Feeling higher education futures: affective imaginaries of online teaching for higher education leaders

Abstract

Digitally enabled technologies and pedagogies, including the use of AI technologies, have become integral to higher education. Despite this, online teaching continues to give rise to particularly strong and variable affective responses, responses which orient the academics who feel them towards possible futures, whether desired or feared. In this paper, we consider what affective imaginaries might be informing the future of online teaching within higher education. We describe four affective stances which we interpret from our interviews with influential senior academics in Australia and the United Kingdom, and reflect on how affective imaginaries of online learning may be speaking academic practice into being. We conclude that giving legitimacy to the affective may support the collective potential of academics to mobilise their visions and hopes for higher education going forward.