I’ve spent some time this morning updating a few of the static pages on my website, including
The Globe and Mail published an op-ed I wrote. As a condition of being featured in the publication, the paper has first publication rights for the first 48 hours. Since it’s been more than 48 hours, and for posterity, I’m making a copy available below.
George Veletsianos is a professor of education and Canada Research Chair in Innovative Learning and Technology at Royal Roads University.
Imagine a world where surveillance technologies monitor and scrutinize your behaviour. Imagine a report that you write at work being compared with myriads of others and flagged for additional inspection when an algorithm deems it to be “very similar” to others.
Students don’t have to imagine this world. They are already living in it, in the form of plagiarism detection software, remote proctoring technologies, and now, tools aimed at detecting whether the students used ChatGPT – including new software that promises to catch students who use ChatGPT to cheat.
While taking online exams, students’ webcams scan their surroundings; their microphones monitor sounds and background noise, and their body and eye movements are tracked. Unexpected movements may indicate something as innocuous as stretching a tight neck or as problematic as catching a glimpse of Post-it notes on the wall, while unexpected sounds may indicate a child playing in the background or a roommate whispering answers. The essay assignments students submit are compared to a vast amount of writing by others. And a battery of scores might indicate plagiarizing from Wikipedia, passing off text created by ChatGPT as one’s own, or simply using common expressions. Any of this will get students flagged as potential cheaters.
That there are technologies to identify text written by artificial intelligence shouldn’t come as a surprise. What is surprising is that educators, administrators, students, and parents put up with surveillance technologies like these.
These technologies are harmful to education for two main reasons. First, they formalize mistrust. As a professor and researcher who has been studying the use of emerging technologies in education for nearly two decades, I am well aware that educational technology produces unintended consequences. In this case, these technologies take on a policing role and cultivate a culture of suspicion. The ever-present microscope of surveillance technology casts a suspicious eye on all learners, subjecting them all to an unwarranted level of scrutiny.
Second, these technologies introduce a host of other problems. Researchers note that these tools often flag innocent students and exacerbate student anxiety. This is something I’ve personally experienced as well when I took my Canadian citizenship exam online. Even though I knew the material and was confident in my abilities, my webcam’s bright green light was a constant reminder that I was being watched and that I should be wary of my every move.
To be certain, such tools may deter some students from intentionally plagiarizing. They may also improve efficiency, since they algorithmically check student work on behalf of educators.
But these reasons don’t justify surveillance.
A different world is possible when schools and universities dare to imagine richer and more hospitable learning environments that aren’t grounded in suspicion and policing. Schools and universities can begin to achieve this by developing more trusting relationships with their students and emphasizing the importance of honesty, original work, and creativity. They need to think of education in terms of relationships, and not in terms of control, monitoring, and policing. Students should be viewed as colleagues and partners.
Educators also need to come to terms with the fact that our assessments generally suffer from a poverty of imagination. Essays, tests, and quizzes have an important role to play in the learning process, but there are other ways to check for student achievement. We can design assessments that ask students to collect original data and draw inferences, or write and publish op-eds like this one; we can invite them to develop business and marketing plans for real-world businesses in their cities; we can ask them to reflect on their own unique experiences; we can require them to provide constructive peer-review and feedback to fellow students, or have them engage in live debates. In this light, ChatGPT is not a threat, but an opportunity for the education system to renew itself, to imagine a better world for its students.
Educators and administrators should stop using surveillance technologies like ChatGPT detectors, and parents and students should demand that schools and universities abolish them – not because cheating should be tolerated, but because rejecting the culture of suspicion that surveillance technologies foster and capitalize upon is a necessary step toward an education system that cares for its learners.
I participated in four online events in November. Do I miss being with colleagues in person? Yes. But, I don’t think I’d be able to be with so many colleagues in person in different parts of the world in the span of a month. Would I have tried? Perhaps. And I would have likely exhausted myself over and over.
The first was an invited talk for Université Laval.
Better than normal: Finding a future beyond “a return to normal” on campus | Cette conférence s’inscrit dans une série d’activités visant à poser un regard réflexif sur l’évolution de l’enseignement supérieur, et ce, sous de multiples perspectives et points de vue.
