| E-Learning |
ISSN 1741-8887 | ||
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Volume 2 Number 4 2005 | |||
Other issues available | Journal home page | Publisher home page | |||
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CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text] | |||
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SPECIAL DOUBLE ISSUE
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| EDITORIAL |
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| The second ICE symposium (Ideas in Cyberspace Education) was held in the English Lake District over a few icy days in February 2005. With papers submitted under the themes of power, identity and culture, researchers, practitioners and thinkers in the field of e-learning worked together in mapping out new ways of conceptualising this complex and always rapidly shifting landscape. The ICE symposia have attempted to create a space where technicist and instrumentalist ways of thinking about e-learning give way to more critical modes, those which embrace a broader view of the social, cultural, political and symbolic contexts of education in the digital age. The aims of ICE, in short, meshed very closely with those of the editors of E-learning, so we were delighted when they agreed to publish selected papers from the symposium in the form of this special double issue. The journal’s policy statement expresses certainty that ‘diverse conceptions and practices of e-learning will continue to emerge, circulate, and evolve in the years ahead’, and we see the papers offered here as a series of valuable contributions to this maelstrom. In this first part of the special issue, the authors position themselves intriguingly around the themes of culture, cultural diversity, internationalisation, ‘interpassivity’ and identity, drawing out many of the – still too often neglected – political and theoretical complexities of online learning. Caroline Pelletier’s article critically explores the notions of interactivity, agency and pleasure as they apply in computer games and their use as educational media. The interface of gaming with learning – particularly its social and political dimension – is, she argues, deserving of more detailed critical attention than it has generally received. She makes subtle and incisive use of Slavoj Žižek’s work in the psychoanalytic tradition to draw out and critique three alternative ‘versions’ of cyberspace and virtual reality, ending with a fourth and final model concerned with the concept of ‘interpassivity’ and its emergence in educational contexts. In this version of cyberspace and gaming, the focus on pleasure through immersion gives way to a focus on the way in which pleasure and play are made possible through adherence to the rules of the gameplay, and the surrendering of agency to their intransigence. In this model, cheating becomes a productive transgression, in that it ‘reinforces the supremacy of rules, by reaffirming their purpose and status’. It is a theme which emerges again in Shaun Hides’ contribution, which continues the discussion of Žižek’s work, this time using it as a lens through which to examine instrumental e-learning and its implication in the performativity principle. For Hides, the international student, the ‘performative learner’ and the plagiarising student function as ‘symptoms’ of the operation of ideology within the university – they simultaneously reveal the system of higher education as incomplete and locate its condition of possibility. If cheating in the computer game reinforces the necessity of its rules, plagiarism within the academy is revelatory of the performative agenda of contemporary higher education. Hides makes a convincing case for the possibility of ideological critique after postmodernism, applying a subtle range of insights into the operations of ideology across the contemporary university and its engagement with Internet technology. Hides’ consideration of the international student and cultural diversity connects his article with that of Frances Bell & Elena Zaitseva, which problematises the very rhetoric of ‘connection’ as it is used in describing computer mediated communication (CMC) between students and across borders. The connections and ‘continuities’ promised by CMC are contrasted here with some of the cultural and technological discontinuities experienced by students in an online, international, collaborative group. How meaningful is the idea of ‘connection’ achieved through technology and instantaneity when there is a significant gap in cultural expectation? ‘Your proyect …’, as a Spanish student comments on a piece of work by a group of UK students, ‘isnr’t very interesting like it should be.’ Robin Goodfellow & Anne Hewling continue the discussion of the question of culture and international interactions in online learning spaces. Yet their take on how culture operates in online environments differs significantly from that offered by Bell & Zaitseva. Goodfellow & Hewling work from the perspective that culture (and cultural difference) is not so much brought to the learning space by individual users with their distinctive ethnicities, as produced by the interactions which take place online. Their definition of culture allows them to consider not only its manifestation in the online discussions of students, but its location in and emergence through the broader sociocultural contexts of the information age. Their deeply insightful discussion of the ideal of ‘participation’ in online course discussions demonstrates how this broader definition of culture can enable us to question and critique some of e-learning’s truisms and taken-for-granted regulatory principles. Rory Ewins’s contribution marks a shift in theme from culture to identity. Here, Ewins takes an in-depth look at the phenomenon of the academic weblog. Exploring how notions of identity and selfhood are re-articulated through this still relatively new, yet hugely popular, media form, Ewins uses a form of autoethnography to explore the theme of blogger identity through his own practice as a blogger. Building on the work of Madan Sarup and Walter Truett Anderson, Ewins raises important issues for those of us using weblogs for pedagogy and research, in particular looking at how they reposition us in terms of our ‘life beyond the blog’. Implicit to Ewins’s argument is the theme of where the locus of control over the constitution of identity sits in relation to new technological environments. It is a preoccupation which also emerges in Mhairi McAlpine’s consideration of another currently much-touted technological artefact – the e-portfolio. As education institutions increasingly buy in to the e-portfolio as an assessment ‘tool’, McAlpine raises crucial questions relating to how identity construction, data surveillance and privacy are managed in relation to technology and policy which attempt a cradle-to-grave digital encapsulation of the individual-as-learner. The