Projects per year
Abstract / Description of output
This paper considers how online, distance students enact the space of 'the university', in the context of the rise of distance education within a traditional, 'elite' institution. Aiming to provide insight into how students translate into distance the space of a university which has traditionally had its basis in conventional on-campus education, it locates itself within the 'new mobilities' paradigm (Urry in Mobilities. Polity Press, Cambridge, 2007), drawing on four different kinds of social space delineated by Mol and Law (Soc Stud Sci 24(4):641-741, 1994) and Law and Mol (Environ Plan D 19:609-621, 2001) in order to analyse narrative and visual data generated with distance students at the University of Edinburgh. The paper shows that the material campus continues to be symbolically and materially significant for a group of students who may never physically attend that campus. Distance students, we find, need their own version of the 'spatial certainties' of bounded, campus space. Yet, in exploring the 'new proximities' of online distance education, we also argue that to define institutional and academic authenticity solely in terms of this bounded, 'regional' space is inadequate in the face of the other topologies which also come into play throughout distance students' accounts of what it means to be 'at' university. © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 569-583 |
Number of pages | 15 |
Journal | Higher Education |
Volume | 67 |
Issue number | 5 |
Early online date | 3 Sept 2013 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 May 2014 |
Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)
- distance education
- mobilities
- space
- online education
- university
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Being ‘at’ university: the social topologies of distance students'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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edinspace: New Geographies of Learning: distance education and being 'at' The University of Edinburgh
Bayne, S., Macleod, H., O'Shea, C. & Ross, J.
1/09/11 → 31/08/12
Project: Other (Non-Funded/Miscellaneous)
Research output
- 1 Chapter (peer-reviewed)
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The sound spaces of online, distance learners
Gallagher, M., Lamb, J. & Bayne, S., 11 Jul 2016, Place-based Spaces for Networked Learning . Carvalho, L., Goodyear, P. & de Laat, M. (eds.). Oxford: Taylor & FrancisResearch output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (peer-reviewed) › peer-review