Why students ‘elearn’ at home

Posted on July 15, 2010 by Gill Kirkup
notice to sudents using computer lab

unwelcoming notice in computer lab

The above photo was taken in a university computer lab somewhere East of where I am presently sitting. It was a suprise to see that using forums is forbidden along with smoking and other ‘unsocial’ activities.  In a world where many of us sit at home, with a cup of coffee,  logging onto our online professional forums, these kinds of notices make formal computer  labs look like places of isolation, rather than part of the Network society, or significant spaces for student to engage in learning.

About Gill Kirkup

I have worked most of my life as an academic engaged in a combination of teaching, research and scholarship. A strong theme over the years has been a critical engagement with the gendering of technologies and the technologies of gender and identity. This blog is a place where I can reflect on all of these - sometimes in a scholarly way -but not always.
This entry was posted in elearning. Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to Why students ‘elearn’ at home

  1. Mourad says:
    October 26, 2010 at 9:19 am

    Hi Gill,
    I too took the same photo of when we were in the IT lab. Before Facebook, discussion forums were v .popular to discuss and debate about anything in the Arab world. You mentioned “professional forums” which is not usually the case. The warning says “Forums and chatting are not allowed”. This includes predominantly MSN Messenger and irrelevant Discussion forums. I am sure AOU students are allowed to use the Moodle forums.
    Regards
    M

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>