E-Learning and Digital Media

The logic of ‘time’ in modern capitalist society appears to be a fixed concept. Time dictates human activity with a regularity, which as long ago as 1944, George Woodcock referred to as The Tyranny of the Clock. Seventy years on, Hartmut Rosa suggests humans no longer maintain speed to achieve something new, but simply to preserve the status quo, in a ‘social acceleration’ that is lethal to democracy. Political engagement takes time we no longer have, as we rush between our virtual spaces and ‘non-places’ of higher education. I suggest it is time to confront the conspirators that, in partnership with the clock, accelerate our social engagements with technology in the context of learning. Through Critical Discourse Analysis I reveal an alarming situation if we do not. With reference to Bauman’s Liquid Modernity, I observe a ‘lightness’ in policy texts where humans have been ‘liquified’ Separating people from their own labour with technology in policy maintains the flow of speed a neoliberal economy demands. I suggest a new ‘solidity’ of human presence is required as we write about networked learning. ‘Writing ourselves back in’ requires a commitment to ‘be there’ in policy and provide arguments that decelerate the tyranny of time. I am, though, ever-mindful that social acceleration is also of our own making, and there is every possibility that we actually enjoy it.

While elements of Deleuze’s theory, notably the ‘geophilosophical’ concepts of ‘rhizomes’, ‘smoothness’ and ‘striation’ have been applied to educational technologies, his work on time has, to date, been comparatively neglected by educational theorists. This article explores practices and outcomes of educational technology design in terms of Deleuze’s dimensions of time in which habitual practices, trajectories of change and concerns about identities in flux are synthesised into a ‘present-becoming’. The article draws on empirical work carried out during a large, funded research project during which teachers, students, technologists and researchers were able to work together for extended periods in order to explore the potential of emerging ‘semantic web’ and ‘linked data’ technologies and approaches in higher educational settings (Ensemble: Semantic Technologies for the Enhancement of Case Based Learning). Doing learning technology design and development in a way informed by ‘Deleuzian’ syntheses of time involves conversations not just about creating a technology-rich educational utopia or constantly specifying new ‘gadgets’, but the troubling of existing pedagogical practices and the multiplication of perspectives and subjectivities. By going beyond notions of ‘feature sets’, ‘use cases’ and ‘affordances’ it provides a richer conceptual framework that helps us understand why some educational technologies are adopted and abandoned, some are creatively appropriated and used in unexpected ways, and others sink without trace. The article concludes with suggestions as to how current conditions in higher education, rather than constraining the development of educational technologies, might provide opportunities for these broader explorations to be initiated.

Chatbots, known as pedagogical agents in educational settings, have a long history of use, beginning with Alan Turing's work. Since then online chatbots have become embedded into the fabric of technology. Yet understandings of these technologies are inchoate and often untheorised. Integration of chatbots into educational settings over the past five years suggests an increase in interest in the ways in which chatbots might be adopted and adapted for teaching and learning. This article draws on historical literature and theories that to date have largely been ignored in order to (re)contextualise two studies that used responsive evaluation to examine the use of pedagogical agents in education. Findings suggest that emotional interactions with pedagogical agents are intrinsic to a user's sense of trust, and that truthfulness, personalisation and emotional engagement are vital when using pedagogical agents to enhance online learning. Such findings need to be considered in the light of ways in which notions of learning are being redefined in the academy and the extent to which new literacies and new technologies are being pedalled as pedagogies in ways that undermine what higher education is, is for, and what learning means.

