The Digital Future of Education: An Introduction
Johannes Britz, Michael Zimmer
Our contemporary information society is reinventing how knowledge is
created, organized, accessed, and shared, with far reaching implications for
institutions of learning – schools, libraries, museums, and more. Digital
technologies facilitate new ways of thinking about learning that acknowledge
and nurture individual talents, skills, and interests, as well as fostering
connectedness and collaboration.
The rapid development and ubiquity of digital technologies and platforms
have pushed the future of education in innovative and unexpected directions.
Computers, tablets and smart boards are integrated into classrooms from
kindergarten through university; Web-based resources are increasingly relied on
for instruction, collabo-ration, and research; entire courses, classrooms, and
universities have moved online; social media platforms are being leveraged to
improve student services and communication; big data analytics are used to
enhance enrolment and advising services; MOOCs and related online environments
provide alluring new learning op-portunities.
This special issue of the International Review of Information Ethics
explores the ethical dimensions, implica-tions, and challenges of the evolving
“digital future of education,” and approaches these issues from neces-sarily
diverse and multifaceted perspectives.
In his contribution, “The Ethics of Big Data in Higher Education,”
Jeffrey Alan Johnson contemplates the ethical challenges of the increased use
of data mining and predictive analytics in educational contexts, arguing that
we must “must ensure both the scientific and the normative validity of the data
mining process” in order to mitigate the ethical issues that surround big data.
Mark MacCarthy continues this ethical analysis in his article “Student Privacy:
Harm and Context,” suggesting the need to embrace a contextual approach to
ensure that “intuitive context-relative norms governing information flows” in
the educational context are respected. In their essay, “The Ethics of Student
Privacy: Building Trust for Ed Tech,” Jules Polonetsky and Omer Tene complete
this discussion of student privacy by arguing for more concrete ethical
guidelines and toolkits to ensure transparency and trust in the use of big
data.
Maria Murumaa-Mengel and Andra Siibak push our discussion from ethical
concerns related to student privacy broadly, to those focused on the impact on
student-teacher interactions when social media platforms are introduced in
educational contexts. In “Teachers as nightmare readers: Estonian high-school
teachers’ expe-riences and opinions about student-teacher interaction on
Facebook,” the authors note the risks inherent in the use of social media in
teaching contexts which might require enforceable guidelines, but they also
highlight how social media use by instructors “can have positive influence on
students’ motivation and participation” and instructors should enjoy free
speech rights when using these digital tools for communication. These con-cerns
over speech and intellectual freedom are central to Taryn Lough and Toni
Samek’s contribution, “Cana-dian University Social Software Guidelines and
Academic Freedom: An Alarming Labour Trend,” which analysed the social media
policies from nine Canadian universities. Their results are pointedly negative,
revealing how “authoritarian management of university branding and marketing”
is trumping the “protection of academic freedom in the shift into 21st century
academic labour.”
This concern over the potential negative impacts of the digital shift in
academic labor is brought into sharp focus Wilhelm Peekhaus’ reflection,
“Digital Content Delivery in Higher Education: Expanded Mechanisms for
Subordinating the Professoriate and Academic Precariat.” Upon considering the
emergence of unique digital education platforms – such as MOOCs and so-called
“flexible” learning models – Peekhaus exposes several ethical dilemmas faced by
students, faculty, and universities confronted with this “contemporary
neo-liberal academic ecosystem.” The final contribution, “Digital Education and
Oppression: Rethinking the Ethical Para-digm of the Digital Future,” by Trent
Kays identifies similar concerns with digital education paradigms. While Kays
warns that “education done digitally must account [for] the technology used to
distribute the oppressive power structures inherent in traditional education,”
he provides an optimistic new paradigm to promote liber-ation through digital
education.
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