Rather than a return to an imagined “normal” that existed in pre-pandemic times, this talk invites us to explore the future of our teaching and learning environments. What do they look like? What should they look like? Who do they serve, and do they serve everyone equitably? Grounded in ongoing research projects examining student experiences with online and remote learning, and studies examining what the future of education may look like, this talk invites us to recognize that various pre-pandemic teaching, learning, and institutional practices were problematic. “Normal” was (and is) problematic. What are some better futures for students, faculty, and institutions of higher learning?
Plutôt que d’imaginer un « normal » qui existait à l’époque prépandémique, ce webinaire vous invite à explorer l’avenir de nos environnements d’enseignement et d’apprentissage. À quoi ressemblent-ils ? À quoi devraient-ils aspirer? Qui servent-ils et servent-ils nos populations équitablement ? Fondée sur des projets de recherche en cours qui examine l’expérience des étudiantes et des étudiants avec l’apprentissage en ligne, à distance et des études qui s’intéresse à quoi pourrait ressembler l’avenir de l’éducation, cette séance vous invite à reconnaître les problématiques de nos diverses pratiques d’enseignement et d’apprentissage ainsi que nos politiques institutionnelles prépandémiques. Notre “normal” était (et est toujours) problématique. Quelles décisions concernant l’avenir présentent potentiellement de meilleurs résultats pour les personnes étudiantes, le corps professoral, les membres du personnel enseignant et les établissements d’enseignement supérieur ?
The second was a panel discussion hosted by the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, as part of the Asia-Pacific Online Distance Education (APODE) week.
Lessons from Learners: Students’ Insights on Effective Learning Online
Description: This webinar features a lively panel discussion with three leading scholars working in online distance education with a strong learner focus to their work. Professor George Veletsianos holds the Canada Research Chair in Innovative Learning and Technology and the Commonwealth of Learning Chair in Flexible Learning. He is well-known internationally for his research in online distance education and is author of the book Learning Online: The Student Experience (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020). Dr Elaine Beirne works in the National Institute for Digital Learning at Dublin City University, Ireland and has a strong interest in the role of emotions in online learning. She played a key role in the development of A Digital Edge: Essentials for the Online Learner, a free course that has attracted over 10,000 people worldwide. Dr Melissa Bond, previously a Researcher Officer at University College London (UCL) and who has recently returned to Australia, is known for her meta-analysis research on student engagement in educational technology contexts. Melissa is co-author of several seminal major systematic literatures reviews in this area. The panel will discuss lessons that we have learnt from learners and other valuable insights into the online learning experience from a student perspective.
The third was a panel webinar discussion on Instructional Design In & After COVID-19 hosted by Royal Roads University and our MA in Learning and Technology program.
Description: The field of instructional design and instructional designers’ role and value has been amplified by the pandemic as organizations work to continue to provide education and training offerings to their students, staff, and employees. Join us for a conversation with leaders in this space as they share their perspectives on instructional design and the field of educational technology and how it has responded to the challenges and opportunities resulting from the global pandemic.
The fourth was a fireside chat on Gender Equality and Social Inclusion in Open and Distance Learning. This was an internal event for the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), with Dr. Suzan Koseoglu (Goldsmiths, University of London, U.K) and Dr. Sindile Ngubane (Institute for Open and Distance Learning, University of South Africa) aimed at introducing COL staff to current
thinking on equality and social inclusion in Open and Distance Learning, from concepts such as feminist pedagogy, to perspectives on current challenges of social inclusion in learning contexts during COVID-19.
Informed by survey studies using nationally representative samples, in a recent project we examined the nature and magnitude of remote approaches to teaching and learning at three points in time:
Some of the big picture findings include the following
The report is CC-BY licensed and is available at: Johnson, N., Seaman, J. and Veletsianos, G. (2021) Teaching during a pandemic: Spring Transition, Fall Continuation, Winter Evaluation Bay View Analytics: Oakland CA, March 22, pp. 53.
I am excited to share a new paper with you. I’m excited because it draws together themes from work Shandell Houlden and I have been doing over the last year and which now seems increasingly important. I’m also excited because the paper is part of a special issue of Postdigital Science and Education, which the Editor reports including “more than 50 articles, authored by nearly 200 people from more than 30 countries and all continents.” I’ve been reading many of these – they are currently posted here as Online First but should appear in an issue soon.
I thought I’d share a couple of snippets here, but I’d love to hear your feedback on this work. The paper is available as Open Access here: Radical Flexibility and Relationality as Responses to Education in Times of Crisis.
Our abstract summarizes the main ideas well:
As educational institutions negotiate numerous challenges resulting from the current pandemic, many are beginning to wonder what the future of education may look like. We contribute to this conversation by arguing for flexible education and considering how it can support better—more equitable, just, accessible, empowering, imaginative—educational futures. At a time of historical disorder and uncertainty, we argue that what we need is a sort of radical flexibility as a way to create life-sustaining education, not just for some, but for all, and not just for now, but far into the future. We argue that such an approach is relational, and centers justice and trust. Furthermore, we note that radical flexibility is systemic and hopeful, and requires wide-ranging changes in practices in addition to the application of new technologies.
We end the paper with this:
Solnit (2020) urges us to remember that ‘[o]rdinary life before the pandemic was already a catastrophe of desperation and exclusion for too many human beings, an environmental and climate catastrophe, an obscenity of inequality’, and this was in many ways as true in the halls of education as anywhere else. But she further reminds us that hope ‘offers us clarity that, amid the uncertainty ahead, there will be conflicts worth joining and the possibility of winning some of them’. If, out of this struggle, we ground our hope in attention to the relational nature of the many worlds in which we all live together, then perhaps we can achieve the radical flexibility truly liberatory education deserves.
Veletsianos, G., & Houlden, S. (2020). Radical Flexibility and Relationality as Responses to Education in Times of Crisis. Postdigital Science and Education, 2(3), 849-862. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00196-3
Below is the the pre-published version of a short reflection I wrote for Distance Education, published here for posterity. The paper is Veletsianos, G. (2020). How should we respond to the life-altering crises that education is facing? Distance Education, 41(4), 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2020.1825066
Abstract
Prior literature suggests that to address the problems facing education, researchers and practitioners of online and flexible learning should avoid placing too much emphasis on the potential of technology and consult the history and literature of the field. In this reflective article, I argue that in addition to these activities, we should expand our efforts to broaden the reach and impact of our field and engage in speculative work that asks: What should the future of digital, online, and flexible education look like?
Introduction
“In this increasingly unstable world, crises potentially impact our education systems. This will be true whether the crisis is caused by the circulation of a new pathogen, or something else entirely: hurricanes, flooding or wildfire, now more common due to climate change. We have before us a stark reminder that we should approach the promises of technological solutions with caution. Flexible and resilient educational systems require more than tools. They demand collaboration, care, preparation, expertise, resources and learning lessons from the past. (Houlden & Veletsianos, 2020)”
We wrote the sentences above in March 2020, 2 weeks before educational institutions in North America transitioned to remote education in an attempt to influence practitioners’ and researchers’ responses to the life-altering crises that education is facing. We were hoping to convince readers that even though technology may enable institutions of education to engage in some semblance of educational continuity, technology will not fix the crises facing our educational systems. Such reasoning flows from a long line of scholarship that details the problems of technological determinism and solutionism in our field (e.g., Bayne, 2015; Oliver, 2011; Tennyson 1994), urges researchers and practitioners to avoid placing too much emphasis on the potential of technology (e.g., Selwyn, 2011), and encourages us to heed the lessons embedded in the history of the field (e.g., Watters, 2014; Weller, 2020). Similar arguments are included in this issue of Distance Education as well. Baggaley, for instance, argues that “the surest way to make online learning effective is to consult the decades of practical experience in the distance education literature.” But what may be some additional responses to such life-altering crises as COVID-19 and climate change?
One possible response may include efforts to broaden the reach and impact of the distance and flexible education literature, as well as literature present in related fields, such as instructional design and technology, learning analytics, and the learning sciences. Such efforts may address limitations that restrict the literature’s helpfulness, applicability, and accessibility. For instance, the literature suffers from a problem of access. Much of our literature, like the literature of other fields, is written for researchers rather than practitioners, and much of it is locked behind paywalls (like this reflection). One set of responses, therefore, may be to refine and rethink the ways our own scholarship is accessed. For instance, at an individual level, we might strive to make our own articles available in open ways, expand our public outreach, engage in more practice-oriented scholarship, write for broader audiences, and address inequities in knowledge production, dissemination, and consumption (cf Czerniewicz, 2013; Scharber et al., 2019). At a systemic level, we may question practices like top-tier publishing, rankings, impact factors, and the various practices that sustain and encourage these, such as institutional policies on promotion and advancement and grant-funding decisions.
A second possible response may involve reflecting on our own scholarship and the scholarship we support, reward, and encourage. Reeves and Lin (2020) argue that to make a real difference in the lives of learners we should be studying and solving problems, rather than studying tools and technologies. In effect, these authors urge us to ask whether our particular work, the work of our students, and the work of our colleagues contributes to better educational futures. My intent here is not to draw demarcation lines between appropriate and inappropriate scholarship. Instead, if higher education is facing the very real possibility that the post-pandemic era may be radically different than our earlier “normal” (Cox et al., 2020), this may be a good time to ask: What should the future of digital, online, and flexible education look like?
This is not a call for more hopeful writing of the possibilities of online education or educational technology. Instead, it is a call for more critical and speculative writing and practice. Such critical efforts are gaining broader visibility and interest and can be found in recent work in both this journal (e.g., Valcarlos et al., 2020) and elsewhere (e.g., Lambert, 2018). To imagine possible educational futures, some researchers are turning to speculative methods as “research approaches that explore and create possible futures under conditions of complexity and uncertainty” (Ross, 2018, p. 197). Envisioning such futures does not solely mean employing fiction in our writing. Rather, speculative methods “inform us about what matters now in the field, what issues and problems we have inherited, and what debates define what can or cannot be currently thought about or imagined” (Ross, 2017, p. 220). Considering that the current state of education, at all levels, is situated within a context of ever-evolving social, cultural, political, and technological shifts, we face an urgent need to engage with uncertainty on multiple levels.
The use of speculative methods, therefore, may enable us to offer guidance when making current decisions related to the future of higher education, and to explore what may or may not be possible in different contexts. In a special issue of Learning, Media and Technology (Selwyn et al., 2019) for example, colleagues examined near-future educational scenarios and critically contemplated the use of technology in education. To use an example of present activities to speculate about desirable and undesirable educational futures, consider the now-broader use of proctoring tools, which were largely adopted to maintain the continuity of such familiar practices as invigilated exams. Now consider a future in which proctoring tools are as pervasive as the use of learning management systems or even email. Are proctoring tools consistent with desirable future educational systems? Asking this question forces us to deal with the ethics of our work. What if, in the process of asking this question, we realize that adopting proctoring software may not only become a barrier to alternative assessments but may also foster a culture of surveillance and mistrust (e.g., Fawns & Ross, 2020; Swauger, 2020)?
Conclusion
Clearly, technology alone will be unable to provide a solution to such a complicated problem as responding to the complex challenges that educational systems worldwide are facing. The two possible responses I offer—broadening the reach and impact of our scholarship and engaging in more imaginative, speculative, and critical work—are not panaceas either. Unlike technological solutionism though, these actions respond to calls by Facer and Sanford (2010), Ross (2017), Staley (2019), and Alexander (2020) to develop scenarios for the future of higher education as a way to address current challenges and work toward desirable outcomes. I imagine such futures to be inclusive, equitable, and just; to serve all of our learners; to prioritize collaboration over competition; to be flexible to learners’ needs; to exhibit care and trust for our students; and to be free of systems of oppression and injustice that operate within our own institutions.
References
Alexander, B. (2020). Academia next: The futures of higher education . Johns Hopkins University Press.
Bayne, S. (2015). What’s the matter with ‘technology-enhanced learning’? Learning, Media and Technology , 40(1), 5–20.
Cox, R. , Slick, J. , & Dixon, T. (2020). Surviving, thriving, or radical revisioning: Scenarios and considerations for pandemic recovery and response planning . Royal Roads University.
Czerniewicz, L. (2013, April 29). Inequitable power dynamics of global knowledge production and exchange must be confronted head on. Impact of Social Science. https://press.rebus.community/openatthemargins/chapter/repost-inequitable-power-knowledge/
Facer, K. , & Sandford, R. (2010). The next 25 years? Future scenarios and future directions for education and technology. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning , 26(1), 74–93.
