Dissolving the dichotomies between online and campus‑based teaching: a collective response to The Manifesto for teaching online

This article is a collective response to the 2020 iteration of The Manifesto for Teach-ing Online. Originally published in 2011 as 20 simple but provocative statements, the aim was, and continues to be, to critically challenge the normalization of education as techno-corporate enterprise and the failure to properly account for digital methods in teaching in Higher Education. The 2020 Manifesto continues in the same critically pro-vocative fashion, and, as the response collected here demonstrates, its publication could not be timelier. Though the Manifesto was written before the Covid-19 pandemic, many of the responses gathered here inevitably reflect on the experiences of moving to digi-tal, distant, online teaching under unprecedented conditions. As these contributions reveal, the challenges were many and varied, ranging from the positive, breakthrough opportunities that digital learning offered to many students, including the disabled, to the problematic, such as poor digital networks and access, and simple digital poverty. Regardless of the nature of each response, taken together, what they show is that The Manifesto for Teaching Online offers welcome insights into and practical advice on how to teach online, and creatively confront the supremacy of face-to-face teaching

Networked Learning in 2021: A Community Definition

Introduction (Networked Learning Editorial Collective): Since the turn of this century, much of the world has undergone a tectonic socio-technological change. Computers have left the isolated basements of research institutes and entered people's homes. Network connectivity has advanced from slow and unreliable modems to high-speed broadband. Devices have evolved: from stationary desktop computers to ever-present, always-connected smartphones. These developments have been accompanied by new digital practices, and changing expectations, not least in education, where enthusiasm for digital technologies has been kindled by quite contrasting sets of values. For example, some critical pedagogues working in the traditions of Freire and Illich have understood computers as novel tools for political and social emancipation, while opportunistic managers in cash-strapped universities have seen new opportunities for saving money and/or growing revenues. Irrespective of their ideological leanings, many of the early attempts at marrying technology and education had some features in common: instrumentalist understanding of human relationships with technologies, with a strong emphasis on practice and 'what works'. It is now clear that, in many countries, managerialist approaches have provided the framing, while local constraints and exigencies have shaped operational details, in fields such as e-learning, Technology Enhanced Learning, and others waving the 'Digital' banner. Too many emancipatory educational movements have ignored technology, burying their heads in the sand, or have wished it away, subscribing toa new form of Luddism, even as they sense themselves moving to the margins. But this situation is not set in stone. Our postdigital reality results from a complex interplay between centres and margins. Furthermore, the concepts of centres and margins 'have morphed into formations that we do not yet understand, and they have created (power) relationships which are still unsettled. The concepts … have not disappeared, but they have become somewhat marginal in their own right.' (Jandrić andHayes 2019) Social justice and emancipation are as important as ever, yet they require new theoretical reconfigurations and practices fit for our socio-technological moment. In the 1990s, networked learning (NL) emerged as a critical response to dominant discourses of the day. NL went against the grain in two main ways. First, it embarked on developing nuanced understandings of relationships between humans and technologies; understandings which reach beyond instrumentalism and various forms of determinism. Second, NL embraced the emancipatory agenda of the critical pedagogy movement and has, in various ways, politically committed to social justice (Beaty et al. 2002; Networked Learning Editorial Collective 2020). Gathered around the biennial Networked Learning Conference,1 the Research in NetworkedLearning book series,2 and a series of related projects and activities, the NL community has left a significant trace in educational transformations over the last few decades. Twenty years ago, founding members of the NL community offered a definition of NL which has strongly influenced the NL community’s theoretical perspectives and research approaches (Goodyear et al. 2004).3 Since then, however, the world has radically changed. With this in mind, the Networked Learning Editorial Collective (NLEC) recently published a paper entitled 'Networked Learning: InvitingRedefinition' (2020). In line with NL's critical agenda, a core goal for the paper was to open up a broad discussion about the current meaning and understandings of NL and directions for its further development. The current collectively authored paper presents the responses to the NLEC's open call. With 40 contributors coming from six continents and working across many fields of education, the paper reflects the breadth and depth of current understandings of NL. The responses have been collated, classified into main themes, and lightly edited for clarity. One of the responders, Sarah Hayes, was asked to write aconclusion. The final draft paper has undergone double open review. The reviewers, Laura Czerniewicz and Jeremy Knox, are acknowledged as authors. Our intention, in taking this approach, has been to further stimulate democratic discussion about NL and to prompt some much-needed community-building.lic

