Being ‘at’ University: The Social Topologies of Distance Students (Bayne et al, 2013)

This paper takes a topological perspective on how online distance students understand and enact the idea of the university. Located within the ‘new mobilities’ paradigm, this analysis overviews how online students conceive of the University of Edinburgh. It suggests that even for students who never physically go to campus, the material campus remains both symbolically and materially significant. Distance students, we find, need their own version of the ‘spatial certainties’ of bounded, campus space. Yet, in exploring the ‘new proximities’ of online distance education, we also argue that to define institutional and academic authenticity solely in terms of this bounded, ‘regional’ space is inadequate in the face of the other topologies which also come into play throughout distance students’ accounts of what it means to be ‘at’ university.

Bayne, S., Gallagher, M. S., & Lamb, J. (2014). Being “at” university: the social topologies of distance students. Higher Education, 67(5), 569–583. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43648675