Where is the Classroom? Digital Transformation and the Reverberation of Knowledge Spaces in Post-COVID Aotearoa

COVID-19, a global health crisis, facilitated rapid and major disruptive transformations in universities worldwide. In Aotearoa, learning management systems (LMS) such as Blackboard, Canvas, and Moodle became essential to universities in 2020 when we entered our first period of self-isolation to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2. These digital platforms transformed how knowledge circulated within the university and created new infrastructural nodes of connection between learners, educators, and content. Although COVID-19 restrictions have since eased, most lecturers have not quite pivoted back to pre-pandemic modes of teaching (due in part to "dual delivery" and lecture recording mandates from university leadership), and tertiary students have not yet returned to their pre-COVID lecture attendance rates, instead accessing course content through learning management systems. In 2022, we (Grant Otsuki and Lorena Gibson) began researching how these evolving digital infrastructures are reshaping knowledge ecologies at Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington. Inspired by China Miéville's novel The City & The City - where citizens of distinct cities occupy the exact same physical space, but are trained from birth to psychologically "unsee" the people, buildings, and activities of the other city - this paper discusses interviewee responses to the question "Where is the classroom?", to argue that changing socio-technical infrastructures are changing classrooms into sites where multiple and conflicting educational realities coexist.