identity theme is taken up again in Gwyneth Hughes & Catherine Scott’s article, though here the attention shifts from identity constitution through the database to the question of learner control over personal identity in online discussion spaces. In describing a game designed to allow students to explore the trope of ‘fictional identity’ in an online discussion group, Hughes & Scott make the argument that successful online learning must involve the conscious development of awareness of identity issues by learners and teachers. The final two articles in this issue shift to questions of design and technological environment. Martin Oliver takes a rigorous and detailed look at the concept of ‘affordance’ as a way of exploring the properties of particular technologies, problematising its ‘degenerate’ use in current e-learning research. In tracing the history of the term, Oliver describes the tension implicit in it between positivist and constructivist ways of understanding, and intriguingly outlines the possibility of an emergence of a more ‘literary’ way of theorising our relation to technological artefacts, informed by Bakhtin’s study of the novel. Finally, in the article ending this first part of the special issue, Chris Jones reflects on his own experience of working within a three-dimensional, avatar-enhanced world. Exploring issues of identity and presence within this environment, Jones engages with Oliver’s discussion of affordance by maintaining his own use of the term as indicating something which is both real and relational. Echoing both Ewins’s and Hughes & Scott’s concern with identity issues in online environments, Jones’s article perceptively evaluates the ways in which both presence and identity might be ‘performed’ in educational virtual space. In adopting something of the autoethnographic method, and exploring issues of identity, presence and affordance using work carried out across national borders and within a game-like environment, Jones’s article both touches upon several of the themes and issues which constitute this first part of the special issue and neatly draws it to a close. The second part of the double issue – currently in the final stages of production – will return to some of these preoccupations, while also branching out into the compelling domains of digital authorship, articulations of power in text-based collaboration, and the carnivalesque. Sian Bayne University
of Edinburgh, United Kingdom |
| Reconfiguring Interactivity, Agency and Pleasure in the Education and Computer Games Debate – using Žižek’s concept of interpassivity to analyse educational play |
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| Digital or computer games have recently attracted the interest of education researchers and policy-makers for two main reasons: their interactivity, which is said to allow greater agency, and their inherent pleasures, which are linked to increased motivation to learn. However, the relationship between pleasure, agency and motivation in educational technologies is undertheorised. This article aims to situate these concepts within a framework that might identify more precisely how games can be considered to be educational. The framework is based on Žižek’s theory of subjectivity in cyberspace, and in particular on his notion of interpassivity, which is defined in relation to interactivity. The usefulness of this concept is explored first by examining three approaches to theorising cyberspace and their respective manifestations in key texts on educational game play. Žižek’s analysis of cyberspace in terms of socio-symbolic relations is then outlined to suggest how games might be considered educational in so far as they provide opportunities to manipulate and experiment with the rules underpinning our sense of reality and identity. This resembles Brecht’s notion of the educational value of theatre. The conclusion emphasises that the terms on which games are understood to be educational relate to the social interests which education is understood to serve. |
| The Ideology of Performative Pedagogies: a cultural symptomology |
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| This article examines the interplay of power, identity and culture within online learning in higher education. Specifically it addresses the relation between online learning, or e-learning, and the apparent disappearance of ideology within postmodernity, in the context of teaching highly diverse cohorts of students. This conjunction is theorised through Slavoj Žižek’s 1990s critique of multiculturalism and ideas of the symptom and interpassivity. The engagement with the ‘cultural difference’ of ‘international students’ problematises one current orthodoxy of online learning, enabling the re-conceptualisation of the ideological confrontation in this context as one between perfomativity-informationalisation and friction, difference and cultural engagement. |
| ‘Only Connect’? Complexities in International Student Communication |
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| This article explores the potential and limitations of international educational collaboration using the concept of connection, a term with different meanings that are sometimes conflated to produce unrealistic expectations of computer-mediated communication (CMC). The authors explore the use on the Internet of the ‘only connect’ quote from Howard’s End, in order to critique technological determinism and advocate an alternative approach that recognises the interpretive flexibility inherent in CMC. In a communication-rich experience such as education, the limitations of CMC are evident, particularly for non-native speakers, but the medium does offer some advantages over face-to-face communication. The authors introduce the notion of ‘cool webs’ to understand some responses to the challenges presented by international student collaboration online, illustrated by examples from the Collaboration Across Borders project. |
| Reconceptualising Culture in Virtual Learning Environments: from an ‘essentialist’ to a ‘negotiated’ perspective |
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| The notion of ‘culture’ as an essential attribute of individuals and groups, owed to national or ethnic background, is critiqued in this article as unhelpful to the project of understanding how diverse participants in virtual learning environments (VLEs) individually and jointly construct a culture of interaction. An alternative conceptualisation of culture in VLEs is proposed, which views online discussion as just one of the sites in which the culture of a VLE is negotiated. Other sites are to be found in institutional practices of teaching and learning at a distance, and in the wider cultural narratives of the Internet. Examples from two online masters courses in online and distance education are used to contextualise this concept of culture, exploring the differences in patterns of participation that are produced by contrasting institutional cultures, even though such participation is explicitly valorised as the means and the subject of the learning that goes on in both these courses. Some implications for the understanding and management of student diversity in these environments are considered, in particular the need for emerging cultural narratives around VLEs to reflect all aspects of student engagement in distance education, not just those which relate to online interaction. |
