University teachers' interactions with their online students at an Australian university

This chapter focuses on teacher-student interactions in the context of the use of digital technologies for online teaching and learning in an Australian university using thematic analysis and focus group discussion data. Cotemporary scholars agree that the factors influencing teacher-student interactions in online environments are diverse and multiple and are framed by a complex set of historically grounded and socially mediated forces. One potentially fruitful way to interrogate these factors and forces is to draw on aspects of affordance theory, by examining the kinds of relationships that are (and are not) afforded by particular digital technologies in those online environments. More broadly, affordance theory emerges as a useful conceptual lens for understanding the influences on and the impacts of teacher- student interactions using digital technologies in online environments. Those influences and impacts in turn are crucial to (re-)visioning digital futures in the context of students' learning outcomes in tertiary education, and to advancing critical thinking in higher education.