A Call for the Philosophising of Open, Distance E-Learning: Learning as the Art of Living in Twenty-First Century South Africa

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic and its consequent “lockdowns” caused many universities across South Africa to adopt the andragogical methodology of remote teaching and learning. This move was pragmatic rather than ideological: When students and lecturers could not meet face-to-face, teaching and learning had to continue. Aside from the necessities of the Covid pandemic, there are institutions mandated to teach at a distance as their norm, so this research has the potential to be relevant to both recently hybrid and strictly distance learning universities. Our survey of the available literature directs us to a lacuna in the purely philosophical research on “distance education” and “open distance e-learning.” For, whilst there exists literature that deals exclusively with the “philosophy of distance education”, there is scant literature available on the “philosophy of open education”, and more specifically an absence of what we deem as the “philosophy of open distance e-learning”. Herein we will argue that open distance e-learning, or, ODeL, is deserving of philosophical engagement by professional philosophers. Moreover, we will contend that if this is undertaken from an Aristotelian approach, then ODeL can be imagined as directing all involved in its project to living well.