Recent studies show how complex and messy students' day-to-day study practices can be. They draw in a wide array of technologies; take place in both institutional and personal settings; and involve the consumption and production of a variety of digital and print texts. In a recent JISC-funded study, a striking element of students' accounts was the importance attached to creating productive places for study. Examples of such work will be presented, using images and textual data to illustrate such sites of study, and focusing on the subsequent management of boundaries between sites of personal, professional and study activities. The analysis will show how spaces are not simply found, nor are they just 'containers' for social practice, but are constantly generated by students and form part of the sociomaterial assemblages required to undertake their studies.

1. Exploring physical and
digital sites of study: making
and breaking boundaries
Martin Oliver & Lesley Gourlay
Institute of Education, University of London

2. Space as relationally defined
Space is a social construct
The social is spatially constructed
Social space is not static but dynamic; it is constituted by
changing social relations
Space is implicated in questions of power and symbolism,
that is the ‘power-geometry’ of space
Social space implies a ‘a simultaneous multiplicity of spaces:
cross-cutting, intersecting, aligning with one-another, or
existing in relations of paradox or antagonism
(Massey 1994: 3)

3. Space as relationally defined
We recognise space as the product of interrelations; as
constituted through interactions, from the immensity of
the global to the intimately tiny. […] We recognise space as
always under construction. Precisely because space on this
reading is a product of relations-between, relations which
are necessarily embedded in material practices which have
to be carried out, it is always in the process of being made.
It is never finished; never closed. Perhaps we could imagine
space as a simultaneity of stories-so-far.
(Massey, 2005: 9)

4. Space and flexibility

5. Constraint?
Technology offers a number of opportunities and challenges for higher
education, both enhancing existing provision and opening up new
potential. The key consideration underlying this report is why and to what
extent flexible pedagogies can be promoted and in what ways. In the
context of e-learning the answer lies in the way technology naturally
enables the provision and delivery of flexible learning and pedagogy.
Flexible learning is concerned with the pace, place and mode of learning:
[…]
place is concerned with the physical location, which may be work based
or at home, on public transport while commuting, or abroad when
travelling; […]
Thinking of the three variables above, namely pace, place and mode, then
a pedagogical approach can be positioned within the three degrees of
freedom, ie a three-dimensional space of flexible learning. In the following
diagram, the bottom, front-left point being no flexibility in any axis, and
increasing levels of flexibility, ie choice, as the space is traversed from left
to right, front to back and bottom to top.
(Gordon, 2014)

6. Flexibility
Nikolova & Collis, 1998

7. Disaggregating Universities
(Weller, 2011)
No mention of space
(This has been going on since at least 1836; University of London)

8. What is lost?
The campus is best thought of not simply as a constraint but, to
borrow Brown and Duguid’s phrase, as a ‘resourceful constraint’
(Brown & Duguid 2000: 246), one it would be premature to
write off and which those developing distributed learning need
to take seriously. […]
The campus – or more generally, the co-location of learners,
teachers, labs, class-rooms, lecture theatres, libraries and so on –
refuses to lie down and die. […] Those seeking to develop
distributed education should understand the support a campus
setting gives the educational process and should be prepared for
the necessity to find new ways of providing that support in a
distributed education context.
(Cornford & Pollock, 2005: 181, 170)

9. A sociomaterial perspective

10. (Re)assembling the Social
Behind the innocuous epistemological claim that social
explanations have to be ferreted out, lies the ontological
claim that those causes have to mobilize forces made of
social stuff. […] To explain is not a mysterious cognitive
feat, but a very practical world-building enterprise that
consists in connecting entities with other entities, that is,
in tracing a network.
(Latour, 2005: 103)

11. Material assemblages
Humans, and what they take to be their learning and social
process, do not float, distinct, in container-like contexts of
education, such as classrooms or community sites, that can
be conceptualised and dismissed as simply a wash of
material stuff and spaces. The things that assemble these
contexts, and incidentally the actions and bodies including
human ones that are part of these assemblages, are
continuously acting upon each other to bring forth and
distribute, as well as to obscure and deny, knowledge.
(Fenwick et al, 2011)

