During this period of remote working, I’m reminded of Martin Oliver’s (2015) argument for the importance and value for higher education of the co-location of learners, researchers, teachers, spaces, libraries and so on. These bases of values are now being eroded, problematised and reframed in the pivot to remote teaching. Oliver discusses such value creation … Read more
I am currently developing a paper on innovative research methods that discusses the operationalisation of socio-material assemblage theory. This is the summary of the paper so far: This paper presents an innovative research approach to examining learning in open online digital environments: in this case, professional learning communities on Twitter. The research approach draws on … Read more
The minor amendments have been completed, the thesis has been printed and bound and handed in! I’m now starting on drafting papers from the thesis but meanwhile, here’s the final abstract: Distributed online discussion events in social media are increasingly used as sites for open, informal professional development, knowledge sharing and community formation. Synchronous chat … Read more
For all the structuring effects of the Twitter functional features, the Twitter experience is generally perceived as a private one as only the individual user can see their Twitter feed, as they have structured it, on their particular screen configuration (Gillen and Merchant 2013). This aspect of the individualisation and heterogeneity of public and open … Read more
[Update: the paper was published in January and can be found here] In the New Year, a short paper by me is to be included in a special edition of TechTrends to be published in the New Year. The abstract is: This article explores professional learning through online discussion events as sites of communities of … Read more
Last Friday I attended a Digital Cultures & Education research group presentation by Sian Bayne on her recent article What’s the matter with ‘Technology Enhanced Learning’? These are my notes taken during the presentation and then tidied up later – so they may well be limit, partial and mistaken! While Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) is … Read more