiences and wellbeing in ITESs. In practice, this research encourages ITESs designers to emphasise the relational entanglement of technology with consumer routine practices in their service innovations for the purposes of consumer wellbeing

‘Super disabilities’ vs ‘Disabilities’?:Theorizing the role of ableism in (mis)representational mythology of disability in the marketplace

People with disabilities (PWD) constitute one of the largest minority groups with one in five people worldwide having a disability. While recognition and inclusion of this group in the marketplace has seen improvement, the effects of (mis)representation of PWD in shaping the discourse on fostering marketplace inclusion of socially marginalized consumers remain little understood. Although effects of misrepresentation (e.g., idealized, exoticized or selective representation) on inclusion/exclusion perceptions and cognitions has received attention in the context of ethnic/racial groups, the world of disability has been largely neglected. By extending the theory of ableism into the context of PWD representation and applying it to the analysis of the We’re the Superhumans advertisement developed for the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games, this paper examines the relationship between the (mis)representation and the inclusion/exclusion discourse. By uncovering that PWD misrepresentations can partially mask and/or redress the root causes of exclusion experienced by PWD in their lived realities, it contributes to the research agenda on the transformative role of consumption cultures perpetuating harmful, exclusionary social perceptions of marginalized groups versus contributing to advancement of their inclusion

Epidemic space

The aim of this article is to highlight the importance of 'spatiality' in understanding the materialization of risk society and cultivation of risk sensibilities. More specifically it provides a cultural analysis of pathogen virulence (as a social phenomenon) by means of tracing and mapping the spatial flows that operate in the uncharted zones between the microphysics of infection and the macrophysics of epidemics. It will be argued that epidemic space consists of three types of forces: the vector, the index and the vortex. It will draw on Latour's Actor Network Theory to argue that epidemic space is geared towards instability when the vortex (of expanding associations and concerns) displaces the index (of finding a single cause)

Mixing and Re-Purposing Realities

This paper discusses a mixed reality that intertwines two parallel spaces, a real and a virtual contemporary sculpture park. With the goal to create a game that motivated children to explore the park and engage with the artworks, we engaged with children as informants. We developed a cast of characters based on the children’s input that lived in the sculpture park. Using the characters as inspiration we created a three-act narrative, with the canonical trajectory provided as a sequential clues treasure hunt. The clues are integrated into character dialogue, with traversal and transitions reinforced through the narrative. Although the narrative and game were designed for a collaborative, multi-user, multi-device experience, the characters, narrative and experience were rapidly re-purposed for an individual game on a mobile phone. This re-purposing focused on the transitions, using dramatic narrative to reinforce and mask reality change. Our results are positive, children enjoyed the mixed reality experiences and are keen to engage in different realities. Re-purposing assets, such as characters and narratives as well as virtual spaces is effective, enabling rapid development of similar, yet very different mixed reality experiences