Personally, I am a person who uses technology and judiciously takes advantage of technology. But at the same time, it is worth mentioning, that I do not support the progression of the technology which leads to the formation of invisible/virtual society (Facebook society or like Anderson's imagined community) alongside the human-society which becomes the sole basis of human existence and fortunes.
Pitching on the above-said argument I would like to interrogate whether the need for online teaching is to be seen in relation to the present lockdown crisis alone, or are these efforts, to make online teaching as the futuristic mode of operation whereby creating virtual teaching universities.
Based on historical experience, we see that the purpose of this much-needed attention and the emphasis seems to be to make artificial intelligence an integral part of teaching in the future and to create alternative e-teachers' by creating solid content for the education sector.
The basis of this logic can be seen in the expenditure incurred on these resources by linking human resources with the WTO as neo-liberal policy. We have already seen the results of such efforts in the health services, where many of the Indian state’s civil hospitals do not even have basic ventilator facilities. That is why we are forced to rely on social science solutions (social distancing) during this lockdown due to lack of scientific tools to prevent the Corona epidemic. The inadequacy of the human resources attached to the market due to economic aspirations and the big divide between the private and the public, with the increase in privatisation is the root cause of our lack of self-confidence in fighting the Corona epidemic. Even the governments are at sea dumb and confounded as to how to tackle the situation with dampened resources.
Further, consequences include a rise in social fear and a sense of transiency of human life. It's time we need to make our human resources more efficient and relevant. It is important to realise that human needs can never be met by artificial intelligence as an alternative to mutual cooperation, love, communication and knowledge of humankind. It is a point to think that the man may become a skilled man but will that man be a human being as well?
It is possible that while today we see a lack of human resources in science; juxtaposing in future we may see the same situation in social sciences as well in the form of lack or awareness and irresponsibility (a good example is citizens coming out of their home during lockdown without realizing their social responsibility).
At the same time, if we are planning to use online teaching as a tool in the future, we need to be more accomplished in not only the material/virtual network but a network of ethical humanities. Because the main function of teaching is to inculcate critical thinking in the students. This allows students to create new ideas by displacing established ideas, objects, phenomena, and individual discourse. Creating new discourses or counter-discourses is not possible unless the student develops his own independent thinking; he will just be a slave of master narratives and will follow as is given situations like robots.
In my opinion, the chances of some new creation in online teaching are very low or non-existent because the possibility of surveillance in online teaching is very high and as Foucault says that supervision is a way to stop ideas or behaviors. If the teacher is not able to express his ideas/thoughts freely, then he will not be able to create a new one, in which case either he will be stoned to death like Copernicus or will apologize like Galileo, who contradicted the established idea that the sun is the centre of the universe not the earth.
In the given scenario, online teaching will be more established as a method of monitoring/surveillance and will be thus, an obstacle in novel creation and co-creations.
