Online Teaching, the Panopticon, and the ‘Unequal Gaze’

Mick Beltz, Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of North Dakota

It is my intent to explore the relevance of Michel Foucault’s insights, on discipline and the panopticon, within the context of the online educational experience. Bill Caraher, in his recent posting, “The Panopticon and Online Teaching,” explored some of the possible ways to use the work of Michel Foucault as a tool for understanding the online experience. While there will be some overlap between his thoughts and mine, the specifics of our discussions point to different conclusions.

Many people, when presented with Foucault’s discussion of the disciplinary principles of the panopticon, tend to view this discussion in a negative manner. They tend to read this harsh language of prisons, internalization, and discipline with a mild horror. They see the panoptic gaze in a purely negative light and take steps to chastise any structures that reinforce that gaze. I do not intend to defend every example of the ‘unequal gaze’ as being beneficial; however, I do want to highlight some positive consequences of the panoptic nature of online educational environments.

One of the most powerful concepts within the discussion of the panopticon is that of the ‘unequal gaze.’ For Focault, the ‘unequal gaze’ is a structural relationship where two individuals have different power relationships in their ability to monitor and survey the other person. In the discussion of the panopticon, the prison guard has the ability to completely monitor the actions and behaviors of the prisoner. The prisoner, on the other hand, never has the ability to monitor the prison guard, unless the guard allows the prisoner to have access to this information. This uneven power relationship usually means that the prisoner never knows if they are being monitored; instead, since there is the constant possibility of being observed, the prisoner must always operate under the assumption that they are being monitored.

The result of this ‘unequal gaze,’ for Foucault, is a level of discipline that shapes the individual to better fit within modern society and workforces. Any time that an institution has the ability to constantly monitor and record the individuals within those institutions, and the individuals internalize the disciplinary principles, they end up with a ‘docile body.’ That is a body that is disciplined in such a way as to fit smoothly into a society.

It is almost uncanny how the current online education model mirrors the idealized disciplinary institution of the panopticon. The power relationship between student and instructor is magnified in online educational environments. Any given student in an online course, only has access to material presented by the instructor. A student sees what the instructor wants them to see, and nothing more. For many students, this may even mean that they do not know who else (if anyone) is also taking the course. If an instructor decides to not include any group work, a student may never know if there are other students in the course. This isolation has a powerful impact on the internalization of the disciplinary principles. In traditional face-to-face classroom environments, students have the opportunity to talk with other classmates outside of the classroom. Even if this does not happen, a student will likely receive subtle verbal and non-verbal cues indicating the understanding of concepts and ideas by other students during class time. This eliminates isolation. If a student does not understand a concept, they might be able to see that other students are in the same boat. Most online teaching environments are not structured to eliminate this sense of isolation. Instead, since any given student does not know for sure if anyone else is in the course, they each are left with the potential of feeling that they are the only ones that are confused or lost. This feeling of isolation is at the heart of the internalization that comes from the ‘unequal gaze.’

The level of internalization of disciplinary principles needs to be much higher for online educational environments than it does for traditional educational environments. One of the major selling points of online educational environments is that they can allow students to be freed from the standard confines of the course structure. This means that they are freed from attending lectures at preset times or from needing to be someplace specific to learn. The difficulty is that these structures that students are being freed from are not arbitrary; they serve valuable educational purposes. They ensure that students are receiving the necessary information on the subject matter. They ensure that students are spending a specific amount of time digesting that information. They ensure that students do not fall behind in the course. If we free students from the repressive disciplinary structures of the traditional classroom environment, how can we avoid the negatives those structures are designed to prevent? This is the question Foucault was concerned with: how can we eliminate the repressive disciplinary structures and still maintain the results we desire? This is the importance of internalization. The panoptic nature of online educational environments provides this. Instructors are presented with a vast array of information that tells them how often a student views material, how long they view it, whether they have skipped over sections, etc. Since this information is unequally distributed in the instructor’s favor, the instructor has a much stronger level of power (not including all of the other power relationship that come in all educational environments). This ‘unequal gaze’ coupled with the potential isolation allows online education to free the student from the repressive structures if they are able to successful internalize the disciplinary principles.

Foucault argues that the goal of the panopticon is to create the ‘docile body’ within the prison population. By this, he is arguing that we need to shape the body to be better prepared to be a productive member of the workforce. Those people who cannot control their bodily impulses would be disruptive to those who can control themselves. This focus on the body seems anachronistic to our modern understanding of the needs of the workforce. Modern pluralistic societies have been arguing for decades that the body is not relevant to success. Instead, it is the capabilities of the mind that are relevant. The panopticon that accompanies online education seems to embrace this belief in a way that does not occur in traditional classroom environments. Since both the student and the instructor are disembodied representation of ideas, the focus on the body is eliminated. The race, gender, social class, age, or able-bodiness of both the student and instructor are obscured. This reinforces the expectations within the modern workforce. We are disciplining students to see that the presentation of ideas is the only relevant standard, because students cannot use any physical features as an excuse for their performance in a course.

I believe that there is a second beneficial consequence to the panoptic nature of online educational environments. I have argued, so far, that the ‘unequal gaze’ creates isolation for students. This is not necessarily a negative thing. Since the student’s primary contact is with the instructor, this can be used to foster a feeling of a personal educational experience. Instead of being able to blend in with the crowd, online students have no ability to see the crowd they might blend in with. Whether it is real or not, students internalize the personalized interaction with the instructor. For the student, he or she is likely to feel a personal connection with the instructor, since that is the primary voice they hear in the class. But from the instructor’s perspective, each student is just one out of many students. This gives the perception of personalized attention, without being as capital intensive as private instruction.