Abstract

COVID-19 has necessitated inquiry into the capacity of technology to build learning communities to solve problems beyond proximal boundaries. Platforms like Zoom offer pathways for communication and content-delivery, but little stimulus for collective online outcomes (projects/learning-objects/discussion forums). We aim to examine how monetized platforms fit within Marcuse’s technological rationality and its capacity to exercise social control. This owes to dominance of aspects of technology related to providing content rather than how we direct agency towards using it. Such control is reminiscent of influence exercised by portals like television and radio in the mid-1900’s. We suggest Habermas’ communicative rationality using technology can foster critical thinking in online education. We often assume technology is the basis for change in classrooms. As Marcuse says, this enables technology to exact control upon us, and fragment outcomes obtained from using it to learn, warranting creation of new tools. Integrating bottom-up ways of using technology into existing frameworks can mitigate fragmentation of the public sphere resulting from industrialized online education. Fragmentation becomes pervasive with migrating classes online. We provide a framework/design to better encourage critical reflection in online learning communities during unprecedented times such as the era of COVID-19.