Curiosity and Self-connected Learning: Re-centring the ‘I’ in Technology-Assisted Learning

Abstract

Innovations in technology shape Higher Education. In the UK, technology provides direct interfaces between institution, lecturer and learner, whether the learner is campus-based or studying at a distance. Technology is thus blurring traditional geographic boundaries by widening remote access to the university as well as having a significant role in campus-based pedagogic practice. Educational research into learning at a distance can inform the broader HE community because the differences between on-campus and off-campus learning is often less overt. This chapter details findings from research into what it means to the individual to learn at a distance. This is important and necessary at this juncture: technology provides a range of pedagogic advantages, but, to maximise learning the individual learners’ experience must steer our pedagogic assumptions, actions and aspirations. And yet, relatively little is known about how people learn at a distance. The dynamic nature of the self is often unrecognised in either course design or learning content, where learning itself can be misrepresented as linear and compartmentalised (and often encouraged through modular-designed courses and instrumental evaluations that monitor superficial aspects of the modular experience). By better understanding what it means to be learning at a distance via the interface of technology, we can design and deliver better learning, using technology more effectively, irrespective of where the learner is located. Via an interpretive phenomenological research project into distance learning, we question what it means to learn at a distance and offer practical propositions about maximising learning.