On making in/access together: A reimagining of ‘access’ to education platforms as a socio-material practice

Open education platforms are increasingly hosting vocational curricula provided and endorsed by companies rather than ‘traditional’ educational organizations. This chapter demonstrates how such a platform, FutureLearn, enables/constrains access to online courses. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS) and the notion of ‘configuration’, we understand ‘access’ as the conjoint actions of the user and platform. We performed autoethnography to scrutinize platform access which, we argue, is situated in an ecology of educational organizations, public and otherwise, creating and legitimizing educational resources. Three modes of access, funnelling, tracking, and diverging, indicate how the user and platform make access together and blur strict distinctions between their roles. Focussing on ‘in/access’ can help educational actors consider user-platform interplays and rethink restrictive binaries in education.