| Who are You? Weblogs and Academic Identity |
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| The weblog format has increasingly been adopted by academics in recent years, both as a teaching tool and to disseminate and discuss their own research interests. Academics are turning to blogs to exchange ideas about their discipline, their wider field, the academy, and beyond. Doing so, however, raises questions about personal identity with implications for life beyond the blog. Academics, because of the public nature of weblogs, the self-reflection encouraged by the form, and their analytical frame of mind, serve as useful case studies in exploring these questions. This article explores what it means to have an online identity in the light both of works by two commentators on identity in the postmodern world, Madan Sarup and Walter Truett Anderson, and of the author’s own experience of blogging over the past five years. Weblogs, while they afford opportunities for identity construction and reconfiguration, can end up changing their authors’ sense of identity in ways they may not expect. |
| E-portfolios and Digital Identity: some issues for discussion |
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| As awarding bodies modernise their procedures and incorporate elements of e-assessment into their qualifications, e-portfolios are emerging as a popular method of allowing candidates to display their abilities. All major United Kingdom awarding bodies now accept evidence from e-portfolio products for at least some of their qualifications. Although there is a substantial body of emerging literature looking at how e-portfolios can be used and the practical implications of increasing provision, issues of identity and privacy with widespread use of e-portfolio products are rather less well explored. This article highlights the two dominant paradigms of e-portfolios – e-portfolio as assessment and e-portfolio as story – before exploring the concept of identity, particularly in relation to authentication, within an e-portfolio. It also considers the concept of ‘emplotment’ as defined by Ricoeur as a means of making sense of the narrative identity created. The article examines the implications and issues for awarding bodies associated with personal identity, privacy and surveillance which are raised by the widespread use of e-portfolios. It goes on to suggest some areas for further investigation and exploration. |
| No Pain, No Game: use of an online game to explore issues of online identity and the implications for collaborative e-learning |
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| As computer-mediated communication (CMC) is becoming more mainstream in higher education (HE), the issue of social interaction online and its impact on learning has been raised. CMC theorists have argued that shared group identity produces the online social presence necessary for successful interaction but that other identities may be inhibiting. Meanwhile, advocates of the liberating potential of online communication have drawn on postmodern interpretations of identity to argue that the online world offers freedom from the constraints of social identities such as gender and class, but critics argue that social behaviours and stereotypes are not transcended but are reproduced through language and style. Salmon’s five-step model promotes social interaction as a basis for collaborative e-learning, but it does not encourage such a critical exploration of online identity. To address these issues, this article explores the development and use of an online identity creation game to examine how participants respond to making online identity more visible, and to review the implications for e-learning. Discourse analysis was used to study the game from a researcher-participant perspective. Nearly all players pursued a low-risk strategy of concentrating on their own identity rather than on those of peers and were anxious about applying social conventions online. While many understood how online identity is constructed though descriptive text, only a minority was aware that style and language can also create identity, thus exhibiting what we term online ‘listening’ skills. The game made transparent some of the difficulties in developing the online presence required for collaborative e-learning and suggests a more general need for learners to acquire familiarity with the processes of online identity construction. |
| The Problem with Affordance |
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| This article reviews the concept of ‘affordance’, a term widely used in the literature on learning and technology to try and explain the properties technologies have. It is argued that the concept has drifted so far from its origins that it is now too ambiguous to be analytically valuable. In addition, it is suggested that its origins in ecological perception – where relatively primitive claims are made at the level of species about animal-object relationships, framed in an evolutionary timescale – have little direct relevance to the moment-to-moment interactions of an individual using a specific artefact. Because of this, it is proposed than an alternative way of talking about technology use is required. A stylistic analysis of technologies, drawing on Bakhtin’s analysis of novels, is outlined as one potential alternative. |
| Who are You? Theorising from the Experience of Working through an Avatar |
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| This article explores the experience of a researcher who was part of a pan-European team exploring one of the currently available avatar worlds used for educational purposes. The article reports research undertaken as part of the European Union (EU)-funded project EQUEL (e-quality in e-learning) from the point of view of a single researcher. The EQUEL project was organised into several Significant Interest Groups (SIGs) and the Agora SIG was set up to explore knowledge-sharing in 3D (three-dimensional) avatar-based systems, in particular Active Worlds Educational Universe (AWEDU – http://www.activeworlds.com). AWEDU is a relatively common, stable and explored 3D system. Further details of the research reported here can be found in papers presented by Jensen and Fejfer Olsen et al at the networked learning conference 2004 (http://www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/past/nlc2004). |
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