Aims and objectives

Our approach in this project has been to conduct empirical research in order to provide theoretical insight into the ways in which online distance learning students construct and understand their higher education institution. Specifically, this has involved:

• conducting a piece of research over one year in which narrative and visual data has been generated on themes of place, home and institution
  
• using this research as the basis for a high quality publication on the topic of institutional identification by distance learners
  
• considering how the thinking generated from the project can impact of developing new pedagogical and course design approaches for the MSc in E-Learning (and other programmes) in a way that takes account of space, location and a re-thought geography of learning.
  

The over-arching research question we have addressed has been: what does it mean to be a student at Edinburgh who is not in Edinburgh, and what insight does this give us into learning design for high quality distance programmes?