‘Sending Messages to a Machine’: Articulating Ethe-Real Selves in Blended Teaching (and Learning)

Abstract

Teaching and learning online is one of several risky practices in higher education today that threaten to disfigure academics' work and identity. For many academics, accustomed to the tempo and practices of face-to-face teaching, it threatens disorientation. In this article the author examines the teaching beliefs of a computer science lecturer, via the lens of his self-ascribed teaching metaphor (the Performer). Seb and other participants in the author's research are grappling with new modes of pedagogical being – ‘blended teaching and learning’ – the structures and practices of which straddle the imprecise boundaries of live and asynchronous pedagogies. Why does the hybrid, blended academic choose and value ‘traditional’, on-campus face-to-face lectures and/or seminars over online modes? The prospect of becoming a machine – a cyborg academic, a tech(no)body teacher clearly troubles him. An early adopter and technology enthusiast, Seb nevertheless prefers the embodied riskiness of ‘real’ face-to-face teaching over the ‘ethereal’ uncertainty of online pedagogy.