Being (t)here: mobilising ‘mediaspaces’ of learning

Abstract

The mobile learning literature, particularly studies that focus on interaction or context, has the tendency to be top-down and highly scripted. Mobility is designed into learning scenarios and spaces. In this article, I proposed a practice perspective for research as an alternative starting point to ‘set in motion’ all modes of learning (blended, e-, distance, campus-based and mobile) based on mobilities research. A practice perspective seeks to understand what is being done in terms of both the social and material reconfiguration of bodies, spaces and technologies through the increasingly dialectic links between absence and presence, proximity and distance and individualism and community. This article takes into account not only the technologies we ‘wear’, but also the embodied and material performances implied by repeated and relocated media production and consumption in terms of what used to be known as oxymorons: absent presence, public privacy and isolated connectivity. These realities do not merely suggest the widening of context. This article argues that the context of inquiry is no longer where things happen, instead it is what happens as practice. Two accounts borrowed from media studies on how to mobilise ‘mediaspace’ are described as new analytical orientations for consideration to ‘move’ research into practice.

Keywords:

• mobilities
• mobile learning
• absent presence
• public privacy
• isolated connectivity

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