From Eden to Agora: The E-Learning Trading Zone

Sean Sturm,Susan Carter

doi:10.14426/cristal.v3i2.48

Abstract

E-learning is not just a learning and teaching innovation; it also signals a shift in human cognition and communication. The lexicon of e-learning borrows from the barren lexicon of information science: of users, usage and usability (Gould and Lewis, 1985), or of information-seeking and affordances (Pirolli and Card, 1999). Deep e-learning requires a more fecund idiom, a new myth: of the digital agora , an e-learning ‘trading zone’ (Mills and Huber, 1995). Here we reflect on the process of shaping an electronic version of our generic doctoral skills sessions, during which it occurred to us that, to match the benefits of interactivity in face-to-face teaching and learning and to be transformative of academic subjectivity, e-learning must be truly performative, rather than merely informative; e-learners (and e-teachers too) must enact the skills they hope to learn (or teach).

Highlights

Eden or agora? E-learning is not just a learning and teaching innovation; it signals a shift in human cognition and communication
Will it be a myth of hope, where e-learning technology liberates teachers and learners? Or a myth of decline, where e-learning is yet another false paradise, bound to fail because it remains oriented to information transmission? Could e-learning offer education a redeemed Eden, or does it at its best replicate the agora [assembly place], the marketplace, a zone where ideas as well as goods were traded (Gorman, 2004; Mills and Huber, 1995), a place sometimes dicey, edgy and dodgy? Here we argue for the latter: a digital agora, the currency of which is knowledge and the profit, identity
Our shift led us to seek out ways to transform e-learning, for us and our students – to make it genuinely interactive, and transformative – we cannot claim that the resulting site was an unequivocal success

Summary

Introduction

Eden or agora? E-learning is not just a learning and teaching innovation; it signals a shift in human cognition and communication. Our shift led us to seek out ways to transform e-learning, for us and our students – to make it genuinely interactive, and transformative – we cannot claim that the resulting site was an unequivocal success.

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Conclusion