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

Byline: J. Ola Lindberg, Anders D. Olofsson 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.