Fawns, T. , & Ross, J. (2020, June 3). Spotlight on alternative assessment methods: Alternatives to exams. Teaching Matters . https://www.teaching-matters-blog.ed.ac.uk/spotlight-on-alternative-assessment-methods-alternatives-to-exams/
Houlden, S. , & Veletsianos, G. (2020, March 13). COVID-19 pushes universities to switch to online classes—but are they ready? The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/covid-19-pushes-universities-to-switch-to-online-classes-but-are-they-ready-132728
Lambert, S. R. (2018). Changing our (dis)course: A distinctive social justice aligned definition of open education. Journal of Learning for Development , 5(3), 225–244. https://jl4d.org/index.php/ejl4d/article/view/290/334
Oliver, M. (2011). Technological determinism in educational technology research: some alternative ways of thinking about the relationship between learning and technology. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning , 27(5), 373–384.
Reeves, T. C. , & Lin, L. (2020). The research we have is not the research we need. Educational Technology Research and Development , 68(4), 1991–2001.
Ross, J. (2017). Speculative method in digital education research. Learning, Media and Technology , 42(2), 214–229.
Ross, J. , (2018). Speculative method as an approach to researching emerging educational issues and technologies. In L. Hamilton & J. Ravenscroft (Eds,), Building research design in education (pp. 197–212). Bloomsbury.
Scharber, C. , Pazurek, A. , & Ouyang, F. (2019). Illuminating the (in)visibility of female scholars: A gendered analysis of publishing rates within educational technology journals from 2004 to 2015. Gender and Education , 31(1), 33–61.
Selwyn, N. (2011). In praise of pessimism—the need for negativity in educational technology. British Journal of Educational Technology , 42(5), 713–718.
Selwyn, N. , Hillman, T. , Eynon, R. , Ferreira, G. , Knox, J. , Macgilchrist, F. , & Sancho-Gil, J. M. (Eds.). (2019). Education and technology into the 2020s: Speculative futures [Special issue]. Learning, Media and Technology , 45(1).
Staley, D. J. (2019). Alternative universities: Speculative design for innovation in higher education . Johns Hopkins University Press.
Swauger, S. (2020). Our bodies encoded: Algorithmic test proctoring in higher education. In J. Stommel, C. Friend, & S. M. Morris (Eds.), Critical digital pedagogy: A collection. Pressbooks. https://cdpcollection.pressbooks.com/chapter/our-bodies-encoded-algorithmic-test-proctoring-in-higher-education/
Tennyson, R. D. (1994). The big wrench vs. integrated approaches: The great media debate. Educational Technology Research and Development , 42(3), 15–28.
Valcarlos, M. M. , Wolgemuth, J. R. , Haraf, S. , & Fisk, N. (2020). Anti-oppressive pedagogies in online learning: A critical review. Distance Education , 41(3), 345–360.
Watters, A. (2014). The monsters of education technology. Tech Gypsies Publishing. http://monsters.hackeducation.com
Weller, M. (2020). 25 years of ed tech . Athabasca University Press.
What does a better – more equitable, more hospitable, more flexible, more creative, less oppressive, more impactful – post-pandemic education system look like? What does teaching and learning look like in such an environment? What does scholarship look like? Speculative futures work in education aims to imagine answers to such questions, but, what are some steps individuals and institutions are taking now toward imagined futures?
Open Science has been described as a key to responding to COVD-19. Whether in vaccine search or medical equipment design, open science is critical. It also has a critical role in education – in teaching, learning, and scholarship.
I encourage you to explore the following initiative:
“The Association for Learning Technology (ALT) is proud to support the launch of the Open Covid Pledge for Education, covering all forms of research, data and know-how that can support the COVID-19 response in education around the world. The creation of the Open Covid Pledge has been co-ordinated by Helen Beetham, Researcher and Consultant, and ALT Member.”
You could start small (e.g., by depositing a pre-print of a paper in a repository or publishing your next paper in an open access journal). For example, I learned about OSF in June. OSF is an open source project management tool supporting researchers throughout their entire project lifecycle. I’ve seen some use it as a place to host pre-prints, data, and insrtruments. To explore its use, I deposited the survey instrument and outputs from the Canadian Pulse survey to a project there: https://osf.io/dt3h7/
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