12. Human /nonhuman actors
… The more one works with digital technologies, the more
one comes to appreciate the capacity of networked and
programmable machines to carry out sophisticated
cognitive tasks, and the more the keyboard comes to seem
an extension of one's thoughts rather than an external
device on which one types. Embodiment then takes the
form of extended cognition, in which human agency and
thought are enmeshed within larger networks that extend
beyond the desktop computer into the environment.
(Hayles 2012:3)

13. The digital saturation of the
material campus
‘the classroom’ or lecture hall has perhaps remained the most iconic
symbol of what is seen as the ‘traditional’ university, and is often
placed in opposition to ‘elearning’ as somehow representing the
essence of what is ‘face-to-face’ and non-digital. […]
Similar to online resources and networked devices, the VLE also causes
the epistemological nature of the lecture and the ontological status of
the lecturer and students to be destabilised. The claims of the lecturer
may be more easily called into question, and may be simultaneously
checked, challenged or undermined in class with recourse to external
online authorities. The multivocal and unbounded nature of the
information serves to relativise the lecturer’s voice as one among many.
The biological body of the lecturer has been displaced, shifted to the
side or dwarfed by the screen. The lecturer’s voice has become a
voiceover to an increasingly visual spectacle. The point at which new
knowledge is made available has become radically dispersed.
(Gourlay 2012)

14. Students and spaces

15. Methodology
2-year JISC-funded project
1st year: student research
(Focus groups)
Longitudinal multimodal journalling
2nd year: implementation projects
Staff longitudinal journalling
(Changes to structures and systems)

16. Journaling
12 students recruited from the focus groups
3 from each of the four groups (PGCE, taught masters,
taught masters at a distance, Phd)
Distance students interviewed via Skype
A structured sequence of interviews:
A digital ‘biography’, exploration of current practice,
guidance on data generation
Students capture images, video and other forms of
documentation to explore engagement with
technologies for study
2-3 further interviews, building student analysis of data
via presentations
4 Members of staff

17. Co-constituted spaces

19. Juan’s space engineering
Library
TextsDesks
Folders
Notes
Another collegeDesktop computer
Electronic
resources
A printer that prints double-sided
The institute
Pens and Paper
Post-it
Notes
A girlfriend
Another desktop
Her password

20. When spaces fail

21. In my school, I… we had… our staff room was equipped… one,
two, three, four, five, six, seven… seven computers now we can
use and only one of them attached with a printer. So, actually
we’ve got six PGC students over there, so it’s, kind of, everybody
wants to get to that computer where you can use the printer. Yes,
so in the end I found actually I can also use the printer from the
library in the school.
So, six student teachers tried to use other computer. So, it, kind
of, sometimes feels a bit crowded. And when the school staff
want to use it, well, okay, it seems like we are the invaders,
intruders?

22. Nowhere
That’s really interesting how much I use the iPad for a start
everywhere and anywhere... And I have the information
there all the time constantly, and I just feel as though I
don’t have to be anywhere physical at all anymore…
(Django interview 3)

23. Everywhere
For me the most important thing is portability, because I use
technologies, ICT, everywhere I go, anywhere I go. For example of
course I use some technologies, PCs and laptops and my iPad in the
IOE building, and in the IOE building I use PC, I use them in PC
room, in library, and for searching some data or journals. In the
lecture room I record my, record the lectures and taking memos by
that.
(Yuki; Japanese, female in her 40s, MA student)

24. 24

25. Somewhere
I’ll only work at the computer usually to actually do the
final part of writing an essay. I enjoy… the image of being,
sort of, in a dusty, you know, sort of, wooden shelved, kind
of, old library, where it’s, sort of, cosy and warm, that’s,
you know, I like that and that’s a part of the experience of
studying that I enjoy.
(Juan interview 1)

