Educational dialogue and technological utterances: a phenomenological approach to developing a theory of evocative design practice

Online and distance education presents many challenges for both educators and system designers. The nature of these challenges is given particular clarity when examining online education in respect to pedagogical approaches which emphasize the importance of dialogue as part of the educational process. In order to begin to understand the dialogic role that technology plays in online education, a phenomenologically-oriented conceptual framework is sketched out. Taking computer interactions to be structured largely as interpretive processes that occur within a wider cultural context, the role of online educational systems in instructor-student dialogue is presented as a form of technological utterance, able to both sustain, as well as instantiate, messages in a dialogue between students and instructors. Introducing questions for future research, the aim is to develop design theory for both the design of online education as well as for design in general