Taking Time to get Messy Outside the Online Classroom

The learning network extends beyond the classroom, whether the classroom is situated online, on-campus or elsewhere. The specific locations of students and staff, their “places”, are part of that learning network. This place-centred awareness of the network connects with all beings in these locations. With this in mind, I argue that there is a benefit to explicitly acknowledging our physical location in learning, teaching and research. In an increasingly uncertain and messy world, we need to develop skills to deal with risk that is appropriate and applicable to our place in the world (Garcia et al., 2017). This work proposes a way of developing those key graduate skills for online learners and teachers. Drawing on elements of place-based learning traditionally employed in outdoor, face-to-face teaching, this chapter will consider how incorporating place-based approaches in online postgraduate learning may have the potential to provide a more holistic learning experience, connecting our diverse locations, learning from and sharing local place-knowledge.