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Week 10 Final post – Summary of my Lifestream.

Going back over my lifestream this week, it became apparent how ontogenetic this exercise has been, as my lifestream has gently morphed over these months to suit both the requirements of each block and my own. From short, frequent posts that characterised it at the beginning, my posts grew longer, contained more links and hopefully were more varied

Indulging in some human algorithmic processes as I went through the posts, I found that most of them were triggered by references to literature and websites while others contained links to videos. I did not have as many Twitter posts as I wanted (probably because of my shyness with social media) but I did find some podcasts here and there.

I embrace Kitchin’s (2017) view that algorithms ‘can be conceived in a number of ways’. I believe that there have been several algorithms at play in Education and Digital Cultures. The most obvious has been the technical algorithm, controlling the automation of posts using IFTTT. This allowed me to customize the algorithmic process to my needs, something that would have perhaps been too ‘extensive and complex a task to be tackled’ manually (Kitchin, 2017). The algorithm behind IFTTT allowed me a glimpse into the way triggers act on personal data and behaviour in order to ‘process instructions and produce a result’ (Kithin, 2017) that is tailor-made similar to the way modern technology is envisaging education.

Was I happy to allow an app to trawl my accounts, bring them to the public and ‘shape part of my everyday practices and tasks’ (Kitchin, 2017)? Perhaps not completely, and I did create separate accounts on occasion but the process of ‘domestication’ (Kitchin, 2017) eventually took place.  Were my IFTTT algorithms impartial and objective? No, as the choice of applets was mine and the choice of which feeds to forward too. Yet the lifestream was never meant to be impartial. On the contrary, it helped represent my train of thought over these weeks. Was my algorithm reliable? IFTTT did glitch or shut down on a few occasions. At one point I got a forwarded a YouTube video I had not liked. What would have happened if an algorithm embedded in an educational platform failed? What would have been the outcome?

There was also the cultural and relational dimension to algorithms defined by the connections between members of Education and Digital Cultures (to whom I am indebted) and the experiences of other communities on the MOOC. Here, algorithms acted ‘as a wider network of relations which mediated and refracted their (relations) work’ (Kitchin, 2017). Strong ties encouraged strong community feelings, triggered by posts/comments sent to members which initiated discussions or prompted sharing of experiences.

The artefacts which were another form of algorithm, condensed the knowledge from every block into visual representations, incorporating accumulated data from literature, browsing, forums, suggestions and the course experience itself while encouraging the discovery of new media to represent them.

How has the lifestream experience helped me understand the implications algorithms have on education? Like the algorithms involved in generating content for my lifestream according to my personal choices, algorithms in education make the collection of large amounts of data possible. Data is collected (datafication) to maximise the learning experience (digitization), removing what is extra and presenting it in the best way possible for learners, a process human agency alone would find difficult to replicate as I observed through the lifestream exercise.

Am I thoroughly convinced in the processes of ‘datafication’ of student information and ‘digitization’ of curriculum content (Knox et al, 2020)? Again…not entirely. While datafication is a precious resource in modern educational systems, the adage where the end justifies the means keeps coming to mind.

What happens to the learner when his/her actions are reduced to a collection of numbers (accrued from ‘pervasive data mining and data analytic packages (Williamson,  2017) ) that can be broken down, interpreted, sectioned and grouped into blocks, similar to the way entertainment media or products are categorised in online shopping and entertainment platforms? Is there a risk that learners become a ‘product of consumerist analytic technologies’ (Knox et al, 2020) and black-boxed trade secret algorithms, whereby the value of a person lies in data obtained by tracking his/her behaviour and success?

My lifestream algorithm has been an occasion for me to be both author and agent of the data selected to represent my activity during the course. This is not always the case with all educational platforms. It is, therefore, necessary that exercises pertaining to the collection of student data while done by large corporations are as transparent (by questioning and studying them) as possible while the digitization of the learning experience keeps both learners and teachers at its centre (and safeguards their autonomy), where they can still contribute to the output of the algorithm.

