Abstract
This chapter describes two different practices which attempted to enact a digital university: MOOCs and videoconferencing apps used for lecturing. I show how regular MOOCs show little potential for mediatic displacement, since there is only one source of sensory input which tends to capture and overwhelm the students’ attention, hence very little potential for study gestures. However, I also describe a new and experimental MOOC format, the bMOOC, that showed a possibility to stirr occasions for thought by disrupt the linearity of the classical MOOCs, by disorienting the student and by refusing to deliver some ‘content’ to be learned. Meanwhile, using videoconferencing apps to enact an online lecture cannot yet be an instance of a digital university since the collective experiences of attention-making were subverted by the individualising logic of the screen. The promise of the digital university seems to remain aspirational until we figure out how to enact the techniques of mediatic displacement currently flourishing at the physical university.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
See for example: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20190123080937857.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
See for example Peter Adamson’s History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps (HoP), a well-known philosophy podcast with educational relevance.
- 7.
- 8.
Note: Several of the gestures described in this section were uncovered while discussing with the students of the class on “Pedagogische cinematheek en theorievorming” during a seminar activity at KU Leuven. I am grateful to Benedikte Custers and Joris Vlieghe for giving me the opportunity to teach this seminar and learn from the student’s own experiences with the online university.
- 9.
Software used included: Youtube, Skype, Zoom, Google Hangouts, BlueButton, as well as custom educational platforms such as Canvas, Blackboard, Brightspace, Toledo, Moodle, etc.
References
Ariko, M., & Sun, J. (2018). A phenomenological inquiry into student’s experience of critical thinking while participating in MOOCs. Master’s thesis, KU Leuven, Leuven.
Bali, M. (2014). MOOC pedagogy: Gleaning good practice from existing MOOCs. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 10(1), 44.
Bennett, R., &Kent, M. (2017). Massive open online courses and higher education: What went right, what went wrong and what next? New York: Routledge.
Clark, W. (2006). Academic charisma and the origins of the research university. Chicago, IL, Bristol: University of Chicago Press.
Decuypere, M. (2015). Academic practice: Digitizing, relating, existing. PhD. KU Leuven, Leuven.
EADTU. (2014). Porto Declaration on European MOOCs. Porto.
Flusser, V. (2011). Does writing have a future? (N. A. Roth, Trans.) (Electronic mediations, Vol. 33). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Friesen, N. (2017). Telepresence and the posthuman: Pedagogical tact and the limits of representability. Philosophy of Education Archive, pp. 640–655.
Friesen, N. (2020). 4 weird things that happen when you videoconference. The Conversation.
Gadamer, H.-G. (2004). Truth and method (2nd ed., Continuum impacts). London, New York: Continuum.
Godwin-Jones, R. (2014). Global reach and local practice: The promise of MOOCs. Language Learning and Technology, 18(3), 5–15.
Guo, P. J., Kim, J., & Rubin, R. (2014). How video production affects student engagement. In M. Sahami, A. Fox, M. A. Hearst, & M. T. Chi (Eds.), The first ACM conference, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 04.03.2014–05.03.2014 (pp. 41–50). New York: ACM Press. https://doi.org/10.1145/2556325.2566239.
Israel, M. J. (2015). Effectiveness of integrating MOOCs in traditional classrooms for undergraduate students. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16(5), 102–118.
Jacobs, A. (2013). Two cheers for web U!. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/opinion/sunday/grading-the-mooc-university.html.
Johnston, B., MacNeill, S., & Smyth, K. (2018). Conceptualising the digital university: The intersection of policy, pedagogy and practice (Digital education and learning). Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Knox, J. (2014). Posthumanism and the massive open online course: Contaminating the subject of global education. PhD, The University of Edinburgh. https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/15895.
Maciejewski, M., & Gouardères, F. (2019). Digital agenda for Europe. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/64/digital-agenda-for-europe.
Oakeshott, M. (2004). The idea of a university. Academic Questions, 17(1), 23–30.
Ong, W. J. (2000). The presence of the word: Some prolegomena for cultural and religious history (2nd ed., Academic studies in religion and the social order). Binghamton, NY: Global Publications.
Petrulis, J. (2020). Teaching a large lecture class remotely, due to coronavirus. https://genderstudies.hku.hk/pedagogies/teaching-remotely/. Accessed 14 Mar 2020.
Rivard, R. (2013). Measuring the MOOC dropout rate. Inside Higher Ed, 8.
Storme, T., Vansieleghem, N., Devleminck, S., Masschelein, J., & Simons, M. (2016). The emerging pedagogy of MOOCs, the educational design of technology and practices of study. Journal of Computers in Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40692-016-0070-5.
Vandendorpe, C. (2009). From papyrus to hypertext: Toward the universal digital library (Topics in the digital humanities). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Vansieleghem, N. (2017). MOOC pedagogy—The bMOOC experiment. Leuven.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Marin, L. (2021). The Digital University. In: On the Possibility of a Digital University. SpringerBriefs in Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65976-9_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65976-9_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-65975-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-65976-9
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)