This study uses interpretive sociological methods to explore parallels between fictional accounts of cyborgs and educational technology-based practices currently present in some e-learning environments. Specifically, the cyborg in fictional accounts (Star Trek and Doctor Who) and the cyborg in academic accounts (Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto) are used to frame an analysis of the potential of regarding e-learners as cyborgs. Two social scientific concepts are revisited in this analysis: cognitive dissonance (social psychology) and temporal refusal (critical sociology). These conceptual lenses reveal that the various modes of operating in the online classroom have assimilating tendencies threatening to draw us into a mass social delusion. Considering the science fiction trope, “Resistance is Futile”, the author proposes that the promotion of “best practices” sublimates us into the domination of a particular educational philosophy. Recognizing this type of oppression provides space for temporal refusal – withdrawing from the potentially assimilating “Borg” when it threatens to be disadvantageous to education. Her conclusions lead the author to suggest the need for a critical reflexivity in teachers to identify and take advantage of opportunities to resist the absorption of distinctiveness in the online educational environment.

In this article the authors re-examine Sir Thomas More’s classic book Utopia as a potential source of ideas and concepts for examining, understanding and imagining contemporary education. Too often the concept utopia is used to criticize an idea, perspective or image as offering a simplistic solution to a complex problem, or, at its worst, as a model that all must be forced to accept. In our rereading of Utopia we suggest that the book and the concept can be best understood as an imaginative, critical and playful dialogue. When applied to the field of education utopia offers the potential for reimagining how we engage with and conceptualize educational theory and practice.

Possibilities for a different form of education have provided rich sources of inspiration for science fiction writers. Isaac Asimov, Orson Scott Card, Neal Stephenson, Octavia Butler, and Vernor Vinge, among others, have all projected their own visions of what education could be. These visions sometimes engage with technologies that are currently opening new horizons in education—sources both of wonder and of anxiety—but they also grapple with concerns about student agency, the shape of schools, and the societal purposes of education. This article is an exploration of schools, learning communities, and ways of knowing on offer in science fiction. It suggests science fiction representations of the future as tools for analyzing and choosing the technologies proposed in education today, posing these questions: Why are we adopting this technology? How might this tool be used in different ways, and to what ends? Does this technological intervention prioritize individual development, or collective growth? Do we believe that intelligence is a matter of nature, or of nurture? How do we support student inquiry and why? Ultimately, is a particular educational technology really what we want, or are we really looking for a shape of social change?

The term ‘vicarious learning’ was introduced in the 1960s by Bandura, who demonstrated how learning can occur through observing the behaviour of others. Such social learning is effective without the need for the observer to experience feedback directly. More than twenty years later a series of studies on vicarious learning was undertaken in the context of technology-enhanced learning in mass higher education. These studies employed the idea in a rather narrower sense, defining it as learning through observing others in the act of learning, focusing in particular on the kind of conceptual learning that is typical in higher education and is best observed in tutorial settings. The key proposal was that multimedia recorded versions of tutorial dialogues could be chosen for their effectiveness in revealing the way concepts are grasped, questions posed and problems solved, from the perspective of real learners rather than from that imagined by teachers. These recorded dialogues could be linked to the primary subject matter and, it was hoped, would constitute a powerful resource for new students who would otherwise not have the opportunity to benefit from a teaching method which, if restricted to the original participants, simply does not scale. This paper reviews the subsequent research that has continued to explore this idea. Overall, the potential importance of vicarious learning in various kinds of subject matter has been confirmed. Research on vicarious learning continues to resonate with fundamental issues of the design of higher education in a digital world.

The use of technology to support learning is well recognised. One generation ago a major strand of human–computer interaction research focussed on the development of forms of instruction in how to interact with computers. Today, however, the advanced usability of modern technologies has all but removed the presence of many user manuals. Learners, educators and developers now need to know not how to use the technology per se: the adoption of user-centred design has solved much of this. Rather, they must understand the nature of learner behaviour across contexts: insight is required into ‘how to learn’ using mobile technology and ‘how to manage and structure’ learning behaviour across changing contexts whilst mobile. To this end, we advocate a reinvention of effective user instruction at the metacognitive level, and use a classic framework developed in the early 1980s to structure our conceptualisation of the onward research and development effort that is required for 21st century user instruction and support.

