Learning in a High-Speed Society: Inquiring Deceleration by Digital Means

Learning is constantly restructuring itself along with our societal and communicative systems. Social acceleration and its enablers in both macro- and micro-levels can be regarded as one of the dominant forms of nowadays social reality. It is definitely necessary to observe how new forms of education act within this process. Whereas the increasingly mediatized world is characterized by fragmentation and social acceleration, we would like to explore the possibilities for grounding and deceleration offered by digital pedagogy. Using the multimodal approach and cultural semiotic analysis, we will investigate the temporal aspects of new media on the example of “Education on Screen”, a digital learning environment developed at the University of Tartu (Estonia). The results are based on the analysis of 61 learning activities created and tested since 2017. The paper looks into the connection between the degree of multimodality and acceleration, while defining potential solutions for slowing down the “fast media” through the processes of analysis and design. Is there a definite discrepancy between the increasing speed and agency of media versus the logic of education and knowledge development, or can it be overcome? Addressing this question enables for better execution of education practices, especially considering the limited natural capacity of humans to retain information and develop knowledge. Inquiring into deceleration in learning environments additionally addresses the topic of temporal structures in learning: the speed at which data is created in relation to how fast it is semiotically processed. Addressing such questions, research findings in this study suggest that use of multimodality in EoS can contribute to meaningful deceleration of the learning process.