Posthuman
SRHE DIGITAL UNIVERSITY NETWORK
SRHE Digital University Network
Friday 2 March 2012
9.30 – 12.30 followed by lunch
Digital Disaggregation: Assessing the Uncanny Posthuman
Dr Sian Bayne, School of Education, University of Edinburgh
To learn and teach across multiple digital spaces can be to experience uncertainty, disorientation and fragmentation in both generative and disturbing ways. This presentation will draw on notions of the uncanny and of the posthuman in theorising the ‘strangeness’ of these new modes of being in education. In particular, it will discuss the ways in which assessment practices in online learning can explicitly engage with disaggregation, spectrality and posthuman pedagogy, as critical moves in re-thinking teaching, learning and assessment for the digital mode.
Dr Bayne’s research focuses on the impact of the digital on higher education, museum education and lifelong learning. Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Edinburgh, she has held awards from the British Academy, the Higher Education Academy, the AHRC and the Royal Society of Edinburgh for a range of projects concerned with the ways in which technological change prompts us to re-think what education is and can be. Dr Bayne is a member of the University of Edinburgh Digital Cultures and Education research group (http://www.education.ed.ac.uk/dice/), Programme Co-Director of the University of Edinburgh MSc in E-learning (http://www.education.ed.ac.uk/e-learning/), and Associate Dean (digital scholarship) for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Edinburgh (http://www.digital.hss.ed.ac.uk/).
Education as Sociomaterial Practices – Posthuman Frontiers for Educational Technology
Professor Tara Fenwick, School of Education, University of Stirling
The materiality of everyday interaction is too often ignored, dismissed, or isolated in educational research. Objects and technologies are often assumed to be separate and distinct from human desire and action, in ways that lead to other unhelpful distinctions between virtual and real, designers and users, and knowledge and action. In this presentation I argue for a different configuration, showing how the social and material not only are entangled in assemblages of the human and nonhuman, but also constitute the practices and knowings that comprise education. Sociomaterial analyses trace how and why particular practices and knowledges in educational processes become naturalized or stabilised, what is holding them together, what is excluded and what inequities are created. Capacities for action are more-than-human, they are relational, distributed, and enacted through particular dynamic assemblages. This is a posthuman, not anti-human approach – a sociomaterial sensibility opens radical new questions and imaginative possibilities for education and educational technology.
Professor Fenwick has written extensively about theories of learning and gender in relation to work practices and education, most recently focusing on what some call ‘socio-material’ theories, particularly actor-network theory and complexity sciences. Her book Learning Through Experience: Troubling Assumptions and Intersecting Questions (Krieger, 2003) was granted the 2004 Cyril Houle Award of the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education for Outstanding Contribution to Adult Education Literature. Recent large projects funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council include (1) an examination of older professionals’ informal learning and its relation to aging and generational issues; (2) a study exploring knowledge networks and practices of ‘portfolio’ workers (independent and mobile professionals who work with multiple employers and organizations simultaneously); and (3) a participatory research project studying social responsibility learning among small business owners, including professional firms. Her current project with Canadian colleagues Kathryn Church, Elizabeth Lange, Taylor Webb is comparing knowledge-creation practices of nurses, social workers and teachers in changing organizations, using an activity theory framework.
Event booking details
To reserve a place at this seminar please register at: www.eventdotorg.co.uk/events.asp
Or telephone +44 (0) 207 4472525. SRHE events are open to all and free to SRHE members as part of their membership package. The delegate fee for non-members is £25 [full time students £20]. Non-members wishing to join the Society may do so at the time of registration and the delegate fee will be waived. Please note that places must be booked in advance and that a £25 for non-attendance will be charged if a place has been reserved but no notice of cancellation/non-attendance has been given in advance.
Yours sincerely
Francois Smit, SRHE Event Manager
PLEASE NOTE THAT SRHE HAS MOVED TO NEW OFFICES. OUR NEW TELEPHONE NUMBER
OUR NEW OFFICE DETAILS ARE: Society for Research into Higher Education, 73 Collier Street, London N1 9BE
Telephone 0207 427 2350; Fax number 0207 278 1135; srheoffice@srhe.ac.uk; http://www.srhe.ac.uk
**END**
‘I believe in the afterlife.
It starts tomorrow,
When I go to work’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)
‘Maximum levels of boredom
Disguised as maximum fun’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)
‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8
‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc
Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic
The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com
Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com
Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com
Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski
Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski
