Tag: Week 5 (page 1 of 1)

Block: ‘Learning’ with Data / Summary

This block, I tracked different bodily data while learning and working – my posture, movement, and reflected gaze. I wanted to experiment with the encoding of the body through data as a way to explore the turn towards bodily and emotional data in edtech (Knox et al. 2020). If the edtech imaginary treats the failings of educational systems as “engineering problems to be solved at scale” (Friesen 2019, p. 144), then the turn towards bodily data posits our bodies as part of the ‘problem’ to be ‘solved’ by edtech and learning analytics. This is an obvious and problematic endpoint of data practices based on behavioural approaches – or, at least obvious to anyone who has experienced similar exertions of control over their bodies based on their gender, disability, sex or race.

I didn’t set any clear questions to be answered in this block, choosing to explore and think about the construction and curation of bodily data instead. But my experimenting so far feels only surface level and, despite inspiration from the ‘Dear Data’ project, I struggled to track and visualise data in ways that I felt reflected the complexities of intra-action between the mind-body and data while learning or working (Rogowska-Stangret 2017). Still, I posited that a ‘knowing’ awareness of the methods of data collection and visualisation could provide a site of performative resistance to surveillance technologies and learning analytics, in a similar way to how a knowing awareness of gender performance informs drag acts.

There are some obvious problems with this position. Firstly, the increasing complexity of learning algorithms work to obscure from students the ways in which their learning activities and bodies are datafied and shaped, as does the increasing insertion of behavioural interventions and nudging across the educational landscape (Knox et al. 2020). Secondly, existing power relationships and imbalances in complex educational systems (Tsai et al. 2020) limit the ability of students to enact their agency in even performative ways. My position comes from three weeks of self tracking data, a learning activity that encouraged my own agency and power over the data I curated. There are evidently different power dynamics at play when a student is sitting a high stakes exam with mandatory online proctoring, or having to agree to terms of use in order to matriculate (Tsai et al. 2020), and this limits their ability to resist or question the ways in which their data will be collected and used.

The act of self-tracking made me think about how I ‘pay attention’ to learning activity and data production and when I’m happy to let a machine ‘pay attention’ on my behalf. Can an awareness of the rules of the game, so to speak, help develop learners’ empowerment over their data? Although increased transparency and personalisation of data (for example, through personalised data dashboards) might help to develop a ‘knowingness’ of data practices, we cannot automatically assume that this will lead to student or teacher empowerment over their learning (Bulger 2016, Tsai et al. 2020). Assuming also that teachers should explain to students how their data is being collected ignores the ways in which power dynamics in educational systems and complex data processes obscure teachers’ comprehension of data practices as well. 

It’s these tensions and complexities I’ll carry in the back of my mind as we move into our next block on ‘teaching’ with data.

References

Bulger, M, 2016, Personalized learning: The conversations we’re not having. Data and Society, 22(1), pp. 1-29.

Friesen, N 2019, “The technological imaginary in education, or: Myth and enlightenment in ‘Personalised Learning.” In M. Stocchetti (Ed.), The digital age and its discontents. University of Helsinki Press, pp. 141-149.

Knox, J, Williamson, B & Bayne, S 2019, ‘Machine behaviourism: Future visions of “learnification” and “datafication” across humans and digital technologies‘, Learning, Media and Technology, 45(1), pp. 1-15.

Rogowska-Stangret, M 2017, Body, viewed 13 February 2020, <https://newmaterialism.eu/almanac/body/body.html>.

Tsai, Y-S, Perrotta, C & Gašević, D 2020, Empowering learners with personalised learning approaches? Agency, equity and transparency in the context of learning analytics, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 45(4), pp. 554-567, DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2019.1676396

Block: ‘Learning’ with Data / Week 5

This week, I recorded all the times my image was reflected back to me by software while I worked. This reflection is through Zoom and Microsoft Teams while I work from home. I attempted to classify these instances by the type of activity, whether my camera was on or off (with profile picture on display), and audience/participants by number and type (internal team members or faculty). For background, I am a learning technologist, and these measures are a personal codification of my work this week.

I plotted these instances along a subjective “fidget meter”. After each Zoom or Teams session, I noted how often I thought I fidgeted (made movements with my hands, arms, face and back) during that time.

Some things I learned:

1. I appear to fidget the most during internal team meetings.
2. I appear to fidget the least when I’m working with faculty members in consultations or leading workshops.
3. The main way I appear to meet with faculty is through consultations and workshops, not meetings.
4. I do not turn my camera off while leading consultations or workshops.

Fidgeting is used as an indicator of lower engagement by some algorithms (Chang et al. 2018), so you could say that I’m not very engaged in most meetings. However, the session in which I fidgeted the most was a meeting of our team’s “journal club”. I might have fidgeted a lot, but I was also actively participating in the discussion. I think I fidgeted a lot because I was with people I was comfortable with, discussing a more casual topic. Compared to working with faculty academics in workshops or consultations, where I have to act a certain way, or be more ‘switched on’.

I use the phrase ‘switched on’ to imply a different level of engagement, but also a performance. By paying attention to my fidgeting this week I likely fidgeted more or less often at times, performing for my data visualisation, my reflection and my real time audience. The nature of meeting people through software like Zoom and Teams, which reflect your image back to you (even with your camera off, you may display a profile picture or your name), also appear to encourage an awareness of self image that is different from offline meetings.

This awareness or gaze uncovers a performative aspect to the surveillance of bodily data that resists the idea that ‘correct’ forms of engagement can be measured through the body. If we are aware that bodily data, like other learning analytics measures, serve as “proxies for, but not accurate representations of, attentional focus” (Bulger 2016, p.16), we can perhaps find ways to perform focus to surveillance algorithms in queer, resisting or dissembling ways.

References

Bulger, M., 2016. Personalized learning: The conversations we’re not having. Data and Society, 22(1), pp.1-29.

Chang, C., Zhang, C., Chen, L. and Liu, Y., 2018, October. An ensemble model using face and body tracking for engagement detection. In Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (pp. 616-622).