Student-to-Student Connections in Postdigital Networked Learning

Abstract Analysing learning situations as entanglements of humans and things in networked learning links to contemporary topics that are at the forefront of the postdigital challenge. The literature broadly conceptualises researching networked learning through four different understandings of networks, as a network of people, as situations or contexts, as infrastructure, and as actant. In this study, we explored the fourth way of understanding networked learning by examining how students described their connections with other students while learning online. Using mediated discourse analysis, we analysed 12 student focus groups to gain insights into what supported their connections with other students, paying particular attention to the nature of the networks they engaged in. This led to the identification of six enablers of student-to-student connections: attention, access, collaboration, proximity, timely interaction, and purpose. We demonstrate how the networks described by students when providing accounts of their connections with others can be best described as networks of human and non-human actants. While current research acknowledges that learning is a result of the socio-material entanglements of physical, virtual, and human actants, it is limited in demonstrating how and why such networks are supportive of learning. Our study contributes by showing how the identified enablers and their interrelationships influenced the extent to which networks were found to be supportive of learning. As such, it also supports a more tangible way of articulating the relationship between networked learning and postdigital education.