Description
ABSTRACT
The article examines a performative perspective on online student learning in higher education given the lack of direct communication and physical interaction. Performativity implies embodied cognitive action, which is complicated in the situation of online learning, where physical, spatial, and temporal dimensions acquire a different format. Although performativity in offline and online learning of students has a similar artistic nature, the practices of online student performativity differ from physical activities within social and virtual networks. The research suggests that online student learning in higher education imitates physical practices through mimesis and interactive practices, involving dramatic, visual and cognitive components. In this way, performers compensate the absence of bodily and spatial engagement, creating online conditions for student engagement. Within these conditions, if offline performativity involves direct interaction between a teacher and students, then online performativity always takes place indirectly through the screen. The research concludes that the screen is a specific sphere for performativity, which is realized due to staging, mimesis, and non-verbal communication, allowing students to be active, creative, and innovative outside of the physical environment. The limitation of the research concerns only the experience of teaching philosophical, social, and linguistic disciplines.
Keywords: student performativity, online learning, higher education, bodily engagement, mimesis.
