- Title
- Out of sight, out of mind: pedagogical and equity implications of videoconferencing for higher education students’ learning in rural areas
- Creator
- Croker, Anne; Fisher, Karin; Littlejohns, Sonja; Wakely, Katrina; Cooper, Emma; Grotowski, Miriam; Cone, Lauren; Wakley, Luke; Little, Alex; Carter, Lani; Little, Fiona; Squires, Kelly; Brown, Leanne; Munro, Simon; Edgar, Anna
- Publisher
- University of Newcastle
- Resource Type
- report
- Date
- 2021
- Description
- Our research explores videoconferencing for higher education students’ learning in rural areas. Having students in rural areas participate in learning opportunities through videoconferencing is an important aspect of widening participation in higher education. Our social justice intention for this research resonates with the recent words of the Regional Education Expert Advisory Group in their National Regional, Rural and Remote Tertiary Education Strategy: Final Report (2020) for the Australian Government: “We firmly believe that all Australians deserve fair and equal access to high quality tertiary education, regardless of location or personal circumstances.” Accompanying our social justice intention was our pedagogical interest in videocon- ferencing. This interest stems from our stance that it is insufficient to focus on just accessing higher education. We also need to consider what happens beyond entry or admission to higher education, including how curriculum, assessment, and academic literacy are accessed. In our research we sought to understand more about the pedagogical and equity implications of videoconferencing for higher education students’ learning in rural areas. We focused on health professional students living and learning in the University of Newcastle Department of Rural Health in Tamworth (UONDRH), NSW, Australia. We used collaborative dialogical inquiry to ensure that we ‘researched with’ educators, rather than on them. Data for analysis was constructed from focus groups with the pro- ject’s 15 co-researchers (health profession educators), as well as other educators in rural and metropolitan areas, and students living and learning in our local site. Through our research we developed the model of “joining via technology from…” to inform future practice and to guide ongoing discussions.We note upfront that our research was undertaken prior to the COVID-19 pan- demic. Acknowledging this timeframe is important. COVID-19-related requirements for physical distancing instigated rapid widespread use of videoconferencing across the higher education system. This widespread use created rural–metropolitan ‘level playing-fields’ for those organising and supporting learning. However, this new-found equality will be difficult to maintain as metropolitan contexts return to ‘face-to-face’ learning as COVID19 restrictions ease. Thus, findings from this research are important during these unprecedented times where learning and teaching may shift from physical co-location to online interactions and then back again. The grant we received from the Excellence in Teaching for Equity in Higher Education (ETEHE) program, through the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education (CEEHE) provided both funding and guidance. The funding enabled us to stop, reflect and grapple with issues; issues that we would not normally have time or space to think deeply about, beyond them being a shared niggle of concern or insight to follow up ‘if and when we have time’. CEEHE’s multidimensional social justice framework and commitment to research-informed equity practice helped us grapple with complex concepts of difference, inclusion, misrecognition, misrepresentation and praxis. Importantly as health professional educators we acknowledged that while social justice theories were relevant to our practice, they were not necessarily at the immediate forefront of our professional socialisation. Thus, we valued the expertise and experience of our equity practitioner colleagues as we navigated complex social justice theories. The conceptualisations of the key terms we present in Text Box 1 were developed with the guidance of these colleagues and informed our social justice intentions. Importantly, the more we used and grappled with them, and their underlying theories, the more we under- stood their complexity and scope for richer engagement. Our understanding of the social justice framework has grown through the project and this is accompanied by our realisation of the huge scope to develop it further.
- Subject
- videoconferencing; higher education students; learning; rural; Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1426779
- Identifier
- uon:38471
- Identifier
- ISBN:978-0-7259-9906-3
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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