Seminar with Bjarke Lindso Anderson, Aarhus University
Moray House School of Education, Charteris Land, Room 2.03
12 noon - 2 pm (please bring lunch)
Online education spreads and becomes common. It is no longer synonymous with "cutting edge" universities or distance education. However, when online education finds its way into universities with traditions of classic bricks and mortar-teaching, it is not only a matter of converting traditional practices to a digital environment. I show how this shift to online radically changes and challenges the position of the teacher. Not only because of technical challenges, but especially because a new group of third-space professionals assigned to support teachers in their online education affect and interfere with the teacher's authority. With inspiration from a theory of authority proposed by Alexandre Kojeve (2014) and a postphenomenological take on technological mediation (Ihde 1990) I analyze everyday sequences from a four month field work with focus on online education practices in an Australian university department. I seek to develop a theoretical patchwork that enables me to grasp how technology works as active agent in processes of erosion and sedimentation of authority between third-space professionals and teachers behind the scenes of online education.