References:

Kitchin. R., (2017) Thinking critically about and researching algorithms,
Information, Communication & Society, 20:1, 14-29, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2016.1154087

Knox, J., Williamson, B., & Bayne, S., (2020) Machine behaviourism:
future visions of ‘learnification’ and ‘datafication’ across humans and digital technologies, Learning, Media and Technology, 45:1, 31-45, DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2019.1623251

Williamson, B. 2017. Introduction: Learning machines, digital data and the future of education (chapter 1). In Big Data and Education: the digital future of learning, policy, and practice. Sage.

Featured image created and modified from images obtained on https://pixabay.com.

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Week 9 – Algorithms and the future

Images obtained and modified from https;//pixabay.com

This post brings me closer to the end of the block on Algorithmic Cultures. Most of my time this week was dedicated to the artefact, which brings together the literature, observations and experimentation with algorithms.  My interest over the past few days has been evaluating the socio-economical dimension of algorithms in popular platforms and education. Williamson (2017) describes the impetus of Silicon Valley enterprises and entrepreneurs and their interest in developing ‘incubators’ as prototypes for a new wave of education.

Williamson’s (2017) concept of sociotechnical imaginaries describes the way large corporations approach education…and ‘whose aspirations are therefore becoming part of how collectively and publicly shared visions of the future are accepted, implemented and taken up in daily life’. This begs the question of whether education within this vision can ever be free from the bias that exists when it is filtered through the strata of political, commercial and legislative machines. How unbiased can education be when the concept of learning and teaching becomes a set of data that can be studied, categorised and developed in a software lab?

Another case in point is the concept of nudging, also mentioned in a couple of my posts this week. While nudging can help students by providing them with timely feedback, support and content, one wonders whether this useful tool can be used to promote ideals that go beyond the educational aims, whose scope is to act as part of models ‘to which certain actors hope to make reality conform, serving as ‘distillations of practices’ for the shaping of behaviours and technologies for visualizing and governing particular ways of life ad forms of social order (Huxley, sited in Williamson, 2017).

 

References

Williamson, B. 2017. Introduction: Learning machines, digital data and the future of education (chapter 1). In Big Data and Education: the digital future of learning, policy, and practice. Sage.

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Week 8-Algorithms for everyone

Pavstud

 

It would have been very handy to design an algorithm to filter my most inspired posts on this blog from the more run of the mill ones. On the other hand, this could prove futile in a blog aimed at documenting my train of thought throughout Education and Digital Cultures. Algorithms are as much about filtering out ‘undesired’ data as about whitelisting user choices.

There were two main arguments running in tandem through the posts this week. The right for the informed public to have access to algorithms behind some of the most popular social media platforms and how algorithms in education can either help or destroy notions of learning. Since algorithms are ‘adjudicating more and more consequential decisions in our lives’ (Diakopoulos, cited in Kitchin, 2017) and they are essentially capitalist in nature, one has to question who they are serving. Their chimaeric nature made up of many networked ‘hands’ (Seaver, cited in Kitchin, 2017) is perhaps why studying their effect is not straightforward. Yet algorithms feed-in human ingenuity or lack of knowledge about them and so need to be ethically managed.

Algorithms and AIEd is also a field of education that is often contested because of a return to a behavioural approach to learning. Perhaps this might not be the Pavlovian route where learners are given instant gratification but more of a consumerist perspective that monitors learning to collect data and tailor effective learning solutions through positive behaviour. Reinforcement learning and nudging are perhaps two of the most effective ways to shape learning. Not only are technologies shaping learning but more often than not they are shaping humans to act like machines, thereby stripping them of their autonomy by negating them access to what is being filtered out.

The ‘learner’ is now an irrational and emotional subject whose behaviours and actions are understood to be both machine-readable by learning algorithms and modifiable by digital hypernudge platforms.  (Knox et al, 2020)

References:

Kitchin. R., (2017) Thinking critically about and researching algorithms,
Information, Communication & Society, 20:1, 14-29, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2016.1154087

Knox, J., Williamson, B., & Bayne, S., (2020) Machine behaviourism:
future visions of ‘learnification’ and ‘datafication’ across humans and digital technologies, Learning, Media and Technology, 45:1, 31-45, DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2019.1623251

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Week 7- An overiew of online cultures.

