Jude Fransman

The SAGE Handbook of E-learning Research

The new edition of The SAGE Handbook of E-Learning Researchretains the original effort of the first edition by focusing on research while capturing the leading edge of e-learning development and practice. Chapters focus on areas of development in e-learning technology, theory, practice, pedagogy and method of analysis. Covering the full extent of e-learning can be a challenge as developments and new features appear daily. The editors of this book meet this challenge by including contributions from leading researchers in areas that have gained a sufficient critical mass to provide reliable results and practices. The 25 chapters are organised into six key areas: 1. THEORY 2. LITERACY & LEARNING 3. METHODS & PERSPECTIVES 4. PEDAGOGY & PRACTICE 5. BEYOND THE CLASSROOM 6. FUTURES

Rhetoric and the politics of representation and communication in the digital age

This special issue presents different approaches to a contemporary theory of rhetoric for exploring the politics of representation and communication in the digital age. As an evolving and multifaceted field, scholarly studies of rhetoric have explored the questions of who is communicating to whom, conveying what and communicating in which ways? Moreover, a contemporary (as opposed to classical) view of rhetoric brings together a number of positions in the communication arts including political literary criticism; biand multilingualism; multimodality; framing as an artistic and sociological device for composition and interpretation; literacy in the digital age; and issues of power and agency in communication (Andrews 2010). As such, a focus on rhetoric provides a framework through which the issues of ownership, authorial voice(s), power and the nature of the audience in a digitally mediated world can be described and explored. Such issues have an inevitable impact on learning both in terms of the shifting roles of the learner and the relationship between learner and educator.

(Re)assembling Community The Ontological Politics of Academic and Community-based Research in/on/with/by a Migrant Community in London

This article explores the ontological politics of research in the field of community studies. Focusing on a migrant community in London, UK, it shows how the community is (re)assembled in different ways through the different research practices of academics and practitioners. Guided by a framework based on material semiotics, this article compares the agendas, methods, and representational texts that inform the different research practices. It argues that community studies researchers have an ethical responsibility to acknowledge the particular enactments of communities that emerge through their research and the role that agendas, methods, and texts play in constructing those enactments.