Play, Things, Rules, and Information: Hybridized Learning in the Digital University

LEA Volume 17 Issue 2
Senior Editors for this volume: Lanfranco Aceti and Simon Penny

ISBN: 978-1906897-16-1
ISSN: 1071-4391

Reference: Elizabeth Losh, “Play, Things, Rules, and Information: Hybridized Learning in the Digital University,” eds. Lanfranco Aceti and Simon Penny, Leonardo Electronic Almanac (DAC09: After Media: Embodiment and Context) 17, no. 2 (2012): 92-109.

Play, Things, Rules, and Information: Hybridized Learning in the Digital University
by Elizabeth Losh

The term “hybrid learning” has recently been appropriated by the distance learning movement to delineate the features of a specific type of educational experience that blends traditional lecture and Socratic discussion with online computer mediated instruction. In many ways, however, this “hybridity” only reinforces traditional boundaries between learner and teacher, learner and learner, and teacher and teacher, because this kind of courseware-driven pedagogy ultimately only reifies certain ideologies of late capitalism oriented around efficiency, modularity, linearity, and surveillance in which the interfaces of so-called learning management systems are structured like a conventional teacher’s grade-book, and spontaneous forms of improvisation made possible by the unexpected connections facilitated by a course syllabus and particular aggregations of students are constrained by highly scripted interactions.

Full article is available for download as a pdf here.

Vol 17 Issue 2 of Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) is published on line as a free PDF but will also be rolled out as Amazon Print on Demand and will be available on iTunes, iPad, Kindle and other e-publishing outlets.