Critical Reflection in Online Education: Habermas, Marcuse, and Flattening "Classroom" Hierarchies During COVID-19

• In Event: Critical Reflection in Online Education: Habermas, Marcuse, and Flattening "Classroom" Hierarchies During COVID-19

Abstract

COVID-19 has necessitated inquiry into the capacity of technology to build learning communities beyond proximal boundaries. Platforms like Zoom offer pathways for communication and content-delivery, but little stimulus for collective online outcomes (projects/learning-objects/discussion forums). We aim to examine how monetized platforms fit within Marcuse’s technological rationality and its capacity to exercise social control. Integrating Marcuse’s suggestions for the creation of new tools with Habermas’ ideas about communicative rationality and changing human agency with technology provide new hope for an online education that fosters critical thinking. We provide a dual-layered framework (involving top-down resources and the capacity for bottom-up discussions and idea-mapping) to better encourage critical reflection in online learning communities during unprecedented times such as the era of social distancing.

Authors

• Shantanu Tilak, The Ohio State University

• Logan Pelfrey, The Ohio State University