An Actor-Network Critique of Community in Higher Education: Implications for Networked Learning

The article provides an actor-network critique of ideas on community that are influential in higher education and draws implications for networked learning theory and practice. Networked learning is examined as an educational movement which contains alternative models of learning but which offers to create a sense of virtual community within the structures of mass higher education. Benedict Anderson's work is drawn upon to understand the notion of community and to examine "the nation" as a prototypical community. Aspects of actor-network theory are discussed and illustrated, from which a critique of the idea of community in higher education is developed.