An invited talk for faculty and staff at Stanford University, 1 June 2015. http://jenrossity.net/blog/?page_id=9767

1. a positive principle: online
distance learning as the
privileged mode
Dr Jen Ross, Digital Education
University of Edinburgh, Scotland
image: Ed Guzman, ‘human-technology relations’, https://www.flickr.com/photos/-ed/15673388214/in/dateposted/

2. https://vimeo.com/77766791
http://onlineteachingmanifesto.wordpress.com

4. http://digital.education.ed.ac.uk

5. beliefs about knowledge and the nature of learning are... revealed in
the ways teaching spaces are designed... recognisable patterns in
higher education ...are the result of choices that have been made,
sometimes consciously, sometimes without much consideration of
what the alternatives might be. (Toohey 1999, p.45-48)
http://www.magiceye.com

6. as long as we compare technology conditions to
no-technology conditions, the field will not move
forward, especially in our search for nuanced
applications of technology. (Bernard et al 2014,
p.272)
•It is not difference in instructional method that
determines student performance. (Black 2013, p.6)
http://imgkid.com/old-school-house-inside.shtml

7. • education concerns not only how people learn
‘naturally’ from their environment but also the
social interactions that support learning, and the
institutions and practices that have grown up
around them. (Beetham and Sharpe 2013, p.2)
• technologies work dynamically with pedagogies,
not for them, and in the process they become
mutually determining. (Cousin, 2005, p.118)
Ecofriend ‘praxis of flow’ http://www.ecofriend.com/praxis-of-flow-green-architecture-inspired-by-evolution.html

8. • The university… can no longer be seen as a bounded,
stable place – a static ‘container’ within which education
takes place. (Bayne, Gallagher & Lamb 2014)
http://www.absolutedp.com

9. the privileged mode?

10. diverse perspectives and experiences

11. imaginative, challenging pedagogies

12. imaginative, challenging pedagogies

13. imaginative, challenging pedagogies

14. imaginative, challenging pedagogies

15. imaginative, challenging pedagogies

16. imaginative, challenging pedagogies

17. collaboration, contact, community
‘The MSc was without a doubt the most rewarding
educational experience I have had, online or
otherwise. Intellectually challenging, highly
interactive and collaborative, and with a palpable
sense of enthusiasm and camaraderie... I stay in
touch with this community even after graduation
and consider them all my colleagues.’
Michael Sean Gallagher, programme graduate

18. Kathleen Gresham Everett, http://thecourseofourseasons.com/2013/01/27/small-stones-272013/
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.
Lilia Banton: [to be at Edinburgh university] means to be online but also
mentally, intellectually and even emotionally engaged with the course.
it's not about where you live and breathe, but what you're reading
about, studying, researching, creating. i think for me being at Edinburgh
is being intellectually stimulated, thrown into uncertainty, sort of crisis,
living with it, embracing it. i don't think i would do it while 'in' edinburgh
cos the sheer physicality of the place could overpower me.
‘new geographies of learning’ project - http://edinspace.weebly.com
a rethinking of homeliness

19. Kathleen Gresham Everett, http://thecourseofourseasons.com/2013/01/27/small-stones-272013/
a rethinking of homeliness
Home is that place which enables and promotes varied and
everchanging perspectives, a place where one discovers new
ways of seeing reality, frontiers of difference. (hooks, 2004,
p.155)

20. • the value of the ‘face’
• the place of the teacher
• the implications of the
massive
• the lure of instrumentalism
• the impact of the algorithm
a space of ‘not-yetness’

21. what if...

22. ...‘anytime anywhere’
wasn’t?

23. https://vimeo.com/48102494

24. https://vimeo.com/48038904

25. Consider a house... One might almost see
it as the epitome of immobility, with its
concrete and its stark, cold and rigid
outlines ...[but] our house would emerge as
permeated from every direction by streams
of energy which run in and out of it by
every imaginable route: water, gas,
electricity, telephone lines, radio and
television signals, and so on. Its image of
immobility would then be replaced by an
image of a complex of mobilities, a nexus of
in and out conduits. (Lefebvre 1991, pp. 92–
93)
‘ink wires’, INT3RLOP3R. http://int3rlop3r.deviantart.com/art/Ink-Wires-Abstract-Wallpaper-190511137

26. ...courses got more
flexible?

27. ‘wider themes in digital education’
• “This proposal provides a flexible ‘building
block’ structure supporting students to
participate in or create a portfolio of
learning activities or experiences, engaging
with emergent components of theory and
practice in digital education.” – from the
course proposal

28. amber explosion, Valdrec, http://valdrec.deviantart.com/art/Amber-Explosion-204043128

29. ...human & non-human
teachers taught
together?

30. https://www.timeshi
ghereducation.co.uk/
news/ask-
teacherbot-are-
robots-the-
answer/2020326.arti

31. more about teacherbot:
http://sianbayne.net/?p=234

34. ...what students made
mattered?

35. dissertation trees: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Vue/209/39/28

36. Ed Guzman, the spark and the invitation, https://www.flickr.com/photos/-ed/15505504840/

37. Steph Carr, ‘the haunted city of education’, http://www.i-m.co/stephjcarr/stephjcarrededc/

38. Stuart Nicol, ‘open badges’ OER, http://openaccreditation.weebly.com

39. http://www.elernenmuzik.net

40. Amy Burvall, ‘digital life’, #edcmooc, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO0-7YAxxDY

41. • [e-learning] is about what we truly
value as a higher educational
experience. (Garrison 2011, p.124)

42. • Bayne, S., Gallagher, M.S. & Lamb, J., 2014. Being “at” university: the social topologies of
distance students. Higher Education, 67(5), pp.569–583.
• Beetham, H. & Sharpe, R., 2013. Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age: Designing for 21st
Century Learning, Routledge.
• Bernard, R.M., Borokhovski, E. &Tamim, R.M., 2014. Detecting bias in meta-analyses of
distance education research: big pictures we can rely on. Distance Education, 35(3), pp.271–
293.
• Black, L., 2013.A history of scholarship. In M. G. Moore, ed. Handbook of Distance
Education. NewYork: Routledge, pp. 3–20.
• Collier,A. & Ross, J., in press. Complexity, mess and not-yetness: teaching online with
emerging technologies. In G.Veletsianos, ed. Emerging Technologies in Distance Education.
Athabasca University Press.
• Cousin, G., 2004. Learning from cyberspace. In R. Land & S. Bayne, eds. Education in
Cyberspace. Routledge.
• Garrison, D.R., 2011. E-Learning in the 21st Century:A Framework for Research and
Practice,Taylor & Francis.
• hooks, b., 1990. Choosing the margin as a space of radical openness.Yearning: Race, gender,
and cultural politics, pp.145–53.
• Lefebvre, H., 1991.The Production of Space, Malden: Blackwell.
• Toohey, S., 1999. Designing Courses for Higher Education, Open University Press.