Dissolving the dichotomies between online and campus-based teaching: a collective response to The manifesto for teaching online (Bayne et al. 2020)

This article is a collective response to the 2020 iteration of The Manifesto for Teaching Online. Originally published in 2011 as 20 simple but provocative statements, the aim was, and continues to be, to critically challenge the normalization of education as techno-corporate enterprise and the failure to properly account for digital methods in teaching in Higher Education. The 2020 Manifesto continues in the same critically provocative fashion, and, as the response collected here demonstrates, its publication could not be timelier. Though the Manifesto was written before the Covid-19 pandemic, many of the responses gathered here inevitably reflect on the experiences of moving to digital, distant, online teaching under unprecedented conditions. As these contributions reveal, the challenges were many and varied, ranging from the positive, breakthrough opportunities that digital learning offered to many students, including the disabled, to the problematic, such as poor digital networks and access, and simple digital poverty. Regardless of the nature of each response, taken together, what they show is that The Manifesto for Teaching Online offers welcome insights into and practical advice on how to teach online, and creatively confront the supremacy of face-to-face teaching

Multimodal layers : A comprehensive framework for understanding meaning-making through technology use in learning settings

There is a need for a social semiotic multimodal take on meaning-making through technology use in research and practice in a comprehensive frame of understanding (Schnaider, Gu & Rantatalo, 2020). Contemporary social semiotic multimodal research has identified the multiplicity in meaning-making through technology use within different semiotic systems. Some components have specifically been highlighted such as activities, actions on different levels of mediation and modes of representations in relation to hardware and software technologies, functional properties, and sign-systems that moves across configurations of technologies and users (Adami, 2010; 2014; Djonov & van Leeuwen, 2011; 2013; 2018; Jewitt, 2005; Norris, 2002; Ravelli & van Leeuwen, 2018; The Swedish national agency for education, 2018; Vigild Poulsen, 2018; Zhao & van Leeuwen, 2014; Zhao and Zappavigna, 2018). With a concert of different actors in learning settings such as schools, current research has also pointed out that teacher use is overlooked (Schnaider et al., 2020). Although some considerable contributions to understanding meaning-making through technology use by pinpointing essential aspects have been made, research has not yet united and comprehensively theorized the components important when studying meaning-making through technology focusing on learning settings and actors in school. Previous research is limited in equally exploring the nature of technologies and meaning-making practices. To amend existing research gaps, a multimodal layer (ML) perspective was created that unites the technologies to the meaning-making of different actors in school (Schnaider et al., 2020). In this paper, the ML framework will be theoretically developed and refined from the research question; what multimodal principles can guide a comprehensive understanding of technology use in learning settings? The findings of three previous empirical studies on teachers’ and students’ meaning-making through technology use from the ML perspective will be synthesized, developed, and refined by methods of qualitative meta-synthesis (Finfgeld-Connett, 2018) from the five components: technologies (configurations of hardware/software) (Ravelli et al., 2018), technologies functional (the taxonomy, Wartofsky, 1979) and semiotic properties (Jewitt, 2017), modes of representation and activities (Bezemer & Kress, 2016; Kress, 2010; Kress et al., 2014). The ML framework offers a lens through which the variations between the five components can be identified. By developing the framework, the distinction and overlaps that were found to exist between the layers’ components can be clarified, and how the layers vary in emphasis between activities, users, and technologies. The ML can offer new comprehensive insights into how teachers and students variously mediate meaning in learning settings through different configurations of technologies and representational forms. Detailed knowledge on the nature of the technologies and their relations to teachers’ and students’ meaning-making activities is important since it can guide both design thinking and learning design and model future technology use and implementation.lic

