A blank space is what I have encountered this week in thinking about the spatial experience, metaphorical or otherwise of virtual learning environments.
I am in caught in the grip of Biesta’s “frustrating middle ground”(Biesta 2013). I am experiencing some serious resistance to the use of spatial metaphors with regards to VLEs. In a bid to ensure that I don’t destroy myself or, heaven forbid, the world I will attempt to slowly work through it.
As always, I’d like to give a bit of context to my thinking first. My experience of virtual learning environments as a student is limited to the IDEL course. My learning is an internal process, it seems somewhat independent of my environment. As long as my mind is free from distraction, where I am seems to have little relevance. I am not a person that is terribly in tune with their physical environment. In additional to this I am quite spatially challenged, I still can’t tell my left from my right and I find it virtually impossible to visualise a 3D space from a 2D building plan and it is universally acknowledged that I am not a good driver.
I don’t perceive MOODLE to be a ‘container’ of things. I see it as a network, a link to information, to my tutors, to my peers and to the university administration; it a virtual conduit for the flow of information and ideas. Just as my mind is not a ‘container’ for my thoughts, it is a series of connections and neural networks. When I meditate I don’t ‘empty’ my mind, I slow down my flow of thoughts.
I liked the term “new ecology of learning” that Cousin (Cousin 2005) mentions in her article (the term credited to (Randy Garrison and Anderson 2003)). Instead of spaces, digital education offers connections and relationships; between students, tutors, content and technology itself. In the same article, the internet was likened a rhizome, (the idea credited to (Deleuze and Guattari 1988)). A good argument was made for using the rhizome metaphor but that is not a spatial metaphor. A rhizome is a concrete object and takes up space in a physical sense but that is not the quality to which the metaphor is referring. Looking back over my notes I have used the words; connectivity, association, addition, rupture to describe the metaphor of the rhizome. This is not spatial language but relational language.
As a teacher, I used Google Classroom with my students. It enabled me to connect, not so much to my students but to their work. I did not feel their ‘presence’ in the Google Classroom perhaps because we used the programme at different times. I was physically with them in the computer room when they were using it and I only connected to the Google Classroom outside of teaching time. I would say that I was more intimately connected to their work in the Google Classroom, than with their work in the physical world. Google records everything; the progression of the work and who contributed what and when. Also I could react to their ideas and conclusions on the digital page without being conscious of writing over their work with my red pen. My comments and questions became part of the work – a collaboration between student and teacher.
I think my last hope for ‘finding’ the elusive spatial metaphor in a digital environment is Minecraft. I’ll keep my mind open and see if I can make “space” for the idea. Please forgive the lame puns – I actually can’t help myself.
Cousin, Glynis. 2005. “Learning from Cyberspace.” Education in Cyberspace, 117–29.
That’s a helpful background to your struggle with the spacial metaphors. Does a network involve some spacial aspect for you – as in, resource X is “over there” and I can access along this path (which I suppose is a bit like a memory palace – https://artofmemory.com/wiki/How_to_Build_a_Memory_Palace) ??? But the emphasis on flow is helpful – and I do get that as a metaphor for thinking.
You make a good point that the rhizome is not a spacial metaphor but is connective, relational and growth orientated. Your experience of sensing the presence through the work of the students rather than in their physical presence is a good one – certainly my experience of teaching and working face-to-face and virtually is that I feel far more connected and in the presence of you all on IDEL than I do of the on-campus students.
This is an effective and critical engagement with the idea and you’ve used the literature (and puns) well.