(Re)Framing Our Frames: Architectonics, Intertextuality, and the Scholarship of Integration in Online Education

The pandemic of 2020 has renewed interest in technology as an integrative agent in higher education. However, advancements in technology continue to outpace the scholarship of integration in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), even though American educator Ernest Boyer valued it as an area of continuous interdisciplinary inquiry. This thought piece calls for a reconsideration of Boyer's appreciation of integration as convergence or "intertextuality." Intertextuality and its digital correlate or "hypertextuality" operationalize online education. Yet, they are often ignored as modes of convergence that challenge disciplinarity. This paradox signals a need for a scholarly discourse and framework that can help educators to (re)conceptualize the inherently integrative nature of knowledge and online education. To address this deficit in the SoTL, this meta-synthesis evidences Peircean architectonics as the paradigm that reframes our understanding of convergence and illuminates its actualization in Canadian educator Terry Anderson's prototype for online education theory. Architectonic logic enriches this model and provides online educators with a common discourse and interdisciplinary framework that will advance the scholarship of integration in online education.