PACE and Online Learning and Engagement

Abstract

The 2013 Student Experience and Expectation of Technology survey reinforces the impression that the twenty-first century student has a significant digital engagement (Gosper M, McKenzie J, Pizzica J, Malfroy J, Ashford-Rowe K, Student use of technologies for learning – what has changed since 2010? In: Hegarty B, McDonald J, Loke S-K (eds) Rhetoric and reality: critical perspectives on educational technology. Proceedings ascilite Dunedin 2014. Online http://ascilite2014.otago.ac.nz/files/fullpapers/238-Gosper.pdf, 2014). In the survey, 96 % of students had access to a laptop or desktop computer at home, and 82 % had access to a smartphone. In that context, there is a clear possibility that students could use those tools in all aspects of their lives, including their learning. Experiential learning is no different, and this chapter looks at how the online technologies might be used to improve and extend the PACE experience. Drawing on Resnick (Politics on the Internet: the normalization of cyberspace. In: Toulouse C, Timothy WL (eds) The politics of cyberspace, Routledge, Milton Park p. 47, 1998), we think about how PACE might both use online tools and affect the online realm itself. Conceptually, the hardest (and potentially most innovative) engagement, however, is where PACE activities engage with online-only entities and activities, articulating and shaping professional and community experiences which only happen in online spaces.