The Tyranny of Participation and Collaboration in Networked Learning

As it has evolved, networked learning has come to emphasise the importance of the collaborative learning aspects and possibilities of online learning (c.f. McConnell 2000, Steeples and Jones 2002). The importance assumed for collaboration based forms of partitication within NL has almost become ubiquitous and is frequently seen as an unquestionable good aspect – a utopian view of participation which does not acknowledge the ‘dark side’ of participation in learning In the paper we examine more closely some of the darker sides of collaborative participation which in its extreme manifestations can be experienced as normative and, we suggest, as a form of tyranny of the dominant and which instead of having a liberating effect, reinforces a form of oppression and control. We argue this is most likely to be the case in the absence of reflexivity and understanding of different ways and approaches to participation. We go on to suggest an alternative and potentially more productive perspective which, after Foucault, is a heterotopian one. A perspective that acknowledges and assumes disruption and which disturbs our customary notion of ourselves. Participation in heterotopian spaces is disturbing and ambiguous, but it offers a space in which to imagine, to desire and act differently.