This has been the concluding week to online cultures with a few (I was relatively busy with the ethnography) links to other studies (here and here) conducted with online cultures. Some of these studies were based on quantitative techniques and done a while ago but they still shed light on the interest in online communities generated by the Web 2.0 technologies boom. Most of these studies reveal multiple opportunities for people to come together for a number of reasons and  ‘that, rather than being socially-impoverished and ‘lean’, there were detailed and personally enriching social worlds being constructed by online groups.’ (Kozinets 2010).

Many people have I believe often experienced the feeling aptly described by Rheingold (2005) of ‘ Finding the WELL was like discovering a cosy little world that had been flourishing without me…’ at the first experiences of joining an online culture. Joining my MOOC slightly later I did get a feel of this ‘becoming part of something already there’. The first post might be a bit intimidating at first but it only takes the first reply or the first post to feel your presence has been felt.

I often wonder what it would feel like to meet members of an online community, or perhaps other people on this course in person one day, somewhere, perhaps a pub, a village square or a university hall. Will it be the feeling of meeting old friends, or of experiencing new relationships? Mobile technologies and fast internet speeds have allowed us to be online all the time making us a continuos presence in online communities and we worry when the community is quiet or has not posted in some time.

The study of my MOOC online community over these past few weeks has been interesting not only in the study of the MOOC itself which is all on the micro-ethnography but also in the first days of online communities when I was bounding from one of three MOOCs until I found the one I wanted to study. Each of these three MOOCs had their own specific community with members that made the community unique.

References:

Kozinets, R. V. (2010) Chapter 2 ‘Understanding Culture Online’, Netnography: doing ethnographic research online. London: Sage. pp. 21-40.

Rheingold, H. (2000). The Virtual Community. Available at:http://www.caracci.net/dispense_enna/The%20Virtual%20Community%20by%20Howard%20Rheingold_%20Table%20of%20Contents.pdf. Accessed (1st March 2020).

 

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Week 6 – Have MOOCs been created with the idea of online communities or are online communities a phenomenon of MOOCs?

This week’s posts have been somewhat similar in gist and content to week 5’s but possibly taken more from the perspective of the economy of MOOCs. MOOCs are one of those inventions where the whole seems greater than the sum of the individual parts, often making us wonder if they are seen as a product, a service or even both (Sultan, 2014)?

This week I spent some time analyzing discourse in the MOOC I have chosen, mostly what brought the people on the MOOC to take the course. The MOOC I have chosen ‘Launching Innovation in Schools‘ (which I decided to change to earlier on) is mostly populated by professionals in education. Most of those who took the MOOC decided to do so because they felt they could take something out of the course as opposed to simply taking the course for self-satisfaction (which in a way is also taking something from the MOOC). In this way, a MOOC represents a service. It is providing the necessary material for someone to learn. Yet MOOCs are also a form of ‘servitization‘, defined as

“the increased offering of fuller market packages or ‘bundles’ of customer-focused combinations of goods, services, support, self-service and knowledge in order to add value to core product offerings” and claim that manufacturing firms are increasingly moving towards offering services in order to avoid competing on cost alone.

(Vandermerwe and Rada as cited in Sultan, 2014)

Online communities pertaining to MOOCs are therefore a phenomenon that is part of this servitization but without the need for MOOC organisers to invest any capital into it. They do advertise numbers of participants in an effort to attract more people to the course and investment is required in designing the platform to allow for communication but it is like parking a hamburger van outside a football stadium. All you have to do is wait for the people to come by with little effort.

References:

Sultan, N. (2014) Cloud and MOOCs: The Servitization of IT and Education. Available at: https://www.uos.ac.uk/sites/default/files/basic_file/CLOUD-AND-MOOCS.pdf. (Accessed: 20th January 2020).

