{"id":105,"date":"2023-02-05T11:59:08","date_gmt":"2023-02-05T11:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mscde.education.ed.ac.uk\/katemolloy\/?p=105"},"modified":"2023-02-06T00:08:17","modified_gmt":"2023-02-06T00:08:17","slug":"the-platformisation-of-higher-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.mscde.education.ed.ac.uk\/katemolloy\/2023\/02\/05\/the-platformisation-of-higher-education\/","title":{"rendered":"The Platformisation of Higher Education"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The UNCESO report provides an overview of the ed tech market and some general context(for schools, mostly) but I feel that the Analytical Framework of the Platformization of Education<\/strong> and its three scenarios aren’t widely applicable in higher education. For instance, the second scenario posits: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In platform-systems, we see the birth of a double educational system. The institutionalised, regular and massive combination of a virtual educational system parallel to the brick and mortar one. The face-to-face school system maintains its homogeneous, national character, with socialisation functions and strengthening of cultural, citizen or moral ties. These dimensions require teachers with moral authority and high doses of daily interaction to regulate behaviours and learning. In parallel, digital platforms accentuate personalisation through artificial intelligence, the penetration of a global market and can be more clearly oriented towards job skills.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

While this is the most similar to my context, it certainly glosses over issues of teacher-student ratios<\/a> and learning contact time. Our students in the brick-and-mortar university. aren’t all experiencing daily doses of interaction, and the digital platforms certainly don’t accentuate personalisation, let alone have much alignment toward job skills. Students are experiencing a deficit on both sides. As the UNESCO report indicates a “frustration due to the unfulfilled promises of the technological solutions (Cuban, 2003). The traditional school seemed invincible in all the good and bad of its matrix”, the Covid emergency and continued unfulfilled promises, both technological and otherwise, hve exacerbated our fragile infrastructure, both physical and digital. The school is not<\/em> invincible. Students and staff lack the agency to change things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my own role, I’ve been tasked with leading our Learning Technologies team with a migration from Blackboard Learn to Canvas<\/a>. The decision to change VLE, and the choice of the new one, was decided by our T&L committee, a small group of staff representing the larger body. The university is also undertaking a larger Student Digital Pathways project<\/a> which will change our registration and curriculum management systems as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our digital infrastructure is due to change entirely!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In our context, I feel like the rentee-rentier relations explored in Komljenovic’s article are actually applicable well beyond the digital platforms. Students have proven to be mere commodities to the university, not assets, as highlighted by a serious accommodation crisis<\/a>, with no current option for online learning. While there are mentions of UDL and hybrid\/flexible in the press releases and sound bytes about the new technologies, one does have to wonder if it’s right to fund these platforms considering how the money could be used elsewhere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entanglements<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In addition to overseeing the Canvas migration, my current responsibility installing a plethora of our ‘other’ tools integrated into the VLE through LTI integration<\/a>. This involves reaching out to each company to check if running two instances is even covered by our contract, re-examining privacy policies, completing and testing the technical piece, and then documenting the process. Our ‘other’ tools are considered part of our core offerings. I’ve already installed: Turnitin, Kaltura, Vevox, Qwickly Attendance, H5P, Hypothesis, Zoom, Talis Aspire, and still have to follow up on Ally and others. The reason I’ve listed them all is that our staff generally see these tools all as ‘Blackboard’ or what will now be Canvas. To them, it’s one ecosystem because of where they live, but for us, it’s a bit of a minefield. Most staff and students would never check (or find<\/a>) our data policies. There are tools I’ve flagged concerns about, but I have no agency in the matter. Some days I feel a bit like this: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lisa<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Komljenovic states that the ‘nestedness of platform integration and nestedness of terms of use and privacy policies imply that students and staff become liable to their educational institution\u2019s data policies and policies of proprietary platforms with which their institution has a contract.’ This is true in our case, and I like the term ‘nestedness’. I have a feeling I’ll draw on this more often. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve also raised concerns about the migration process, as content will be dumped from one platform to another for our staff to untangle themselves. I can’t imagine it will go over well, Doug Jones writes about the iron triangle created by these entanglements here<\/a>. I shudder to think how our staff will react when all the shiny promises of a new platform present themselves like this: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Content copied from Blackboard to Canvas from David Jones’ article above<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sadly, most of our users don’t have enough jargon-free information available to them to even make an informed decision about data use. I’m waiting for the day when a student refuses to allow their intellectual property to be sent to Turnitin’s database<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, now we find ourselves plodding along into an even more intricate web of platforms as we’ve acquired Canvas tier 1 support (in addition to our own service desk) and its Impact<\/a> tools. Canvas support will cut a portion of our workload but comes with a pedagogical cost. We do not want to use terminology like ‘Syllabus’ or ‘Module’ in our course menus, we would opt for ‘Information’ and ‘Learning Materials’ if given a choice, but if we decided to change then the newly purchased support documentation would not match our course shells. The Impact tool will provide a ton of learning analytics, none of which we’ve had a chance to explore from an ethical or usefulness perspective, but it’s already paid for, so we’re using it. Once again, the promises of an ed-tech company not only fall short but will also dictate our pedagogy. Right now, it looks like we have to change a lot of language and terminology already embedded in the university’s culture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The article examines the ‘conditions of monopoly’, and I have concerns about our current conditions entering into a new contract with one of the ‘big’ VLE companies. The review and tender process in a university of our size takes time, and contracts lock in for years. We are already in a place where we can’t negotiate certain conditions about the user experience, so what happens when the company decides. to change things? What negotiating power will we have? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the other platforms we are piloting is Impact, which is supposed to help us with tool adoption by. providing data. and insights. Their description of the Impact tool<\/a> sounds like it could have been written by ChatGPT:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The digital transformation tool, Impact by Instructure, sets the standard for what easy-to-use education technology looks like today. Learn how Impact by Instructure makes navigating new technology a breeze, and edtech adoption more streamlined and easier for both learners and educators.<\/p>\nMore promises, more very confusing, non-sensical promises…<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Follow the Money, Lose the Pedagogy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I wanted to spend some time on your comments from last week as you helped me to think about the transition between topics: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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…link across to our next topic of platformisation and how that positions what we think the whole educational concern actually *is*, whose concern it is and what it’s meant to do. In sum, what’s the point of education? Who is it serving? (and why?) And then, what’s the point of a specific educational technology? What does it do? Whose interests are served? Whose agency is developed, whose agency is limited by the tech? etc etc<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It looks like our users will be paying data rent with Canvas, and while it might be more user-friendly and up-to-date than Blackboard Learn, I can already see barriers arising to both staff and student agency, and I’m not sure how much its promise will really serve, aside from its own data collection, etc. It looks like our university will continue to pay monetary rent. We will find ourselves navigating an even more tangled web of platforms. We’ll have two service desks instead of one, more insights than we know what to do with, and a VLE platform that is telling us what to do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also try to be diligent and follow the money, and I don’t think that Canvas’ reputation in recent years has been great: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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