This week, I was delighted to have a reason to re-read the Sian Bayne, Michael Sean Gallagher, James Lamb 2013 paper Being ‘at’ university: the social topologies of distance students.
The paper draws on Mol and Law’s four kinds of social space:
- regional (stable boundaries)
- networked (stable relations)
- fluid (shifting boundaries and relations)
- fire (comples intersections of presence and absence).
and organises the research data into three broad themes:
- homing and the sentimental campus
- the metaphysics of presence (campus envy)
- the imagined campus.
In interviewing students (current and recently graduated) from the MSc Digital Education programme it found that “the material campus continues to be a symbolically and materially significant ‘mooring’ for a group of students who may never physically attend that campus” (p.581).
This concept of ‘mooring’ is echoed in other parts of the paper. When students talked of travelling to Edinburgh for the graduation ceremony the campus “becomes talismanic, the ‘single present centre'” (p.578). Similarly, there was a “tendency for students to view the campus not so much as a senitmental ‘home’ … but rather as a kind of touchstone—a logos—which functioned as a guarantor of the authenticity of academic experience which was not always easy to articulate” (p.577).
This echoed my own experience with the programme (albeit as a citizen of Edinburgh). A few years ago, working as an instructional designer, I investigated the part-time postgraduate opportunities in my field. Two opportunities presented themselves: an MSc in e-learning (as it was then known) at the University of Edinburgh and an MA in Online and Distance Education with the Open University. The Open University were the originators of distance education so why did I choose the University of Edinburgh? A (misplaced) sense of prestige? Perhaps. But I think it was something more than that. I had studied as an undergraduate at Edinburgh. So I was familiar with the campus. Even though I would not attending campus for class, and all I would need is this:
wifi icon
and this:
power point
I would be picturing this:
Old College
and this:
New College
and of course, this:
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie opening credits
In fact, as I am writing this I am sitting in the ECA Library at Evolution House. Look at me, being all studenty, with my week 10 reading printouts and my laptop:
And if I turn my head and ignore the brutalist Argyle House, I can just about make out Edinburgh Castle and imagine Jean Brodie giving me a history of the Old Town.
View from ECA Library, Evolution House
Images of Old and New Colleges taken from the The University of Edinburgh Image Collections
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