The Future of Education

In Sweden, as in many other countries in the world, there has been a massive shift in (higher) education towards distance education and online teaching. In the midst of this, some universities introduce and use remote-controlled devices, for example telepresence robots and iCubes. Both these devices provide a virtual presence – or a bodiless presence – to, for example, a remote student who cannot physically attend the classroom [1]. However, although these telepresence robots are gaining a growing foothold in higher education, there is a lack of research on the significance of telepresence robots in education [2]. The overall aim and contribution of this paper is therefore to explore dimensions of corporeality and hyperreality in digitalised education. More specifically, the focus will be on the research question – how can embodiment and presence be understood when the students are situated, and their participation are mediated, through remote-controlled devices? This overarching question harbours a variety of challenging aspects concerning, for example, the distribution of agency and roles. Does the machine merely become an instrument or does the student embody the robot in a more immersive way? [3] Who controls whom and in what senses? The philosophies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty [4] and Martin Heidegger [5] will provide entries for an ontological understanding of the relational and spatio-temporal aspects of presence and interaction in digitalised education. These philosopical perspctives will be infused with a postphenomenological approach, advocated by Don Ihde [6] who opens up for a phenomenological materialist view which emphasises how “our contemporary technologies actually embody or re-embody our fleshly experience in new ways, in interactive ways” (p.iii). A narrative – in form of a paradigmatic case – of a lesson at a Nordic university will serve as the starting point for the discussion in order to illustrate and relate the philosophical exploration in the paper with a typical classroom situation on campus and online.