Chapter 15: Virtual Carrels: (Re)Thinking Space(s) for Professional Development

The use of online resources to support professional development for higher education faculty is an established notion (Sherer, Shea, & Kristensen, 2003), though it is argued emphasis needs to shift from static online content to faculty-generated content (Cohn, Stewart, Theisen, & Comins, 2016) and sustained support systems (Anthony, Lawrence, & Reed, 2017). In this chapter, we move from thinking about online resources to consider the kind of space(s) supporting professional, practice-based learning for faculty members. Geographer Doreen Massey (2013) has argued “space” presents a fundamentally social/political question: “How are we going to live[-work-be] together?” (para. 9), and for us this became an invitation to consider how we might practice space differently in order to enact more sustainable material ways of being faculty members at geographically dispersed institutions. We explore how we leveraged digital literacy practices to create “virtual carrels,” a digital approximation of the boisterous, generative space shared as graduate students that nurtured scholarly body and soul through camaraderie, reciprocity, critical questioning, and practicality.