Alternative lifeworlds on the Internet: Habermas and democratic distance education

Abstract

Current distance education practices can be susceptible to types of content-heavy, topdown instruction often seen in physical classrooms. These practices are similar to the activities of corporations, which use recommendation systems and game theory to mold the public sphere and fragment it. We propose that free knowledge creation through open, multichannel communication needs to be used in distance education to allow both individual and collective agency for students to process knowledge and develop higher order reflectivity. Such frameworks would help students of distance education, and instructors to use critical thinking to discuss concepts as equal stakeholders, and develop varied ideological outcomes that could contribute to creating social change. This conceptual paper places current distance education practices within Habermasian theory, discusses ways in which the Internet, and its educative potential has come to be viewed thus far, and suggests platforms that could open distance learning to new possibilities. I would firstly like to thank my advisor, Michael Glassman, for having faith in my abilities. He really inspired me to get back to reading critical theory, and trying to understand how the merger of this powerful form of critique with the practical machinations of educational psychology can produce stunning results. To my lab (Logan, Irina, Marvin, Wendy, Qiannan); all of you have helped me immensely in developing my ideas. Working with my friends and creating the environment we have right now reflects the arguments made in this paper a lot. Lastly, I would like to thank my undergraduate advisor, Dr. Maya Dodd, for teaching me critical theory in the first place. While I did not fully understand it then, I now value what I learnt, because it lies at the basis of how we treat one another as humans.

Warranted assertibility and the Internet: A theoretical model for an online proto-research community

“…We tackle difficulties associated with creating a discursive proto-research community of the second-order Internet, and a dual-layered platform for researchers that can be viewed by larger audiences in the public sphere. Granting access to members of the general public to view published work in translatable forms and submit questions to researchers themselves would help achieve Public Understanding of Science through productive discourse, as opposed to a firstorder public engagement model driven by RSS feeds (Bromm & Goldman, 2014) that merely allows the general public to uptake knowledge in shallow, wide communities (Tilak & Glassman, 2020). Our suggestions are based on the assumption that critical discourse is reinforced through user agreement on loosely moderated forums.…”

“…Members of the research team dichotomously labeled comments using a four-part coding scheme. Some of the authors of this study previously developed a qualitative instrument to analyze blog posts created by undergraduate students (Tilak et al, 2020). The scheme is based on the theory of transformative learning (Mezirow, 2003) and Habermas' (1989Habermas' ( /1991 communicative rationality, which state that critical reflection is guided by productive discourse towards the creation of action plans to gain nuanced understandings of truth.…”

“…From our analyses, we see that reflectivity displayed is the main marker the acceptance of knowledge as valid by the wider community via upvotes. (Tilak & Glassman, 2020), that relies on elements & Kuznetcova's (2020) Open Source Educative Processes framework. In the next section, we provide an envisioned design for our dual-layered proto-research community.…”

“…RSS feeds run parallel to highly controlled environments like Netflix, using rulebased systems to mold user preferences (Chavalarias, 2016). In our previous work, we have called this the first order Internet, as it aligns with the ideas of first-order cybernetics, using command-and-control software to guide activity towards mandated outcomes through the creation of wide, shallow online communities showing little critical discourse (Tilak & Glassman, 2020).…”

“…Immediate solutions to emergent problems are constructed collectively, by carefully evaluating the nature of knowledge. Such platforms lie on what we have called the second-order Internet (Tilak & Glassman, 2020), as they allow users to reformulate insights with others in an unfolding online ecology through interaction with tools (an approach championed by second-order cybernetics).…”