Darryl Cressman - Introduction to Learning Spaces

(Presented at the Learning Spaces Workshop @ LIDC, Simon Fraser University; February 11, 2005)

Answers to questions concerning the actual experience on learning online are often implied or pre-answered in many distance education and educational technology studies. Usually an implicit appeal is made to a broadly cybernetic, information-theoretical framework, appealing to the roles of sender, receiver and channel, and often appealing to some notion of "feedback." This paper outlines the research approach used in the Learning Spaces project: one that is focused on the experience of engagement with online technologies. By approaching online education from a phenomenological perspective, the focus of this study could be understood as an inverted model of most examinations of online education.