Implications

I believe this course unit has three major implications. The first two implications are points I think are most relevant for the students in my 171 course. The third implication expands on the theoretical notions I pose in the closing section of my “Context” page and might prove a salient point for pedagogues to keep in mind as they design courses in the age of mobility.

Methods should be expanded. In research classes we give students a smorgasbord of methods to help make sense of the world around them. Commonly they are given the set of more scientific, empirical tools like closed surveys and controlled experiments. At the other end of the spectrum they have interviews and ethnographies. Not only are these divisions between quantitative and qualitative becoming increasingly blurry, but the need to supplement one with the other is also essential. While many seasoned academics already acknowledge this point, the system with which we educate our undergraduates separates the methods unfairly.

In addition to creating an unhelpful and arbitrary binary, this dichotomy also leaves out methods that are not easily slotted into either side of the divide. In the case of my class, the method of purposive and discursive walking (Hall 578) comes to mind. At moments the discourse and purpose could be measured (in time, degrees, coordinates, speed), yet the locomotion as discourse is also an open-ended and exploratory act that hews more closely to a qualitative method. ...Which is why subscribing to a single methodology or ideology is as limiting as conducting research with only one set of methods.

Methods, methodologies, and ideologies should be viewed as existing in a mobile space. My course is enriched by multiple theoretical and methodological perspectives. The ability to switch interfaces, methods, methodologies, and ideologies allows students more agency with which to view a space/place. But students are only allowed this agency if the power dynamics appear to be in flux. Viewing data gathering through a mobilities lens gives the student this desired agency.

Too often the boundaries of academic disciplines cling to their sedimented boundaries--especially at the undergraduate level. Science owns the experiment. English is for discourse. Business school conduct studies. Viewing the power relations are fluid allows for the transfer of knowledge from one discipline to another. In the end students are often assessed on their ability to navigate a system (what is college after all?), not their ability to subscribe to a single ideology (that might be grad school for some).

The interaction should be the focus, not the nodes. The crux of my Interactive Media Studies course is the interaction, not the media. The technology and the movement the technology allows is best viewed as discursive in much the way Hall notes it (578; 582). Too often we adopt a view-as-artifact perspective in our work--a perspective that can reveal interesting and valuable insights. This is closer to the Actor-Network Theory application of tracing the path of a group/actor/action. Less often in rhetorical studies do we actively shape and participate in the discursive movements of society. We are driven by a telos--publication, an implications section, tenure, a measurable result--all the while we say that we are in engaging in discourse. And, here, at the end of this node I think I should note that “discourse” when broken into its roots means a moving away from the planned series of studies.