ABSTRACT
This chapter untangles the methodological challenges and possibilities provoked by a sociomaterial approach to multisite ethnography. Sociomaterial theories challenge the focus on the individual human subject found in traditional humanist research, instead orienting to how heterogeneous human and non-human actors come together moment to moment to accomplish practices such as education. This chapter draws on empirical data generated as part of a multisite ethnography of videoconferenced lectures in a Canadian medical school. Our analysis, attuned to the material force of the non-human, reveals how students engage in distance lectures in informal, unintended ways and in ways that move beyond idealised views of videoconferenced lectures as a ‘window’ between classrooms. This chapter considers how a sociomaterial approach can help researchers attune to informal, unintended educational activities. Ironically, our study illustrates how individual interviews with human participants can reveal otherwise unconsidered features of the spatio-temporal set-up required by distance learning and human interactions with it.
