How to do digital belonging in a time of weaponization: UHI digital practices

Bonnie has created a blog to provide updates and reflections on her research the belonging project – belonging – in classrooms, in communities, in culture.  The LTA have also published this blog following an interview with Bonnie Belonging and Place: Digital Pedagogy at University of the Highlands and Islands. A conversation with Dr Bonnie Stewart. – LTA@UHI. 

Session Outline

This session brings Visiting Fellow Bonnie Stewart, from Canada, back to Inverness to overview her 2024-2025 research study on belonging at UHI. This strengths-based case study, undertaken with the support of the Learning & Teaching Academy and many UHI staff participants, explores how digital practices and concepts of place and culture intersect to shape the ways belonging is cultivated across UHI's distributed federation. 

The session will be set against the backdrop of this particularly challenging time in global higher education, and a turn to belonging that threatens familiar understandings of the term. The talk will explore findings and challenges that staff participants identified, and will highlight specifics of how UHI can serve as an exemplar in its approach to digital and distributed education. It will also explore why smaller, place-based institutions make great exemplars for this moment. 

Whether you were involved in the fall 2024 data collection or not, come out and participate in this interactive overview of the project's key findings, and think aloud with Bonnie about ways to continue building belonging across UHI. 

Presenter

Dr. Bonnie Stewart is an educator and longtime digital researcher fascinated by the intersections of human identity and the contemporary information ecosystem. Associate Professor of Online Pedagogy and Workplace Learning at the University of Windsor, Bonnie explores the implications of digital networks and Generative AI for institutions and society. Bonnie was an early MOOC researcher and ethnographer of Twitter as an academic environment, and currently investigates what it means to know, to learn, and to belong in a society shaped by digital forces of capital and power. 

Bonnie has worked with learners and professionals on all three coasts of Canada and around the world, and is very excited to be back in Scotland to share the collaborative work of the past year

To Book

Please email events.lta@uhi.ac.uk to book a place on this event.

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