Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education           ISSN: 1759-667X 

Special Issue 22: Compendium of Innovative Practice                                     October 2021 

 

Editorial: Embodied learning in an online world 

 

Alicja Syska 
University of Plymouth 
 

 

One of the greatest challenges the pandemic brought to the forefronts of the educators’ 

minds across the globe was the reality of experiential and embodied learning, which often 

requires kinetic and tactile involvement with objects, places and spaces, alongside 

discursive in-class engagements. Merleau-Ponty’s reminder that ‘rather than a mind and a 

body man [sic] is a mind with a body, a being who can only get to the truth of things 

because its body is, as it were, embedded in those things’ (2004, p. 43) has never rung 

more true than when we were denied this embodied experience and became separated by 

(often blank) screens, increasingly relying on technology. Ironically, it was technology that 

we had little choice but use to either mimic or reinvent this embodied experience.  

 

In this section of the Compendium, our writers-educators report on how they had to deal 

with the most literal aspects of what we understand as embodied learning experience. To 

them, it was not just about broadening our thinking about teaching by acknowledging that 

our bodies matter and that privileging cognitive and abstract learning may limit students’ 

educational experiences. Indeed, the challenges for these authors involved recreating 

activities such as handling physical objects to teach about history and material culture; 

reinventing play, collage making, and drawing in teacher training; reprioritising the body 

when teaching positive psychology and while delivering lectures to the screen; rethinking 

hands-on instruction of anatomical structures and performing cadaveric dissections in 

medicine; as well as redesigning hospital placements, mock crime scenes and intercultural 

field trips.  

 

What you will see in these reports is a fabulous range of approaches and an inspiring 

creativity with which these authors responded to the very particular challenges they faced. 

What they demonstrate is that objects can be replaced with well-designed handouts; real 

archives with virtual trips to these archives; discursive interactions with interactive digital 



Editorial 

Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, Issue 22: Compendium                            October 2021 

resources; outward-reaching strategies with inward body-based approaches; lecturing ‘to 

the screen’ with lecturing ‘through the screen’ (Morris, 2020); physical dissections with 3D 

models and videos; clay and paper anatomy with Minecraft modelling; mock crime scenes 

with virtual crime scenes; and intercultural field trips with virtual field trips. For some 

educators, it was possible to retain the bodily/experiential element through home tasks at 

the expense of the shared experience involved in creating synchronously, while others 

used social distancing regulations to improve their processes and provide access to 

physical learning spaces such as museums for a limited number of learners.  

 

Together, what these pieces show is that playful experimentation, openness to creative 

ways of teaching, and dialogic approaches can result in a student experience that is not 

detached but embodied, and which encourages exploration and agility. Even if most 

authors conclude that there are no viable alternatives to certain embodied learning 

activities, they all admit that they made unusual and productive discoveries about the 

disruptive potential of the online pivot to challenge both their students’ and their own 

normative expectations and conventional thinking around education. 

 

 

References: 

 

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2004 [1948]) The world of perception. London and New York: 

Routledge. 

  

Morris, S.M. (2020) ‘Teaching through the Screen and the Necessity of Imagination 

Literacy’, Sean Michael Morris Blog. 3 December. Available at 

https://www.seanmichaelmorris.com/teaching-through-the-screen-and-the-necessity-

of-imagination-literacy/ (Accessed 10 October 2021). 

 

https://www.seanmichaelmorris.com/teaching-through-the-screen-and-the-necessity-of-imagination-literacy/
https://www.seanmichaelmorris.com/teaching-through-the-screen-and-the-necessity-of-imagination-literacy/