26. Physical Location
Bloomsbury: Academic, historical, artistic, studious, important

27. Because the institute is in the centre of London, and because […] where I
live it could be, you could be in a town sort of anywhere and you wouldn’t
really necessarily notice. Whereas you come in here and you come over
the Waterloo Bridge and you see St Pauls and the Houses of Parliament,
you know, you’re in London, you’re doing something again. You know,
this is where people do important things and that, kind of, thing and it
gives it a reality and it puts it in a context of potentially important or more,
or a seriousness to it […] It focuses me a little bit on that. Whereas at
home, it’s, yes, it doesn’t sometimes feel as though I’m part of a thing, part
of a, you know, part of a course. […] And the writing style, it depends I
think on the style of which I like to write is quite potentially, sort of, I
don’t know, confrontational... not confrontational, but critique, you
know, being a critique where you, sort of, say it’s this and you have to have
a strong opinion or you have to feel strongly in, and confidence in your
opinion that this is the way. And I think that all comes from, you know,
feeling that you’re a part of it and that you’re important and that what
you’re doing is important.

28. Intimate spaces

30. “The bathroom is
a good place to read”

31. Establishing boundaries

32. Establishing boundaries

33. Dwelling & Building
Things like such locations shelter or house men's (sic) lives. Things of
this sort are housings, though not necessarily dwelling-houses in the
narrower sense. The making of such things is building. Its nature
consists in this, that it corresponds to the character of these things.
They are locations that allow spaces. This is why building, by virtue of
constructing locations, is a founding and joining of spaces. Because
building produces locations, the joining of the spaces of these locations
necessarily brings with it space, as spatium and as extension into the
thingly structure of buildings. But building never shapes pure "space" as
a single entity. Neither directly nor indirectly. Nevertheless, because it
produces things as locations, building is closer to the nature of spaces
and to the origin of the nature of "space" than any geometry and
mathematic.
(Heidegger 1971: 347)

34. A space, then, which is neither a container for always-
already constituted identities nor a completed closure of
holism. This is a space of loose ends and missing links. For
the future to be open, space must by open too.
(Massey, 2005: 12)

35. Conclusions
“Study” is too broad a category, fine-grained analysis of
specific (textual) practices is required
Space is not a backcloth, container or context to
practice
Spaces of study that are offered to students; that we require
them to use; and that they are required to make
Instead space may be viewed as contingent, emergent
and endlessly constituted through unfolding
socialmaterial/posthuman/textual practice

36. References
Cornford, J. & Pollock, N. (2005) The University Campus as a ‘resourceful
constraint’: process and practice in the construction of the virtual university. In
Lea, M. & Nicoll, K. (Eds), Distributed Learning: Social and cultural approaches to
practice, London: RoutledgeFalmer, 170-181.
Fenwick, T., Edwards, R. & Sawchuk, P. (2011) Emerging Approaches to
Educational Research: Tracing the Sociomaterial. London: Routledge.
Gourlay, L. (2012) Cyborg ontologies and the lecturer’s voice: a posthuman
reading of the ‘face-to-face’. Learning, Media and Technology 37 (2), 198-211
Gordon, N. (2014) Flexible Pedagogies: Technology-Enhanced Learning. York:
Higher Education Academy.
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/flexiblelearning/Flexiblepeda
gogies/tech_enhanced_learning/TEL_report.pdf
Hayles, K. (2012) How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis.
London: University of Chicago Press.

37. References
Heidegger, M. (1971) (Trans. Albert Hofstadter) Poetry, Language, Thought. New
York: Harper Colophon.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Massey, D. (1994) Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Massey, D. (2005) For Space. London: Sage.
Nikolova, I., & Collis, B. (1998) Flexible learning and the design of
instruction. British Journal of Educational Technology, 29(1), 59-72.
Weller, M. (2011) The Digital Scholar: How Technology Is Transforming Scholarly
Practice. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-digital-scholar-9781849666268/