The human desire to join and participate in communities can be seen as an attempt to satisfy some of our universal human needs. The theory of communities of practice has been widely used to explain how and why humans participate in multiple communities, and a key requirement of a community of practice (CoP) is that members engage in ‘joint activities and discussions’. In the current age where social media tools have facilitated the exponential growth of online communities, the term CoP is often used to describe a group of people engaging in online discussion. In the context of online learning, the use of CoP theory can often lead to online discussion being interpreted as a joint activity. This paper argues that the concept of a joint activity as something other than online discussion has been neglected, and that while online discussion may account for the presence of an online community, evidence of joint activities beyond the simple discussion of ideas is required for the community to constitute a true CoP. Using activity theory, the authors investigated the factors motivating students on the Digital Design and Animation course at West Midlands University to participate in a non-formal learning activity involving the co-creation of a digital artefact. The authors believe that a greater understanding of the concept of joint activity, and of the link between co-creating an artefact and members’ shared emotional connection, has the potential to refocus our understanding and application of the theory of CoP in the networked era.

This conversation focuses on a book published in 1983 that examined ‘animism’, the tendency to regard non-living entities as living and sentient. The Intimate Machine suggested that animism will be fully exploited by artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, generating artefacts that will engage the user in ‘social’ interactions so that eventually people will form close and beneficial social relationships with artificial ‘companion systems’. The author of the book, clinical psychologist Neil Frude, is asked to reflect on his book and, although he admits that his techno-optimism in the 1980s was exaggerated, it is clear that he still holds to his major thesis. He considers ‘virtual pets’, such as Tamagotchi, Furby and Sony’s Aibo, and considers why they did not evolve into more sophisticated social artefacts. Frude identifies three vital elements needed for a successful artificial companion – animism, artistry and AI – and acknowledges that the last of these has been the weak link. However, even simple AI programs can make an impressive impact when skilfully implemented. He emphasizes the relevance of characterization, pointing to examples in recent computer-generated animations. In the context of interactive technology, the addition of character and artificial personality will generate companion machines that are highly engaging and exceptionally appealing. Insights into the likely nature and roles of artificial companions, and how people will relate to them, are available in the science fiction corpus, and this literature has also examined relevant ethical and social issues. Finally, he considers some of the possible clinical applications of such systems in both physical health and mental health and he also reflects on some of the potential dangers of the kind of artefact that he is envisioning.

In this article, Larry Cuban discusses his ideas about the topic of this Special Issue of E-learning and Digital Media ‘Networked Realms and Hoped-For Futures: A trans-generational dialogue’ with one of its co-editors, Petar Jandrić. The conversation explores the historical relationships between education and information and communication technologies and draws lessons for present and future. The first part of the conversation explores methodological issues pertaining to historical thinking about schools and computers in the network society. It identifies a continued need to recognize historical patterns, including those in thought experiments, and shows that Rogers’ theory of diffusion of innovations should be supplemented by more nuanced approaches to the historical relationships between schools and computers. The second part of the conversation presents an attempt to explain historical patterns using the ancient notion of magical thinking. It explores why teachers use computers in their private lives much more than in their professional lives, and ‘school anarchy’ caused by student usage of personally owned devices in classrooms. It creates a baseline for comparison between desktop / laptop computers and various hand-held devices, and dismantles the quest for deschooling as another example of magical thinking. The third part of the conversation examines the ideological role of information and communication technologies in contemporary school reform and explores their potential for democracy. It analyses the contemporary transformations of traditional publishing formats such as books, journals and newspapers, and their reflections in the world of academia. It examines the changing role of teachers as public intellectuals, and the role of information and communication technologies in their public exposure. The last part of the conversation analyses the process of ‘educationalizing’ various social and economic problems, and links it to contemporary technologies. It revisits Larry Cuban’s predictions from Teachers and Machines: Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920 (1986), and reminds us that accurate predictions are rare, while inaccurate ones are not only common but often memorable. Finally, it examines why it is so hard to balance education with information and communication technologies.