During the period in 2020 when university campuses first entered Covid-lockdown, one concern related to the possible impact upon the sense of community that students and staff might enjoy. There would seem to be an assumption here that truly meaningful collaboration and relationships are dependent on physical proximity to one’s peers, colleagues and teachers. As students and professionals intimately involved with digital education, we know this not to be the case. On the contrary, digital environments can nurture distinct and vibrant communities.
Across the next 3 weeks we are going to explore the nature of online educational community. To do this, you will undertake a very small-scale study of an active online educational community: ‘a mini-ethnography’. This will be preceded and accompanied by reading about community culture and methodological work around digital ethnography. The artefacts you collect and ideas you construct will form the content of your gallery space, meaning that by the end of the block we will have collectively produced a Community culture exhibition.
Community culture activities
Across this block you should aim to undertake the following activities:
- Do the core reading around community culture and also have a look at the chapters introducing digital ethnography. Please do this at the start of the block as the different ideas and approaches are necessary in order to complete all the other activities in this part of the course.
- Attend one of the tutorials where we will talk about the mini-ethnography activity.
- Collect and add artefacts to your assigned gallery space in order to create an exhibition dedicated to the community chosen for your mini ethnography. You should be aiming to add content several times each week.
- Visit the gallery spaces of your fellow students to view and comment on their developing ethnographic exhibitions.
- In the final days of the block produce a catalogue entry where you gather together your reflections from the mini ethnography.
Tutorials
During Week 7 we will gather to share experiences of our ongoing ethnographic work. In order that we can talk openly about what we have encountered these conversations will not be recorded. We have therefore scheduled two sessions (UK time) in order to give you a better chance of being able to take part. Sign up for either session, although feel free to attend both as you wish and time allows:
- 1 November 2021 at 12:00
- 1 November 2021 at 19:00
E-mail michael.s.gallagher@ed.ac.uk to confirm which session you will attend.