Image obtained and modified from: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart

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Week 5: The needs of online communities.

The posts over week 5 have hopefully been proof of the different needs associated with online communities in an effort to determine what aspects I should concentrate on in the micro-ethnography.

Mark Wills’ view that online community encourage communities that are essentially neutral in the embodiment of genderless, ageless and classless notions may perhaps be counterargued by the last few posts for this week which show an inherent need for MOOCs to suit the needs of different types of communities. Being neutral and anonymous might have been a common practice in the first online communities but nowadays online participants seem to feel the need to show who they are and where they come from. This has also been evident in a short investigation of my MOOC which has shown that few people use pseudonyms any more.

This week has also been about the economics of MOOCs. In one of the articles, a major MOOC platform representative of Coursera states that:

At Coursera, we don’t really see ourselves as a MOOC provider, we look at ourselves as a three-sided platform that’s connecting learners, educators and employers.

(Kapeesh Saraf, 2019)

MOOCs might perhaps be realising that it is not just a question of posting material online for everyone to consume but it is about the need to bring together all interested parties in a continuous effort to meet the needs of different communities. Couple this with the need (still evident) of having face-to-face contact and it seems that teachers will not be out of a profession any time soon.

 

References:

Johnson, S. (2019). Much Ado About MOOCs: Where Are We in the Evolution of Online Courses? Available at: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-02-26-much-ado-about-moocs-where-are-we-in-the-evolution-of-online-courses. (Accessed: 15th February 2020).

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Week 4- Reflections on MOOCs

The development of MOOCs has been somewhat criticised for a number of reasons, for lack of a ‘real instructor’ or for the considerable amount of drop-outs. Perhaps the lack of human contact or the possibility of taking on a course far from an institution does affect the way education is perceived as was discussed in a number of articles posted this week. Is ‘openness’ as observed by Knox (2013) really a liberatory concept or do online learners still feel the need for an institution behind their learning?

In the course of this week, I came to wonder how far MOOCs can be seen as another form of ‘cultural commodity’ (Lister, 2009). Most MOOCs make use of videos, audio and other media which could fall well into the model described by Lister whereby production is focused on the creation of services for profit. This might determine who studies for ‘free’ for personal satisfaction and who pays for a certificate in order to improve the chances of a better career.

I also tried to determine what economic models MOOCs follow. Do they encourage ‘free’ learning to advertise high numbers of those taking on a particular course or is there some other form of discreet advertising going on? O’Reilly (cited in Lister, 2009) predicted that development in Web2.0 would not follow the path of manufacturing better hardware but by an increase in the provision of paid data or data that can be acquired according to need. We might already be paying for that free course by leaving data trails whenever we access the course platform and other companies may already be paying for that data to enhance their online courses.

And now to the micro-ethnography…

 

References:

Lister, Martin … [et al.], (2009) “Chapter 3. Networks, users and economics” from Martin Lister … [et al.], New media: a critical introduction pp.163-236, London: Routledge

Knox, J., (2013). Five critiques of the open educational resources movement. Teaching in higher education, 18(8), pp.821-823.

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Week 3-Tying up

This week was a bit of a juggle bringing together the readings, posts and completing the artefact. My postings have ranged from delving into film culture and feminism, education and technology and today’s video post on AI and the predictions made in the spread of the coronavirus. Quite a mix to say the least and a close representation of what was going on inside my head 😊.

Although I have heard and enjoyed watching and listening to success stories brought about by the implementation of technology, sometimes the ideas tend to put me slightly on edge. What seems in, a way as a straightforward leap from nothing to everything (possibly in areas or countries with different socioeconomic backgrounds) makes me wonder if one needs special super-insight into stripping the learning process to its very fundamentals and applying technology to it. I often find that over-analysing the use of technology and how it benefits education often blindfolds educators into simply providing the means to search for information and allowing learners to enjoy the process of discovery. Many times, and in my experience the use of technology needs to be mired in protocols, time constraints, syllabi and educator training. Why do some people find it easy using social networking platforms, sharing, buying online and a host of other things but then still find it difficult to implement similar technologies within class sessions?

