A Postdigital Exploration of Online Postgraduate Learning in Healthcare Professionals: A Horizontal Conception

Holistic evaluation of educational quality necessitates considering novel and theorized measures of quality as well as more instrumental metrics. Online learning is increasingly valued by working professionals as a means of gaining a postgraduate qualification while employed, but this area of education is undertheorized and investigated. Online learning is often discussed in instrumental terms, as if abstracted from the social and material settings in which learning and work take place, but my own conversations with student and graduates about the impact of their studies contrast strongly with such views and motivated this work. Adopting a postdigital perspective, I present an activity theory analysis of interviews with students and staff about the value and perceived impact of online postgraduate programmes in healthcare professions. Four themes are identified that describe how students learning moves horizontally within and across academic and clinical settings: crossing boundaries, ripple effect, eroding structures and hierarchies and expansion. Teaching is delivered online, but learning occurs as the students move through the various contexts they inhabit. The pedagogical approaches required to realize the potential value of these programmes should not be based on the online delivery or the technologies used, but the particular needs of the student group.