Summary

This book examines some of the underlying principles and approaches which underpin e-learning in today's higher education. It takes a critical lens to both policy and practice at the micro and macro level, exploring how e-learning and its association with broader agendas concerning teaching and learning in higher education is reconfiguring what counts as learning in today's university. This provides a backdrop for challenging some of the more dominant approaches in the field of e-learning and presenting a unique perspective drawn from studies of language, literacies and learning. In so doing, the volume raises questions about the ways in which theories of social constructivism, collaborative learning and learning communities have tended to take centre stage in the field. It suggests that this has resulted in very little attention to the production and negotiation of the specific and contextualised texts and practices which are central to these learning environments.