Internet of (Community) Things: an upcoming workshop at the University of Edinburgh and how we are trying to reimagine the distance in distance education

Dr Jeremy Knox and I, both of the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh, are running two workshops for faculty and students on Internet of Things (IoT) technology and how this might be designed to bridge distance for the university across campuses (there are several discrete campuses within the city) and between distance (about 2600-3000 currently) and on-campus students (≈30,000). For the faculty session, we will be looking to explore how IoT can inform teaching practice (long story short: it can). For students, we are looking to generate ideas around IoT can be used to build community, a sense of belonging, a functional, aesthetic, cognitive, or emotional connection to the university. These workshops (faculty event link here and student event link here) are a part of the Festival of Creative Learning at the university and I see them tangentially linked to my other project on Near Future Teaching.