From place to virtual space adb hamburg 2012
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Alan Tait Pro Vice-Chancellor Professor of Distance Education and Development The Open University From Place to Virtual Space: Reconfiguring Student Support in Distance Education
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Transcript of From place to virtual space adb hamburg 2012
Alan TaitPro Vice-ChancellorProfessor of Distance Education and DevelopmentThe Open University
From Place to Virtual Space: Reconfiguring Student Support in Distance Education
ADB Hamburg 2012
Twin themes
• The development of student support at OU UK over last 40 years
• The development of ideas that are implicitly contained in this broad historical sweep
• Guidelines for the direction of student support for the future
ADB Hamburg 2012
What is happening underneath the surface?
• Disembedding• Die Entbettung?
• ‘Lifting out of social relations from local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across indefinite spans of time-space’
Giddens (1991) The Consequences of Modernity
ADB Hamburg 2012
Characteristics of Late Modernity
• Disembedding from local
• Historical sweep from oral to written cultures
• Role of mass communication
ADB Hamburg 2012
ADB Hamburg 2012
Regions and NationsEngland1 London2 South (Oxford)3 South West (Bristol)4 West Midlands (Birmingham)5 East Midlands (Nottingham)6 East (Cambridge)7 Yorkshire (Leeds) 8 North West (Manchester) 9 North (Newcastle) 13 South East (East Grinstead)
10 Wales (Cardiff) 11 Scotland (Edinburgh) 12 Ireland (Belfast and Dublin)
13 OU Regions/Nations
Milton Keynes (HQ)
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Locations
* Please note that these are part of the same CST
An ancient Egyptian table calculating the number of sacrifices made of a particular type over the course of a specified period. ?date
Ration record from Babylon dating to the years 594–569 BC
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1955
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What else is new?• Ability to make learners responsible for sourcing (some)
material• Capacity for peer and collaborative work• Richness of learning with multi-media• In industrial centre-periphery open universities, ability of
central staff to engage continuously with students• Ability to deliver near-constant updating of learning
materials
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Geological sense of development
• Layers added to layers
• Still visible
• Some fossils!
• What do we take out?
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Disembedding: a characteristic of late modernity
• ‘Lifting out of social relations from local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across indefinite spans of time-space’
Giddens (1991) The Consequences of Modernity
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Disembedding
• Distancing from location and physical presence
• Escape from context
• Key to social mobility
• From or with community?
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Continuities
• Cognitive/affective/systemic dimensions to student support (Tait 199?)
• Support to students to achieve their goals
Overall• Student as subject not object• Values which drive• and politics which negotiate choices for policy
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Vielen Dank!
