The pause/play button actor-network: lecture capture recordings and (re)configuring multi-spatial learning practices

Lecture recording is an increasingly common practice in UK universities, whereby audio, video, and multimedia content from lecture theatres can be captured and distributed online. Despite a large body of recent lecture capture literature, much of the empirical research adopts positivist paradigms, which overlooks the complex and unpredictable nature of teaching and learning. Addressing this knowledge gap, this exploratory case study adopts sociomaterial approaches, specifically perspectives from the domain of actor-network theory (ANT), to view learning technologies as complex assemblages involving heterogeneous human and non-human entities or actors.

This paper explores the entanglements involved in enacting online pedagogy and learning across spatiotemporal dimensions using trace ethnography and visualisation mapping. Examining the student-led study practices revealed that multitasking and fluid task switching, between contrasting networks and spaces, was a significant activity during the playback of lecture recordings. Exploring an innocuous and ubiquitous practice, such as video pausing, affords nuanced perspectives into the sociomaterial entanglements involved in enacting study practices. Moreover, adopting multimodal sensitivities reveals how often overlooked modes, such as iconography, can become actors within an assemblage. This may offer new insights into how modes help produce or stabilise configurations and advance efforts in attending to the non-human within actor-networks.