Synthesizing the face-to-face experience: e-learning practices and the constitution of place online

In this article, I observe the relational production of place online through the mobile practices of an elearning course that combined interactions in physical and online environments. I use actor-network theory as analytical framework to explore element interrelations of this e-learning course, an International Cooperation project organized by Capacity Building International (InWEnt). The course involved participants from African, Asian, European, and Latin American countries. This transnational program included travel from different continents to Germany and South Africa for the participation in face-to-face workshops as well as online interactions. Face-to-face encounters strongly affected e-learning interactions. I show how course participants introduced face-to-face experiences online through associative impulses. I identify these associations that were contributed as texts to online forums as enactments of Law and Mol’s concept of “fire space”. Fire spatial impulses functioned as compensatory practices with respect to scarce sensory and symbolic information in online environments. Social cues associated with the sensory and symbolic information from physical spaces that learners introduced online highlighted the decisive role of face-to-face social stimuli in the constitution of online places. Results are based on ethnographic participation in the observed elearning course. 1 Blending physical and media-generated social spaces Computer-mediated communication has attracted attention for its potential to sustain collaboration since the 1980s (Hine, 2000:14). Advances in information and communication technology have in the meantime enabled informationsharing, communication, and co-work of distributed parCorrespondence to: J. Maintz ([email protected]) ties. Internet-based collaborative virtual environments have been especially adapted to the needs of spatially distributed learners in the case of e-learning platforms. The Internet thus has not only given rise to the transfer of information and communication, but enables encounters in online environments. Moreover, advances in computing and communication technologies promote media-generated interaction spaces, which overlap with face-to-face environments (e.g. the communicative spaces generated by the use of mobile phones; Sheller, 2004:46). The very interface of parallel, overlapping or merging media-generated and physical spaces are targeted by recent sociological and geographical work (see Cooper, 2002:22–26; Green, 2002:282–285, 290–291; Sheller, 2004:40, 48; Urry, 2003:156, 159, 171; 2004:28; Koch, 2005:12–13). Blended spatialities increasingly promoted by advances in communication and ubiquitous computing technologies indeed hold great potential for the advancement of geographical and sociological work. The international phenomenon of increasingly mobile societies corresponds to a mobile lifestyle at the individual level. Individuals travel for professional or private reasons and are often accompanied by mobile devices that sustain their information and communication (basic!) needs. Mobile devices such as cell phones or laptop computers connect these persons to media-generated interaction spheres in addition to their physical environments (Urry, 2004; Sheller, 2004). The distinctness of media-generated and face-to-face socialities will be increasingly blurred, especially by advances in Ubiquitous Computing (Streitz and Nixon, 2005:33–35). Computing devices will pervade and permeate more and more spheres of human interaction, and will be increasingly integrated in people’s daily lives. Today’s often clearly distinguishable computing artefacts will be less visibly integrated in social environments and along with human accommodation will be perceived less as artefacts. The computer will “disappear” physically and mentally Published by Copernicus Publications. 2 J. Maintz: e-Learning practices and the constitution of place online (Streitz and Nixon, 2005:34). Mobile geographies1 might merge with geographies of blended face-to-face and mediasustained environments in the future (see also the concept of “new spaces of circulation”, Thrift, 2000:677–687; Amin and Cohendet, 2004:102–103). This paper targets the interrelation of face-to-face and online environments when they are enacted as social spaces. How do online environments – as instances of mediagenerated spaces – and face-to-face environments interrelate, if social actors use both realms in their interactions? How do these spaces parallel each other, overlap or merge? 2 Actor-network interactions at the interface of physical and online spaces The interrelation of physical and online spaces in social interactions is exemplified by the empirical case of this paper, a blended learning course. The concept of Blended Learning refers to the combination of face-to-face and online phases in the conception of e-learning programs. Trends in e-learning highlight the importance of such scenarios, which are assumed to combine the strengths of electronic learning with advantages of face-to-face teaching (see Dittler, 2002). I approach the topic of interrelating online and physical environments by exploring the interaction of human e-learning course participants with objects and situationspecific influences of any kind that are related to their social activities. Such endeavour acknowledges that online spatiality can be conceptualized as constituted through relations of human and (technical) objects. Focusing on knowledge production processes, Amin and Cohendet (2004:86–111) describe the connection and disconnection of people and objects as taking place in physical and online spaces. They refer to practices of knowing as shaped by the relational proximity of unique constellations of humans and (technical) objects. Relational proximity could comprise the spatial proximity of elements, but would not depend on it. Spatial proximity then is a modality, but not a precondition for relations. Amin and Cohendet outline the potential of the actor-network concept to describe distributed interaction (Amin and Cohendet, 2004:103). “[K]nowledge is not fixed to particular sites (geographical locations or network sites). The “stickiness” of knowledge in these sites, be they clusters or R&D units or brainstorming events, stems from the unique interactions and combinations of bodies, minds, speech, technologies, and objects that can be found there, crystallized in a set of local practices of doing, interpreting, and translating or perhaps even in a momentary flash of inspiration. It has little to do with “native” practices or locally confined assets. If there is a boundedness 1Grabher, Panel “Mobilities” at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. I thank Prof. Gernot Grabher for indicating the importance of the concept of co-presence to mobile geographies. to the knowledge generated in each site, it is a feature of its entrapment and nodal position within specific actor networks of varying spatial composition and reach, not a feature of local confinement (Amin and Cohendet, 2004:102–103).” I choose the relational approach of actor-network theory (ANT) to study the empirical case of the blended learning course allowing for the integration of elements of any kind. Actor-network theory understands the world as a complex of heterogeneous elements involved in network-building processes. The reconstruction of network elements and their interrelations in the observed contexts is seen as the task of empirical work without having met prior ontological assumptions. Actor-network theory does not conceive qualities of elements as essentialist properties, but as produced in relation to other elements. Qualities are defined by context; difference and hierarchies are understood as effects. “[. . . ] I simply want to note that actor-network theory may be understood as a semiotics of materiality. It takes the semiotic insight, that of the relationality of entities, the notion that they are produced in relations, and applies this ruthlessly to all materials [. . . ] (Law, 1999:4).” According to ANT, performativity is part of the concept of relational materiality. As the form of elements is produced through relations including their position in a network of relations, form changes when network relations change (Law, 1999:4). In contrast to social constructivism that analytically and conceptually focuses on human actors, ANT observes networked socio-material ensembles including nonhuman elements (Jöns, 2003:95–96). The key concept of actor-network theory is the actor-network. “Actor-networks” are constituted by the ensemble of elements defined by their relations. Relations might be held stable for a certain time, or change in the process of connecting or disconnecting with new elements. In this paper, I conceptualize the observed blended learning course as actor-network consisting of a group of human and non-human course members (virtual characters), timeand space-related conditions as well as the situation-specific influences relating to the course. I explore the circulation of e-learning course elements. How did the interrelating elements blend physical and online environments? 3 The empirical case: a blended learning course The empirical focus of this research was the blended learning course “e-Learning Training and Management (eLTM)” offered by Capacity Building International (Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung/ InWEnt, headquartered in Germany and partly financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development). It took place from 16 April to 2 December 2003. The International Cooperation project involved participants from African, Asian, European, and Latin American countries. The aim of the course was to teach learners how to develop Soc. Geogr., 3, 1–10, 2008 www.soc-geogr.net/3/1/2008/ J. Maintz: e-Learning practices and the constitution of place online 3 22 Urry, J.: Social Networks, Travel and Talk, British Journal of Sociology, 54, 2, 155-175,