Taking Time to Get Messy Outside the Online Classroom

Abstract

Online postgraduate education has been perceived as taking place in a potentially isolating virtual space. Recent research has challenged this view and demonstrated how online learning is entangled with the student’s location or place in the world. And yet, this location can remain a silent, almost invisible, presence in the learning experience. It is recognised that the student is embodied, while not necessarily considering the importance of where they are embodied, and the influence and impact that location and location-knowledge may have on learning. In this chapter, I will outline how place-based approaches to learning at a distance may help to reframe the learning experience, creating opportunities to recognise diverse locations and the local place-knowledge that each student may bring to their online cohort. I will provide an overview of formative activities that draw on elements of place-based learning traditionally used for outdoor, face-to-face teaching, where online postgraduate students were invited to explore their locations, to find meaning in their place, to learn from and with their local community as well as their online community. The focus of the learning and teaching centres on students’ locations, rather than the locations selected by the staff. These pedagogical approaches can encourage students to build, and build on, their own place-data. Achieving this at a distance can be challenging and the results can be messy, but the graduate skills to deal with risk and uncertainty are needed in this rapidly changing world.