The hybrid education material/immaterial space: Remote learning and teaching in Alice Springs

The remote town of Alice Springs in central Australia has a university campus of Charles Darwin University, the main campus of which is based in Darwin, about 1,500kms away on the north Australian coast. The remote place and space of Alice Springs and its campus create a challenging teaching and learning space. To encourage local people to attend courses, understanding the physical and sociocultural immediacy of the place/space of "The Alice" is worthwhile. Local people can be classed as face-to-face "internal" students. However, due to online learning, "external" students also flow into the localised space of the Alice teaching and learning environment, as both sets of students are taught at the same time in the same online/offline place. This creates a hybrid local/online cultural learning site. This paper will look at the impact of "internal" (material)/ "external" (immaterial) teaching and learning place and space and argues that for "local" teaching and learning to succeed, the contribution of extra-local spatial participation should be influential.