EJERCongress 2019 Bildiri Kitabı / EJERCongress 2019 Conference Proceedings 2255 TEACHING UNDER THE VIRTUAL SURVEILLANCE: EXPLORING ONLINE INSTRUCTORS’ EXPERIENCES KADİR BERK HASAN UÇAR BILECIK SEYH EDEBALI UNIVERSITY BILECIK SEYH EDEBALI UNIVERSITY Abstract Purpose: The state of being viewed by the authority mostly without consent creates a virtual panopticon power. The presence of this panoptic surveillance and the possibility of misusing this power may force the instructors to act as they are being watched and monitored. So, the authors were interested in exploring online instructors’ perspectives on panoptic surveillance through the lens of panopticon concept. Method: In order to gain insight into this situation, this paper used a qualitative case study method to investigate the online instructors’ views on panoptic surveillance in online learning environments. The participants of the study were eight instructors from three different state universities in Turkey. The instructors have been teaching online courses at least for a year. The data of the study were collected through an online survey. Findings: According to interviews data, the instructors reported that they felt like being monitored while teaching online and they felt anxious with the idea that they were being recorded/monitored, namely surveilled during online teaching. They also expressed that they limited themselves while teaching online compared to in-class teaching experience. So, they stated that they controlled their behaviors while teaching online thinking that an authority was watching or would watch them. Implications for Research and Practice: Monitoring gives power to the authorities in online learning platform. Even though it is difficult to determine the agreeable level of virtual surveillance, this can be designated according to aims and results of the surveillance. Keywords: Distance education, online learning, panopticon, control, surveillance Introduction Information and communication technologies have become prevalent tools in all sides of lives. These technologies have also brought the notion of panoptic surveillance in education settings. Surveillance has been one of the most important instruments of power for ages. It has taken many different forms and served various purposes from ancient times to feudal ages, from industrial societies to post-industrial and modern times: to protect the land from enemies; to monitor the criminals; to defend the nation, to discipline the army, to boost the production, to promote the consumption, to prevent crime, to bring and keep the peace and tranquility, to sort people, to monitor the health, and to ensure obedience (Foucault, 1995). Whatever is the purpose and form, the ultimate goal of surveillance is to maintain control on masses and exert self-control over the behavior of the individual (Elmer, 2012; Foucault, 1995; Lyon, 2001). This kind of control has been established through bureaucracy and technology from the industrial times onwards. Some of the basic characteristics of surveillance are that it is associated with governance and management; constitutive of the subject; disabling as well as enabling and is “productive” in Foucault’s sense; understood in terms of distanciation; becoming increasingly implicated in a system of assemblage which brings together diverse control technologies (Zureik, 2005; Philips & Curry, 2005). As stated by Lyon (2005), surveillance happens to us all, every day, as we walk beneath street cameras, swipe cards, surf the Net. Panopticon is the key concept in surveillance systems. Michel Foucault who narrates the-300-year-history of the transition from the society of punishment to the society of discipline and finally to the society of control (surveillance) in his masterpiece (1995), conceptualizes the architectural design of prison by philosopher Jeremy Bentham as Panopticon. Mcgrath (2004) explains this system as a key shift from a view of morality that involved punishments for wrongdoing, to a sense of a self that knows that s/he is subject to the gaze of the authority and thus controls his/her behaviors by measuring, grading and censoring. Panoptic surveillance aims to normalize and/or construct an ideal, obedient, desired self by the perpetual gaze. The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately. Well- arranged light helps the surveillant capture better than darkness. According to Foucault (1995) visibility is a trap. Initially encouraging and stimulating convicted criminals to monitor and exert self-control over their behavior, the gaze of surveillance quickly diffused from prisons into other state institutions such as army barracks, hospitals and schools, and then into everyday life – in the street, at the shopping mall, in the open-plan office. Similarly, courses in online learning environments are always viewed or can be viewed by the authority without consent and this kind of virtual surveillance creates a virtual panoptic power (Epling, Timmons, & Wharrad, 2003; Waycott, Thompson, Sheard, & Clerehan, 2017). As a result of this, the authority can use this unbalanced power to evaluate the online instructors. The virtual classroom has the potential to become far more panoptic than any physical space could. This is because in theory all your actions within this Berk, K. & Uçar, H.(2019). Teaching under the virtual surveillance. In proceedings of VIth International Eurasian Educational Research Congress (pp. 2255-2259). Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey.