| Summary: | This thesis is about learning as a <i>relational effect</i> in local practice <i>situations</i> – how the ‘network’ of learning both enables and constrains in an analytical sense the transformations and innovations of teaching and learning with technology. The educational value of technology in educational institutions has been elusive to say the least. Models and frameworks have been devised, revised, extended and revisited to explain and to provide a set of guidelines on how technology may be integrated for effective teaching and learning or how it may finally emancipate education from its traditional transfer model to a more constructivist model of collaboration and learning communities. The thesis is less interested in how technology may enhance teaching and learning <i>per se</i>. Its main focus is <i>‘what happens where technology is</i>’. This thesis considers an alternative approach. It investigates the effects of technology use by focusing on the <i>relationalities </i>of both human and non-human elements. The interactions of these elements produce and maintain structures and activities. At the same time, it is the very structures and activities that they organise and re-create that enable and constrain their relations. In short, the ‘network’ of learning is rather complex. The thesis does not move away from this complexity. Instead it proceeds to investigate two practice situations in the same English university in an ethnographic approach that follows the leads and links of the conditions of networked learning by <i>to-ing</i> and <i>fro-ing</i> between physical and virtual environments.
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