Session Information
Contribution
Description: In conventional educational ethnographies, the notion of context or field has been treated as a container (Nespor: 1997). In effect, educational settings have clear boundaries and are filled with identifiable contents of culture, classroom instruction, students, administrative practices, etc. With the expansion and pluralisation of higher education institutions, such notion based on the idea of a single site or locality becomes problematic as researchers are confronted with 'mobilities' (Urry: 2000), movements and effects of symbolic and material forms in various sites and situations (Eisenhart: 2001; Wittel: 2000). Consequently, there is almost an urgency to seriously consider how to investigate multiple fields and permeable boundaries. It has been suggested that ethnographers have to redefine the notion of field or context. Instead of something 'that surrounds', we should conceptualised it as that 'which weaves together' (Cole: 1996). Another suggestion, drawing from Castells (1996), is an ethnography of networks, wherein in its metaphor, the multiple sites have connections and relationships. This paper explores an empirical endeavour of investigating networked learning by expanding the design and conceptualisation of ethnographic and case studies to a multi-sited, mobile and virtual ethnographic framework guided by the works Marcus (1995), Latour (1987), Strathern (2004) and Urry (2000) to name a few.
Methodology: The point of entry for the part of study presented in this paper is a postgraduate course in an English university. From this 'field', using the notion of 'follow the actors' (Latour, 1987), I have followed the students and their tutor in a seminar that was videotaped, in a questionnaire distributed and analysed later on followed through with questions, clarifications conducted in either face-to-face meetings or through email responses. The main 'object' I have followed is Blackboard, the virtual learning environment used. To be involved, I have participated in observation and in interviews. I have observed and read written conversations in discussion forums and traced interactions online. The design of the study was not completely laid out in advance nor were its methods or instruments fixed. This strategy of following participants and artefacts alike both in physical and virtual spaces through and within their relationships as friendships, exchanges, responses, resources, etc. shape a space for making further connections and disconnections.
Conclusions: I hope to have produced in this paper an empirical material useful to theorising, analysing and evaluating networked learning in higher education beyond a field or a single site into multiple and disperse situations and elucidate the networks within and through which our methods of investigation have to be able to 'move', especially in a context wherein the field is hybrid, unbounded and emergent. With its partial connections and findings, it is confronted with issues that emerge as effects of moving from 'field' to 'fields', which I think deserves our utmost deliberations for future research.
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