A Multimodal Layer Perspective

Semiotic technologies manifest semiotic resources through differently configured interfaces where the “media” and the user interchangeably transform what is perceived (Ravelli & van Leeuwen, 2018; Vigild Poulsen et al., 2018). The semiotic resources are necessary learning resources that have recently become upscaled in significance as different technologies are frequently used for meaning-making purposes. Although many agents are rather confident in using various technologies, the shift in semiotic resources poses several challenges for meaning-making practices (PanMeMic, 2020). Mainly, interpretation efforts demand a recognition of the semiotic shifts of differently configured interfaces as well as how the resources are reshaped from their meaning-potentials and affordances in cognitive processing and newly prompted into the social space through the actors’ meaning-making (Kress, 2010). This creates complexity and multiplicity that variously shapes the prerequisites for meaning-making and constitutes the semiotic activity system. The presentation will illustrate how the semiotic shifts can be identified by tracing semiotic resources, with a focus on sign-systems within the multimodal layer framework (ML) (Schnaider et al., 2020). The MLs define sign-systems as the connector between the multimodal nature of composite interfaces and the multimodal character of meaning-making that shifts through technological activation and cognitive processes of actions and sign-making. The five MLs - technologies, technologies’ functional properties and semiotic properties, modes of representation, and activities – have been used in educational settings as a tool for analysis but apply to any environment to understand how sign-systems transfer across human and technological processes.lic

Multimodal layers : A comprehensive framework for understanding meaning-making through technology use in learning settings

There is a need for a social semiotic multimodal take on meaning-making through technology use in research and practice in a comprehensive frame of understanding (Schnaider, Gu & Rantatalo, 2020). Contemporary social semiotic multimodal research has identified the multiplicity in meaning-making through technology use within different semiotic systems. Some components have specifically been highlighted such as activities, actions on different levels of mediation and modes of representations in relation to hardware and software technologies, functional properties, and sign-systems that moves across configurations of technologies and users (Adami, 2010; 2014; Djonov & van Leeuwen, 2011; 2013; 2018; Jewitt, 2005; Norris, 2002; Ravelli & van Leeuwen, 2018; The Swedish national agency for education, 2018; Vigild Poulsen, 2018; Zhao & van Leeuwen, 2014; Zhao and Zappavigna, 2018). With a concert of different actors in learning settings such as schools, current research has also pointed out that teacher use is overlooked (Schnaider et al., 2020). Although some considerable contributions to understanding meaning-making through technology use by pinpointing essential aspects have been made, research has not yet united and comprehensively theorized the components important when studying meaning-making through technology focusing on learning settings and actors in school. Previous research is limited in equally exploring the nature of technologies and meaning-making practices. To amend existing research gaps, a multimodal layer (ML) perspective was created that unites the technologies to the meaning-making of different actors in school (Schnaider et al., 2020). In this paper, the ML framework will be theoretically developed and refined from the research question; what multimodal principles can guide a comprehensive understanding of technology use in learning settings? The findings of three previous empirical studies on teachers’ and students’ meaning-making through technology use from the ML perspective will be synthesized, developed, and refined by methods of qualitative meta-synthesis (Finfgeld-Connett, 2018) from the five components: technologies (configurations of hardware/software) (Ravelli et al., 2018), technologies functional (the taxonomy, Wartofsky, 1979) and semiotic properties (Jewitt, 2017), modes of representation and activities (Bezemer & Kress, 2016; Kress, 2010; Kress et al., 2014). The ML framework offers a lens through which the variations between the five components can be identified. By developing the framework, the distinction and overlaps that were found to exist between the layers’ components can be clarified, and how the layers vary in emphasis between activities, users, and technologies. The ML can offer new comprehensive insights into how teachers and students variously mediate meaning in learning settings through different configurations of technologies and representational forms. Detailed knowledge on the nature of the technologies and their relations to teachers’ and students’ meaning-making activities is important since it can guide both design thinking and learning design and model future technology use and implementation.lic

Understanding meaning-making through technology use : a multimodal layer perspective

