What is so spatial/special about an E-classroom?
The phenomenological approach towards E-learning: Gateway or impasse?

Roland Graf (Fachhochschule St. Pölten, Austria) [BIO]

Email: lbgraf@fh-stpoelten.ac.at

 

ABSTRACT:

If it is our spatial sight, that determines expectations, our concept of reality and therefore our way of acquiring knowledge, then what happens in a spaceless environment, claiming to be “the” solution in learning things nowadays: the internet? Kinesthetic horizon was the conceptual frame, Edmund Husserl and – more oriented on media surroundings (in his time: the cinema) – Maurice Merleau-Ponty gave the noetic efforts of mankind.

As this is a rather useful and manifold concept (tracing it to thinkers as different as M. Mc Luhan or Heinz von Foerster), it is surprising, that it was not systematically used as an approach towards e-learning. I want to show, whether this concept can be of use in an surrounding, where you either try to imitate spatial concepts (E-rooms, learning objects) or avoiding it as much as possible (virtualization). Actually it will be an effort out-of-the-lab about what happens, if you move out of the lab/classroom into the WWW.