Surfacing knowledge mobilities in higher education: reconfiguring the teacher function through automation

Automation is becoming increasingly common in higher education. This is generally posed around accepting large number of students while seeking to keep faculty numbers static and casualising an already fragmented academic labour market. Much of this automation is positioned around perceived gains (efficiency, time, cost) and learning personalisation (personal assistants as a means of providing support). Yet there has been little work in exploring how human and student agency, code, algorithms, and further digital instruments might be reconfigured through automation to service the teacher function. In this paper, we draw on a combination of speculative events and qualitative work conducted with students, faculty, and staff across the three colleges at the University of Edinburgh to explore automation as a component of the teacher function assemblage. Through participatory student and teacher-led research and development, narratives of teaching practice and the role of automation in performing aspects of the teacher function emerged. Consequently, this paper offer insights into debates about sociomaterial dimensions of higher education and demonstrates what mobilities are being engendered as a result of the reconfigured teacher function.