Virtual Egalitarianism, Critical Pedagogy, and Geographic Education

Geographies of media and communication III: Academic communications and the digital communication environment

“…However, many such courses now limit access to those who pay tuition, which indicates their negative potential to become profit-making machines promoting what Lane and Kinser (2012) call the ‘McDonaldization’ of higher education. Online classes may still function as spaces of ‘critical pedagogy’ (Lukinbeal and Allen, 2007), where a ‘situated encounter’ brings together dispersed participants, helping expose ‘the tacit barriers inhibiting meaningful understanding within and between diverse groups of people’ (House-Peters et al, 2017: 3). The question is how such potentials will continue to be realized as online education becomes an ever bigger business; the top three providers in the US – Coursera, Udacity, edX – currently have combined profits of around $100 million (Shah, 2016b).…”

“…Whereas mediation indicates the use of a particular medium to carry certain communications, mediatization is the alteration of a wide range of activities in response to the use or availability of certain media. While the mediatization of academia raises important moral and ethical questions (Bacevic and Muellerleile, 2017) as well as practical and political challenges (Lukinbeal and Allen, 2007; Robinson et al, 2015; Walker et al, 2017), the focus here is on the issue of risk.…”

Dialogue, inquiry, and encounter: Critical geographies of online higher education

“…Gibson-Graham, 2006). The recognition of alternative spaces and practices of resistance and flexibility within the history of distance education in a virtual world enables the potential to create new lines of flight within the confines of a constantly reimagined higher education environment (Lukinbeal and Allen, 2007; Stern, 2011). The transformation of higher education vis-à-vis neoliberalism produces important tensions and contradictions that require further explanation (cf.…”

“…(Bondy et al, 2015: 245)Geographers have contributed widely to critical pedagogy scholarship. Although critical pedagogical practices in higher education first developed in face-to-face classrooms and in alternative educational movements beyond the academy, the implementation of critical pedagogy in online classrooms is increasingly the focus of a growing body of research and practice (Lukinbeal and Allen, 2007; Stern, 2011; Mundkur and Ellickson, 2012; Smith and Jeffrey, 2013; Caruthers and Friend, 2014; Davis Conover and Miller, 2014; Bondy et al, 2015; O’Shea et al, 2015). For over two decades, central facets in the debate over online education and the production and dissemination of knowledge have focused on the contested roles of computer-mediated communication, online learning networks, and the place of technology in education (Walther, 1996; Benbunan-Fich and Hiltz, 1999; Hiltz, 1994; Hiltz and Wellman, 1997; Johnson et al, 2000; Heckman and Annabi, 2005; Brooks, 2010; Borup et al, 2012).…”

From Affinity and Beyond

“…The majority of studies concerning online teaching and learning are situated within a classroom context (e.g., K-12 education, post-graduate studies, or graduate studies; Clark, 2006; Hew, 2009; Karchmer, Mallette, Kara-Soteriou, & Leu, 2005; Lukinbeal & Allen, 2007). The purpose, therefore, of the current qualitative study was to understand knowledge sharing and learning among participants in a web seminar whose goal is to provide open-access innovative critical literacy research and present teacher professional development that critically shapes literacy practices.…”