Daring the Meaning, or Cyberspace that Matters. Criticism-Creativity and Online Education

This paper focuses on online education and generic competences such as criticism and creativity. It brings to the fore theories that address processes of meaning making (i.e., a psychological constructionist account of the brain basis of emotion-the conceptual act model (Lindquist et al., 2012; Barrett et al., 2014) and reflect on various patterns of meaning making comprising those that lead to criticism and creativity (i.e., the Deleuzian and Guattarian (1987; 2009) philosophical accounts of affect, concept and stratum) to inspire pedagogical practices that aim to create critically-creative abilities among students. Concomitantly, it seeks to reflect on how such pedagogical undertakings can be actualized in online education and on the possibilities online environment offers to promote criticism and creativity among graduates. By posing questions related to teaching methods, learning activities, software and hardware, and their combinations in online education, and by addressing and problematizing concepts and phenomena of immersion and DFI-digital facial image, I will make an effort to not only highlight, what I call, the promises of cyberspace, but also ponder on how the aforementioned pedagogical practices can be actualized online.

In this presentation: I briefly discuss the aforementioned theories and present the results of the theoretical experiment in which they become combined together.
Then, I discuss how those theories alone and when experimentally brought together influence the way I approach criticism and creativity, and can set off pedagogical practices which then can hopefully result in critical-creative abilities among students.
Finally, by posing questions related to content, teaching methods, learning activities, software and hardware, and their combinations in online education, and by addressing and problematizing concepts and phenomena of immersion and DFI-digital facial image, I will seek to reflect on how these particular pedagogical undertakings can be actualized in online context, and on the possibilities online environment offers to promote criticism and creativity among students.

The Deleuzian and Guattarian concepts:
Affect that is sensory becoming can be comprehended, among its other possible readings, as a moment of deterritorialization, indetermination, indiscernibility, suspension, hesitation, surprise, wonder, and lack of meaning.
Concept that is conceptual becoming might be approached as a creation of new meaning and novel sense concomitantly embodying in itself, so to say, a desire for a constant movement engendering forever rejuvenating meaning and sense.
Affect (sensory becoming) can be read as laying ground for concept (conceptual becoming) and securing that conceptual becoming happens and it does not cease to happen (i.e., meaning is always on the move; never finished and complete). As such conceptual becoming should be interconnected with sensory becoming.
Stratum can be read as a habitual and customary meaning. Stratum is an ambivalent concept as on the one hand, it seems to contradict criticism and creativity yet, on the other hand, it can support one in enduring and sustaining an experienced indetermination of affect and novelty of concept. Deleuze and Guattari seem to suggest that the frequency of the experienced affects/sensory becomings (lack of sense) and concepts/conceptual becomings (new meaning and sense) should fit one's pace.

Theoretical Experiment
Situated conceptualization as the Deleuzian/Guattarian affect/sensory and concept/conceptual becoming, and stratum: • it may not be easily anticipated how external and internal sensations will become conceptualized. This indicates a rather unpredictable 'nature' of the embodied and embedded subject; • the brain and so the subject is able to generate new meaning of given sensations, i.e., to create a new combination of external and internal sensations (and actions), and as such create a new conceptual knowledge for a given category that incorporates properties, relations, rules, objects, settings, actions, words, events or internal states related to that category thus, able to think, feel and act differently; • once a given input leads to a confusion of the brain (and the subject), such confusion can facilitate a creation of a novel meaning for a given external and/or internal input; • new meaning can be continually engendered; • final meaning can be postponed and/or perhaps never reached; • the brain might be seen not only as being able to produce novel sense, but also postpone creating a final meaning of a given sensation; • the role the experience may play in meaning making process: difficulties of creating new meaning of given sensations, of challenging and changing the existing conceptual knowledge; it can be predicted how certain external and internal sensations will become conceptualized; • for the subject to endure and sustain an occurring and experienced lack of meaning and novel sense, and to remain open to indetermination and novelty sometimes it has to think in the customarily ways.

Input for Pedagogical Practices
• there are limits on predicting the outcomes of the meaning making process (i.e., manners of thinking, feeling and acting); • it might be difficult to challenge students' existing conceptual frameworks; • it may be possible to map and determine (and as such eventually diversify) students' patterns of conceptualization;

• it is crucial to support students in generating new meanings of external and internal sensations (to help them think, feel and act differently) that is in creating new combinations of external and internal sensations (and actions) and by doing so producing new conceptual knowledges for given categories;
• students should experience a moment of surprise, wonder and lack of meaning in order to be able to generate new meaning of given sensations; • surprise/wonder/lack of meaning and new meaning should be intertwined in order to secure the fluctuations and movement of meaning. By securing intertwinement of lack of and new meaning, "an educator may hope to activate thinking, feeling and acting that are always on the move, never finished, never taken for granted, and never believed to be final, the only one or finite in their righteousness and certainty" (Just 2016, 300); • intertwinement of lack of, new and habitual meaning. Too much of wonder/lack of meaning and new meaning may be unsustainable. Pedagogical practices should mind and secure students' endurability and sustainability.

Immersion
• deep mental involvement in something; • engagement, reverie and subsidence; • the screen is an entrance gate: the rabbit-hole; • the screen enables full attention and frames perception; • landscapes: interactive, unfamiliar, highly diverse with many 'turns and twists;' • sense of presence; • immersion: 'twists and turns,' interaction, engagement, attention and (self-) curiosity.

Immersion Praxis
To actualize the pedagogical practices online, perhaps, it is worthy trying to create/generate/stimulate immersion. This means, design and combine content, teaching methods, learning activities, software and hardware in such way as to engender immersion.

Try to map students' patterns of conceptualization.
Secure students' endurability and sustainability.
Content, teaching methods, learning activities, software and hardware (and their combinations), whichin relation to the topics and issues that are planned to be addressed in a given class or/and programmeare able to engender sense of presence (as in VR, if possible), interactive, changeable, unknown, unfamiliar territory full of twists and turns (i.e., transformations, becomings, metamorphoses) that keep one engaged, attentive, (self-) curious, surprised, lacking/finding/loosing/finding the meaning thus, ultimately critical and creative. Content, teaching methods, learning activities, software and hardware that will help determining students' patterns of conceptualization, and will support them in dealing with either a lack of sense or new (sometimes unexpected) meaning of the self or of whatever there is that they experience. The latter is especially crucial as apparently too much of indetermination and too much of novelty might be unsustainable, namely, it might be too much to take.
Could content, teaching methods, learning activities, software and hardware be designed and combined in such way that they will engender a Wonderland?
Why a Wonderland? To me Wonderland, as imagined by Lewis Carroll, is:

• the interactive: "'Why is a raven like a writing-desk?'" • unknown territory: "'What sort of people live about here?' 'In that direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, 'lives a Hatter; and in that direction,' waving the other paw, 'lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.'" • full of twists and turns: "'it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.'"
• that keeps Alice engaged: "'-so long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation. 'oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.'"

• surprised: "'How puzzling all these changes are! I'm never sure what I'm going to be, from one minute to another!'" • (self-) curious: "'Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I?
Ah, that's the great puzzle!'" • and in a constant search for meaning: "'Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin,' thought Alice, 'but a grin without a cat!'"