Who are you really, and what do you think? These are the main questions here, although I’m writing about the Community of Inquiry, social presence and Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy.
The Community of Inquiry (CoI) is a concept of a group of individuals inquiring some phenomenon. In blended or online learning, the CoI model includes three different presences – social, cognitive and teaching presence – that form together an educational experience. When Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes and Garrison write about the premise of CoI, they mention that “higher education is both a collaborative and individually constructivist learning experience” (2013, 10). I’ve always found interesting the tension or relation between an individual and a community, so maybe that’s why this text brought Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy into my mind .
As far as I have understood, Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) thought that it’s not possible for one to have an idea of individual “me” before meeting the “other”. If I had always been truly alone in the world, I wouldn’t know what makes me unique as a human being and what kind of features are common in other humans too. Only by meeting the other – and getting so close that we reveal our true beings – we can learn the meaning of “otherness”, and simultaneously we find what is different or same in me. I learn how I’m unique, what really is “me”.
When it comes to CoI, maybe this is one part of the social presence: with others, we learn substantially more about ourselves. The better idea we have about how others think about the topic, the better we know where we differ and what is my personal perspective. Learning the content might be possible alone, but only if I have a true connection with others I may learn what is my own approach to it. With others, I learn not just about the content and what others think and are, but also about who I really am and what I think.
It’s hard to guess what Levinas would say about online learning. He emphasized the importance of face; when I meet the other face-to-face, I meet something that in a very profound way is not me, but is open and oriented towards me – and this creates a connection and responsibility between us. A blunt conclusion could be that people should always turn their video on in Zoom meetings… But if we follow his philosophy in a broader sense, it’s probably safe to say that cultivating social connections is essentially important. Levinas would maybe say that the social presence is not just one part of the Community of Inquiry, but the first part of it; a prerequisite for the essential knowledge and experience about being yourself.
Photo by Laurenz Kleinheider,
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References
Levinas, E. (1985). Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo. Duquesne Univ Press.
Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Edmonton: AU Press.
