E-learning as Organizing Practice in Higher Education

Abstract

In this chapter, how e-learning is constructing new ways of teaching and learning organizing practices in the Brazilian higher education sector is explored. Rather than a case study, the author’s experience of e-learning in Brazil provides the foundation for analysis. As a social phenomenon, education has been subject to the social changes influenced by technology. In this chapter, theoretical analyses of e-learning as an organizing practice provide insight into the daily and situated social life that enables learning. Five elements of the virtual learning environment are developed using a practice-based studies approach to e-learning: (a) learning the e-learning “times”; (b) the necessity of planning; (c) the learning of VLE logic and functioning; (d) the learning of communication and interaction through VLE for professors and students; and (e) the development of a competence of teaching through VLE for the professors and the learning for the students. The key claim is that the virtual nature of e-learning higher education courses can provide a new space for creativity and facilitation of student learning, with an understanding of e-learning logic by human social actors. Like traditional education, e-learning education can be bad if it is not well planned and/or organized, that virtual does not change the key factors for learning.