Entanglements of Posthumanist Bildung in Virtual Learning Environments

This study investigates processes of Bildung in the entanglements of space, time, and student collaboration in a Virtual Learning Environment, itslearning. It is a novel approach as the theoretical framework of posthumanist Bildung was introduced in 2017 by Carol Taylor. The data was read with theories on posthumanist Bildung during the diffractive analysis to understand differences in the entanglements between human agents (participants) and nonhuman agents (deadlines, delayed communication, course content, online posts). The questions pursued are as follows: In what ways are space, time, and student collaboration entangled in the Virtual Learning Environment? What effects do these entanglements produce in the material-discursive practices during the course? Data are reflections by 62 participants in an online course in a Finnish university of applied sciences (2018). The implications of the study are that collaboration in Virtual Learning Environments can involve many entanglements (e.g., cognitive/emotional, theoretical/practical, personal/professional) that matter and are meaningful to the participants because these entanglements are produced in relation to other people and to the time and technologies available.