Campus codespaces for networked learnersSiân BayneCentre for Research in Digital EducationThe University of Edinburgh@sbayne

from Euclidean space (determined objectively and measured scientifically) to relational space (contingent, active and produced through social relations and material practices)to more recent ontogentic ideas of space (not about what space is, but how space becomes)from Kitchin and Dodge, 2011

The becoming of space

‘Where?’ is no longer a simple question.Carvalho, Goodyear and de Laat (2017)

The university can no longer be seen as a bounded, stable place – a static container within which education takes place. Instead it is re-cast as a complex enactment by which people, buildings, objects, machines are brought together to produce certain performances in certain places at certain times.

The emergent mobilities paradigm ... undermines sedentarist theories [which] treat as normal stability, meaning, and place, and treat as abnormal distance, change, and placelessness.Sheller and Urry, 2006

putting into question the fundamental ‘territorial’ and ‘sedentary’ precepts of twentieth-century social science.Hannam et al, 2006

Discursive ‘othering’ of distance educationMaterial practices of teaching methodsReplication of their metaphors onlineFetishization of the campus in promotional materials

“the idea of being away suggests that the learning which takes place off campus is somehow ‘other’ to what happens in the library, studios, tutorial rooms and other teaching spaces.”James Lambhttp://www.james858499.net/

‘Away from the university’

smooth and striated spacenetworked, fluid and fire spacecode/space

Smooth and striated space

Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1988) A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. London: Continuum.

In striated space, lines or trajectories tend to be subordinated to points: one goes from one point to another. In the smooth, it is the opposite: the points are subordinated to the trajectory. Deleuze & Guattari, 1988

striatedlocation

arrivalsedentary space

progressiondelimited

‘word of the citadel’structured

arboreal

smoothline of flightpassagenomad spacebecomingopen‘word of the street’amorphousrhizomatic

‘striated’ in 2004VLEs and LMSs

‘smooth’ in 2004scholarly hypertextmultimodal assessmentsanonymous discussion forums

Bayne S. (2004) Smoothness and Striation in Digital Learning Spaces. E-Learning. 1(2):302-316.

[There is] an asymmetrical power relation between the individuals whose actions generate individual datums and those who come to own and profit from the big data they become.

The teleological nature of this understanding is seen most clearly in the common metaphor of big data—and the ‘digital’ in general—as new frontiers to be explored, expanded, and conquered.Thatcher, O’Sullivan and Mahmoudi, 2016

Rhizo15 http://rhizomatic.net/

Of course, smooth spaces are not in themselves liberatory. But the struggle is changed or displaced in them, and life reconstitutes its stakes, confronts

new obstacles, invents new paces, switches adversaries. Never believe that a smooth space will

suffice to save us. Deleuze and Guattari, 1988

Bounded, networked, fluid and fire space

Law, J. & Mol, A. (2001). Situating technoscience: an inquiry into spatialities. Environment and Planning D. (19), 609-621.Mol, A. & Law, J. (1994). Regions, networks and fluids: anaemia and social topology. Social Studies of Science, 24(4), 641-671.

regional space, defined by stable boundariesnetwork space, defined by stable relations between elementsfluid space, defined by shifting boundaries and network relationsMol and Law 1994

fire space, defined by the lambent flickering of presence and absenceLaw and Mol 2001

First, there are regions in which objects are clustered together and boundaries are drawn around each cluster. Mol and Law 1994

Second, there are networks in which distance is a function of the relations between the elements and difference a matter of relational variety.Mol and Law 1994

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Sometimes neither boundaries nor relations mark the difference between one place and another. Instead, sometimes boundaries come and go, allow leakage or disappear altogether, while relations transform themselves without fracture. Sometimes, then, social space behaves like a fluid.Mol and Law 1994

‘marginalised’ fire topology in which ‘shape is achieved and maintained through the relation between different forms of presence and absence’Ek, 2011

What does it mean to be a student ‘at’ Edinburgh, who is not ‘in’ Edinburgh?