Previous research has highlighted that technology implementation in schools may lead to increased complexity, as digital hardware and software offer a variety of possibilities for sign-making activities. Moreover, recent studies argue that since classroom practices are facilitated increasingly by screen-based activities, digital technology opens a multitude of ways to represent meaning, as an abundance of sign systems becomes available for communication through various digital visual user interfaces (DVUIs) (Jewitt, 2017). In addition, research indicates that technology implementation has a strong impact on school practice (Säljö, 2013) and that knowledge on how to take advantage of technology in learning settings from a more comprehensive perspective is needed (Bezemer & Kress, 2016). To gain a more comprehensive picture of technology use in educational environments, the main goal of the thesis is to explore the use of hardware and software by teachers and students in sign-making activities from a multimodal layer perspective. The main aim of this paper is, in particular, to discuss how multimodal methodology can be used to explain detailed aspects of technology use in networked learning (NL) settings. Concerning the various means used in school and their affordances in semiotic mediation (Norman, 2007; Wartofsky, 1979), all are considered in relation to the users and results of use. From a technology perspective, the multimodal layers, therefore, include things-to-things, things-to-human/human-to-things and human-to-human connections (Bonderup Dohn, Cranmer, Sime, de Laat and Ryberg, 2018; Goodyear, Carvalho & Bonderup Dohn, 2014) and focus on technologies, communication resources (i.e. sign systems), representations and activities. The technologies and their functions are therefore regarded as important. In addition, the multimodal layers relate to the semiotic properties of technology, how they inhere and prompt sign systems in different ways as interpreted by the actors and are reshaped into modes of representation in different activities. The conclusion is that multimodal methodology, particularly the multimodal layer approach, seems to be beneficial to unpack the relationships and connections between the means used and the actors in NL environments via its coherent approach. A greater understanding of the detailed aspects of technology use in teaching and learning may also be obtained if the existing multimodal layers are accounted for and connected. Insights can guide stakeholders on how to integrate technology in future practices and inform technology choices in relation to specific activities.lic

“The influence of technological designs on teachers’ and students’ meaning-making : Semiotic chains configuring teaching and learning activities”

The relationships between digital technologies and the realization of teaching and learning activities havereceived increased attention in interdisciplinary research. Knowledge of the connections between technologicaldesigns and users’ meaning making in semiotic chains is, however, still partial. Teachers’ and students’ remediationof technological designs through cognitive processing was studied in this paper to gain insights intosemiotic chain configurations. Data consisting of video recordings, interviews, and observations were processedwith quantitative content analysis and learning analytics strategies. The findings suggest that the technologicaldesign’s visualized functions greatly affect the semiotic chain configuration when integrated with their users’meaning making in lower-level actions. Technological designs seem to buttonize meaning making, and teachingand learning activities become technologized. Scaled cognitive processes can provide insights into differentiatedmeaning making according to the technologies, and perspectives on paralanguage are proposed.LIC

A Multimodal Layer Perspective

Semiotic technologies manifest semiotic resources through differently configured interfaces where the “media” and the user interchangeably transform what is perceived (Ravelli & van Leeuwen, 2018; Vigild Poulsen et al., 2018). The semiotic resources are necessary learning resources that have recently become upscaled in significance as different technologies are frequently used for meaning-making purposes. Although many agents are rather confident in using various technologies, the shift in semiotic resources poses several challenges for meaning-making practices (PanMeMic, 2020). Mainly, interpretation efforts demand a recognition of the semiotic shifts of differently configured interfaces as well as how the resources are reshaped from their meaning-potentials and affordances in cognitive processing and newly prompted into the social space through the actors’ meaning-making (Kress, 2010). This creates complexity and multiplicity that variously shapes the prerequisites for meaning-making and constitutes the semiotic activity system. The presentation will illustrate how the semiotic shifts can be identified by tracing semiotic resources, with a focus on sign-systems within the multimodal layer framework (ML) (Schnaider et al., 2020). The MLs define sign-systems as the connector between the multimodal nature of composite interfaces and the multimodal character of meaning-making that shifts through technological activation and cognitive processes of actions and sign-making. The five MLs - technologies, technologies’ functional properties and semiotic properties, modes of representation, and activities – have been used in educational settings as a tool for analysis but apply to any environment to understand how sign-systems transfer across human and technological processes.lic