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Wag the Dog? Online Conferencing and Teaching

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Abstract

Web-accessible conferencing softwareand ``conversational ethics'' drawn from Habermas andRawls have successfully brought together on-lineparticipants separated by geography and viewpoint, andoccasionally resulted in consensus regarding otherwisedivisive issues such as abortion. The author describessuccesses, limitations, and costs of incorporatingthese technologies and discourse ethics in a religiousstudies class. Results are striking, but thepedagogical benefits involve technical risks and highlabor and time costs. This experience, coupled withrecent research, suggests that electronic pedagogies,like other teaching strategies, work for some, but notall students: this argues that we take up electronicteaching as one approach among many.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philosophy and Religion Department, Drury College, Springfield, Missouri, USA

    Charles Ess

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  1. Charles Ess
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Ess, C. Wag the Dog? Online Conferencing and Teaching. Computers and the Humanities 34, 297–309 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1002075505432

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1002075505432

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