Lecture capture, social topology, and the spatial and temporal arrangements of UK universities

James Lamb,Jen Ross

doi:10.1177/1474904121993982

Abstract

This article considers how technologies actively shape the topologies of UK higher education. Using the example of lecture capture systems, we examine the relationship between learning technologies and formations of space and time. Combining theories of sociomateriality and social topology, and concepts of assemblage and relationality, we expose the entanglement of interests that influence university spaces and times. Across 3 months coinciding with the onset of COVID-19 we collected over 500 tweets that discussed lecture capture within UK higher education, leading towards 2 central arguments. First, the topology of the lecture is fluid, and, even while being radically technologised, re-spatialised and disrupted, it persists as a lecture and a central pedagogical feature of university life. Second, lecture capture is a rich site of ‘issuefication’, and viewing learning technologies as dynamic issues enables a better understanding of how their meaning, function and influence are contingent on shifting and relational assemblages of human and non-human interests. Lecture capture can be pedagogical, commercial and political, thereby resisting deterministic framings of the relationship between technologies and the temporal and spatial arrangements of higher education.

Highlights

This article explores how lecture capture technologies and practices are reconfiguring the spaces and times of higher education
Building on work where we investigated the social topologies of online students (Bayne et al, 2013), and assemblages of nearness (Ross et al, 2013), we began the work discussed here by asking: what current aspects of digital higher education would benefit from an analysis exploring the relational making of space and time? At the point of identifying lecture capture in UK universities as the subject of this research we could not have foreseen how useful it would be in casting a light on the shifting spatial, temporal and topological arrangements of higher education
By illustrating the ways that lecture capture has tended to be investigated, and how social topology has generated new perspectives in educational research, we identify the significant gaps that this article aims to fill; and will show how this might be done by theorising the lecture as a topological assemblage made up of relations between actors that are able to shift without rupture – sometimes quite rapidly

Summary

Introduction

This article explores how lecture capture technologies and practices are reconfiguring the spaces and times of higher education. Building on work where we investigated the social topologies of online students (Bayne et al, 2013), and assemblages of nearness (Ross et al, 2013), we began the work discussed here by asking: what current aspects of digital higher education would benefit from an analysis exploring the relational making of space and time? At the point of identifying lecture capture in UK universities as the subject of this research we could not have foreseen how useful it would be in casting a light on the shifting spatial, temporal and topological arrangements of higher education. Using the Twitter social networking platform to analyse discussion around lecture capture, we explored the complex and changing nature of educational space and time during this period

Objectives

Conclusion