Finally, the video on the paradigm shift in the use of digital time is something I would like to develop later on as it can perhaps offer an insight in the way older generations find it difficult to relate to younger ones on the uses of technology. Perhaps older generations still tend to use technology in a sequential manner, allocating time for it and range of use while for younger generations it becomes an extension of their physical, psychological and even emotional selves.

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Week 2- From philosophical ideals to practicality.

The above is an image which I had included in one of my posts during IDEL and which seems to depict one of the risks of mass-produced educational programs through technology as it tends towards the ‘universalism’ described by Knox (2015) which can also give rise to the idea that the goal of education is the creation of rational thinking.

This week has brought me closer to the philosophies behind the use of technology. The hopeful views promoted by posthumanism and the ideals supporting transhumanist trends are thrilling, to say the least. On another note, there are still those, like Bayne(2015) who advocate towards the importance of the social aspect in the integration of technology within education.

Bayne’s(2015) view that ‘Reducing a field of such complexity and importance to the terminology and limitations of TEL’ while ‘positioning the ‘material’ and technological aspect as separate from and subordinate to social practice’, thereby negating the entirety of the human, is somehow vaguely reminiscent of some of Rosi Braidotti’s perspectives on technology in a posthuman world. The call for technology as a solution to various things (amongst them education) or as an upgrade for those who can afford it, often stops short from addressing other human maladies that could be caused by technologies such as poverty, the environmental damage caused by the same materials used for manufacturing technologies that are short-lived and ‘the appropriation of nature as resource for the productions of culture’ (Harraway, 2007) while a general sense of alienation seems to permeate throughout.

While technology has, and still will, give much to the world, nothing can be gained by demolishing one world to build another. Although we do live in a world calibrated by digital time, in which the past seems long gone and the future always at hand it is only by bringing the fruits of the labour of those before us and merge them with the modern that a holistic ideal can be truly achieved.

Bayne, S., (2015). What’s the matter with ‘technology-enhanced learning’? Learning, Media and Technology, 40(1), pp. 5-20, https://doi.org.ezproxy. is.ed.uk/10.1080/17439884.2014.915851

Harraway, D. (2007). A Cyborg Manifesto. Bell, David; Kennedy, Barbara M (eds), The cybercultures reader pp.34-65, London: Routledge.

Knox, J., (2015). Critical Education and Digital Cultures. Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. Springer, pp. 1-6. Available at: https://doi.org/10.0.1007/978-981-287-532-7_124-1.

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Week 1…Solutionism as a drive to Posthumanism.

Image by ronymichaud at Pixabay.

Some of the films this week portrayed technology/robot either in human-guise or as machines having strong human emotions. Both ‘The Cyborg’ and ‘Retrofit’ are humans ‘dressed’ as robots. In the first clip, the background seems to be an experiment while in the second the robot has been created to ‘continue’ a life.  This last theme is what bring s me to the argument of this blog.

While my blog this week has generally centred around the depiction of robots and the merging of human and machine seen through the eyes of the 70s and 80s anime and manga films, it is the drive of solutionism through technology that emerges as one of the strong allies of posthumanism. The idea of providing mechanical/electrical versions to cellular/biological parts of the human body (allowing the body to keep on working), while admirable in itself, gives rise to the question whether imperfection will be relegated to the poorer classes. The result of not affording a perfect mechanised body will perhaps be tantamount in the future to not being able to afford the latest iPhone or classy car.

This week has also been about linking applications to WordPress. While some things have gone smoothly, others seem to need tweaking. Twitter posts missed attached images and Youtube videos have not always been embedded well within blogs. I hope to have provided a relatively varied list of content for this first week, with, hopefully, some ideas to the artefact at the end of week 3.

References:

Morozov, E., (2013) ‘We are abandoning all checks and balances’ The Observer, Saturday 9th March, Technology.