Title: E-OLC in a context of the Other: face, trace and cyberspace

Authors: J. Ola Lindberg, Anders D. Olofsson

Addresses: Department of Education, Mid Sweden University, 871 88 Harnosand, Sweden. ' Department of Education, Umea University, 907 81 Umea, Sweden

Abstract: This paper starts with an investigation of the concept of community, various meanings and understandings that may be related to its use, and how community as a concept has been reconceptualised when being transferred from an offline to an online context. It continues by considering an understanding of |Educational Online Learning Communities (E-OLC) in its context| as a question of being-together. Finally, it provides a discussion inspired by the thoughts of Emanuel Levinas, concluding that E-OLCs are conditioned in the unconditioned responsibility of being-for-the-other and that education and teaching, both on- and offline, becomes a question of taking the Other as the necessary condition for knowing oneself, and the responsibility for the Other becomes the first imperative as ethics becomes the first philosophy.

Keywords: community; education; learning community; Levinas; educational online learning communities; teaching; Other; web based communities; e-learning.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWBC.2008.017672

International Journal of Web Based Communities, 2008 Vol.4 No.2, pp.188 - 198

Published online: 26 Mar 2008 *

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