MSc in Digital Education

Interview and visual data with 28 online distance studentsAustralia, Croatia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Poland, Spain, Tanzania, UK and the USA

Phillip Walley: I inherited a packet of family history materials that tracks my heritage back to Scotland.…Family records show the first departure from Scotland was around 1627. … The second departure would come in 1828 when the couple decided to move their surviving Scottish-born children to the States - settling first in Massachusetts, then Maine and finally in Illinois. So, in terms of heritage, my attending the University of Edinburgh in an online programme is very much my own virtual “Homecoming Scotland”.

Bounded space: homing

Bounded space: ‘campus envy’

What we saw in our interview data was a series of ‘campus imaginaries’ - imagined qualities of the sociomaterial space of the university which function as a source of counterfactuals to troubling or difficult experiences participants had as students on online distance programmes. Ross and Sheail, 2016

Max Crary: I seem to remember being a little jealous of those actually in the city as if proximity would somehow give them an advantage! …[I] suspected that more of a 'university life' could be had if one was actually in Edinburgh… but this was a minor thing compared to my enjoyment with study which far outweighed any 'Edinburgh envy'.

Rosaline Bohanek: I can’t imagine any circumstances where I won’t come to the city to graduate.

Networked space

Allie Ruther: Yes. I have felt very connected to people that have been in my courses. I feel more connected than if they were in a face to face class. ...I feel I moved beyond Edinburgh very quickly.

Fluid space

Lilia Banton: ha, for the last five weeks, i've engaged with the course from five different cities in three different countries... York, Glasgow, Dusseldorf, Poznan (PL) and now Kalisz (PL).

Selena Lamon: I am sitting at the kitchen dining table :) With my laptop, and then other things strewn across the table! My mobile, the landline, a watch, a pen. With one ear...listening out for baby's noise, grunts and snorts and thinking about preparing dinner for my husband!

Lucas Davidson, 'Present Absence' (2010)

Erik Credle: I feel a sense of belonging to the University, but at the same time I dont feel that I am actually part of the University.

Matthew Gillon: In a strange way, I didn't feel that I wasn't in Edinburgh.

Phillip Walley: I may not be physically on campus, but … the campus goes with me - as part of my cognitive real estate if you will.

Fire space

Making a case for ‘topological multiplicity rather than uniformity’.Mol and Law 1994

Bayne, S., Gallagher, M.S. & Lamb, J. (2013). Being ‘at’ university: the social topologies of distance students. Higher Education 67(5): 569-583.

“Why just this image, why the dominant architecture? Why replicate a clean outline and unbroken lines?

I want to know about the possibilities of the spaces inbetween, the liminal, the spaces outside, the way we can move between them. I want to let the metaphor crumble and be disrupted so we can pick it apart, brick by brick. I want the euphoria of dystopian visions. I want to play in the ruins until we make a new place.”

http://reticulatrix.wordpress.com/2013/02/12/edcmooc-schools-out/

Code/Space

Kitchin, R. and Dodge, M. (2011) Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.

Code/space is where software and the spatiality of everyday life become mutually constituted, that is, produced through one another.

Code/space, like all space, is beckoned into being through various practices and processes. What makes code/space a unique spatial formation, however, is that it is profoundly shaped by software.

Kitchin and Dodge, 2011

Yik Yak and geosocial campus space

“It’s a live pulse. A real-time feed of what’s going on.”

Nick Pearcehttps://digitalscholar.wordpress.com

Peter Matthewshttp://drpetermatthews.blogspot.co.uk

Transduction: a process of ontogenesis, the making anew of a domain

Mobile transductions ‘make new’ and deterritorialize space

Dodge and Kitchin 2005Mackenzie 2002

Code/space is a form of transduced space where the production of space is wholly dependent on code: if the code ‘fails’, then the entire transduction ‘fails’.

Coded space is where space is transduced by code, but the transduction is not dependent on code; code matters to the ontogenesis of space, but if the code ‘fails’, space continues to be transduced.Dodge and Kitchin 2005

From sedentarism to topological multiplicity:

striated, regulated avenues and smooth lines of flightbounded regions, networks, spaces of fluid and firecoded spaces, code/space, transductions and deterritorializations

sian.bayne@ed.ac.uk@sbaynesianbayne.netwww.de.ed.ac.uk