Uncanny spaces for higher education: teaching and learning in virtual worlds

This paper brings together the theory of the uncanny as it emerges in cultural theory, with an understanding of the uncanniness and troublesomeness seen to be inherent in certain understandings of teaching and learning in higher education. Drawing on research into students’ experiences of learning in virtual worlds, it explores the sense in which teaching in such spaces materialises and extends the positive aspects of uncertainty, strangeness, disquietude and troublesomeness in online higher education

Objects, subjects, bits and bytes: learning from the digital collections of the National Museums

This paper is concerned with online museum education, exploring the themes of user-centredness, digitization, authority and control. Taking as its starting point the shift of focus in museum policy from the collection to the user-learner, it suggests that this movement from object to subject – this ‘de-centring’ of the cultural institution – is further complicated by a fundamental change in the nature of the object, as a result of digitization programmes which transform material, ‘possessible’ artefacts into volatile amalgams of bits and bytes. The ability of users to take, manipulate, re-distribute and re-describe digital objects is, we suggest, a primary source of their educational value. It is also, however, a source of difficulty for institutions as they come to terms with the changing patterns of ownership, participation and knowledge production we are experiencing as we move further into the digital age

Speculative futures for higher education

This paper uses speculative methods as a way of imagining futures for higher education in open, non-predictive ways. The complexity and ‘unknowability’ of the highly technologised, environmentally damaged and politically degraded futures we seem to be facing can mean that our conversations about the future of higher education have a tendency to spiral too quickly into dystopianism and hopelessness. Speculative methods can help open up new kinds of conversation capable of supporting active and fundamental hope. Working within a postqualitative framework, we argue that such approaches support the collaborative imagining of multiple alternatives, and represent a way of advocating for those that are preferable. The paper presents a series of speculative scenarios and microfictions focusing on worlds ruptured by climate change, artificial intelligence, revolution and the technological enhancement of humans, connecting each of these to current critical research focused on climate crisis, ‘big tech’, rising global injustice and ‘big pharma’. It emphasises the vital contribution and place of higher education within such futures, and advocates for speculative methods as an approach to maintaining hope

Learning cultures in cyberspace

This thesis is a study of emerging learning cultures. Its focus is on students and teachers who are engaged in using internet technologies for learning in higher education in the United Kingdom. The thesis provides an exploration of theoretical approaches to the cultural impact of new technologies, drawing on cultural, cybercultural and educational theory. It applies these theoretical insights to interview texts generated through discussions with learners and teachers. Its contribution lies in the originality of its empirical material and of the insights applied to their analysis, and in its application of cultural and cybercultural theory to the area of online learning and teaching.sub_mcpaunpub107_ethesesunpu

Teacherbot:Interventions in automated teaching

Promises of ‘teacher-light’ tuition and of enhanced ‘efficiency’ via the automation of teaching have been with us since the early days of digital education, sometimes embraced by academics and institutions, and sometimes resisted as a set of moves which are damaging to teacher professionalism and to the humanistic values of education itself. However, both the embrace and the resistance can be seen to be anchored in a humanistic orientation to the project of education which recent work in the theory of critical posthumanism draws into question. Working within the broad frame of critical posthumanism, this paper will revisit the notion of teacher automation in higher education, exploring how as teachers we might enact new, resistant ways of playing at the boundaries of the human and machine

Posthumanism:A navigation aid for educators

While the implications of critical posthumanism for education are significant, it can present a difficult terrain for scholars new to this area of thought - its literatures are wide, cross-disciplinary, complex and in some instances (the relationship between posthumanism and transhumanism being one example) contradictory with itself. This can make it problematic for scholars and practitioners, in education and other areas, who are trying to unpick its implications for applied fields. This article looks back at some of the genealogies of posthumanism, offering what is hopefully an accessible way into understanding this complex area of thought for the growing numbers of scholars wishing to apply it to educational concerns. In doing so, it structures the existing, substantial literature on posthumanism into three broad categories - critical posthumanism, technological posthumanism and ecological posthumanism - briefly indicating how each of these might hold different kinds of explanatory power for educational practice and research. (DIPF/Orig.