TY - GEN

T1 - Performing blended learning as a product and a service

AU - O'Keeffe, Cormac

AU - Parchoma, Gale

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - Blended and networked learning discourses tend to focus on relations among learners, tutor/professor/teachers, peers, and material learning resources. While in higher educational contexts there is logic to this discursive practice, the roles of non-educator and technological actants in blended learning networks are often neglected or relegated to marginal positions. Non-educators’ contributions to commercial assemblages of blended learning networks can be perceived as out-sider performances, in which values are more aligned to neo-liberal, managerial practices. The roles of technological actants across contexts remain under theorised. We trace interactions among sales and service staff, technological actors, and learners in a commercial blended learning assemblage and problematise a commodified performance of blended learning in relation to blended and networked learning theorised practices. Using Callon’s notion of socio-technical capacities and assemblages, we redeploy attributes of a blended-learning network where interactions among sales and service staff, learners, technological artefacts and actants are described. The roles sales and service staff and technological agents in a second language enterprise perform blended learning as an assemblage that binds companies, human personnel, and learners. Using this approach, informed by material- semiotics, we follow the sequence of transformations that are involved in the production, distribution, and consumption of blended learning. Non-educator and non-human actants in sales, service, and administrative roles actively work to strengthen blended learning assemblages, making them more - or less - durable over time, while having little or nothing to do with supporting cooperative or collaborative learning activities central to theorised blended and network learning practices. Yet these actants perform key roles in performing blended learning as a product and a service in commercial settings that connect theories of blended learning.

AB - Blended and networked learning discourses tend to focus on relations among learners, tutor/professor/teachers, peers, and material learning resources. While in higher educational contexts there is logic to this discursive practice, the roles of non-educator and technological actants in blended learning networks are often neglected or relegated to marginal positions. Non-educators’ contributions to commercial assemblages of blended learning networks can be perceived as out-sider performances, in which values are more aligned to neo-liberal, managerial practices. The roles of technological actants across contexts remain under theorised. We trace interactions among sales and service staff, technological actors, and learners in a commercial blended learning assemblage and problematise a commodified performance of blended learning in relation to blended and networked learning theorised practices. Using Callon’s notion of socio-technical capacities and assemblages, we redeploy attributes of a blended-learning network where interactions among sales and service staff, learners, technological artefacts and actants are described. The roles sales and service staff and technological agents in a second language enterprise perform blended learning as an assemblage that binds companies, human personnel, and learners. Using this approach, informed by material- semiotics, we follow the sequence of transformations that are involved in the production, distribution, and consumption of blended learning. Non-educator and non-human actants in sales, service, and administrative roles actively work to strengthen blended learning assemblages, making them more - or less - durable over time, while having little or nothing to do with supporting cooperative or collaborative learning activities central to theorised blended and network learning practices. Yet these actants perform key roles in performing blended learning as a product and a service in commercial settings that connect theories of blended learning.

KW - networked learning

M3 - Conference contribution/Paper

SP - 471

EP - 479

BT - Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Networked Learning 2014

A2 - Jones, Chris

A2 - de Laat, Maarten

A2 - Bayne, Sian

A2 - Ryberg, Thomas

A2 - Sinclair, Christine

T2 - 9th International Conference ISBN 978-1-86220-304-4 on Networked Learning 2014

Y2 - 7 April 2014 through 9 April 2014

ER -