Exploring What is Lost in the Online Undergraduate Experience

This book examines the significance and meaning of undergraduate online learning using a hermeneutic phenomenological study, asking what is lost when there is no face-to-face contact and exploring the essence of technology itself.

Drawing on data from undergraduate students across various higher education institutions, including both interview recordings and written reports of their lived experiences, the author seeks to uncover the essence of the phenomenon by engaging with themes around the philosophy of technology and the purpose of post-secondary education, using Heidegger’s essay The Question Concerning Technology as a crucial interpretive lens. Rather than offering generalized conclusions, it presents a basis for further understanding of the experience of online learning and ultimately asks whether the efficiency afforded to undergraduates by online classes or degrees can ever replace what is learned in a classroom with other people.

Providing a novel approach to the topic of online learning, which centers the concept of experience, and drawing links to current conditions and pedagogy in online higher education, it will appeal to scholars working across education and philosophy with interests in higher education, technology and education, phenomenology of education and philosophy of education.