Abstract
<p>Online distance learners are in a particularly complex relationship with the educational institutions they belong to (Bayne, Gallagher, &amp; Lamb, 2012). For part-time distance students, arrivals and departures can be multiple and invisible as students take courses, take breaks, move into independent study phases of a programme, find work or family commitments overtaking their study time, experience personal upheaval or loss, and find alignments between their professional and academic work. These comings and goings indicate a fluid and temporary assemblage of engagement, not a permanent or stable state of either “presence” or “distance”.</p><p>This paper draws from interview data from the “New Geographies of Learning” project, a research project exploring the notions of space and institution for the MSc in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh, and from literature on distance learning and online community. The concept of nearness emerged from the data analyzing the comings and goings of students on a fully online programme. It proposes that “nearness” to a distance programme is a temporary assemblage of people, circumstances, and technologies. This state is difficult to establish and impossible to sustain in an uninterrupted way over the long period of time that many are engaged in part-time study. Interruptions and subsequent returns should therefore be seen as normal in the practice of studying as an online distance learner, and teachers and institutions should work to help students develop <em>resilience</em> in negotiating various states of nearness. Four strategies for increasing this resilience are proposed: recognising nearness as effortful; identifying affinities; valuing perspective shifts; and designing openings.</p>
Highlights
This paper is about the complex relationships that online distance learners have with the educational institutions and programmes they belong to (Bayne, Gallagher, & Lamb, 2012), and how these relationships can be made visible
This paper proposes a number of such strategies for fostering resilience, by exploring how teachers and institutions can support students to cope with different degrees of nearness on distance programmes, drawing on relevant themes that emerged from the research data
This paper has demonstrated that the relationships between online distance learners and their affiliated educational institutions are complex
Summary
This paper is about the complex relationships that online distance learners have with the educational institutions and programmes they belong to (Bayne, Gallagher, & Lamb, 2012), and how these relationships can be made visible. Visibility provides educators a vantage point from which to theorize and work with these relationships and to help students develop the resilience required to manage different states of nearness they will experience. “Nearness” must continually be assembled, as online distance learners progress through the stages of formalized degree programmes and balance their other professional and personal commitments. There are elements of the assemblage – technological, relational, emotional, spatial – that can disrupt or bolster the resilience that students need to be able to manage the varying degrees of nearness to their programme that they experience over time
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