[This post was co-authored with Autumm Caines. Autumm Caines is a liminal space. Part technologist, part artist, part manager, part synthesizer she is passionate about the use of technology in higher education and the many differing facets of how technology impacts society and culture. She likes spending time at the place where differing disciplines intersect. Autumm is an Instructional Designer at St. Norbert College and is a Co-Director in the Virtually Connecting project.]
Justin Reich and Mizuko (Mimi) Ito have recently published a report entitled From Good Intentions to Real Outcomes: Equity by Design in Learning Technologies. The report is available for download without monetary charge and without collection of your personal data. Additionally, it is free of overt advertising from technology vendors which is a welcome relief from some of the other reports we have reviewed recently. If you care about equity in edtech, this report is a must-read, especially if you are interested in evidence-based research and practical solutions. If you don’t care about equity in edtech . . . then that’s really sad, because it’s really difficult to work in edtech and not notice equity issues. This report is brief at 19 pages, and hopefully this will help more people read the entire text. We were mostly happy with the report but there are some big things missing and parts where we disagree with language used.
The report makes some really important and bold statements; supporting them with literature and real-world examples. The report’s methodology is to give details on shared research, learning, insights and conclusions from two workshops conducted in February and May of 2017. The report describes the workshops as “in-depth working sessions to share challenges and solutions for how learning technologies can provide the greatest benefits for our most vulnerable learners.The aim was to develop guiding principles and a shared agenda for how educational platforms and funders can best serve diverse and disadvantaged learners.” The end of the report lists the participants of the workshop who are largely US based corporations, universities, venture capitalists, think tanks, and foundations. Though there does appear to be representation from one community college and one foundation based in Columbia. We suspect that it is because of the makeup of the participation in the workshops, that the report feels very US-centric and in a few places struggles with language that places technology in a place of reverence.
For instance, the executive summary highlights three issues in equity: how providing less privileged schools with technology is not enough in that privileged schools (for a variety of reasons) use technologies differently and towards higher learning than do less privileged schools; that open doesn’t automatically equate to equitable; and how “social and cultural forces derail good intentions”.
It is this last point where we start to see this problem with language. While the point is well-taken that we need better synergies between technology and human realities the wording is problematic. Saying that it is the “social and cultural forces” that “derail” the “good intentions” of technologists implies that it is the social and cultural forces that are to blame for these technologists’ failings despite their good intentions. Instead, the report could have suggested that many well-intentioned technology providers and funders make the mistake of not accounting for social and cultural forces as they design and implement technology solutions. Having said this, we will note that the report seems to be trying. It is mostly is in the spirit of meaningful social and cultural connections with technology providers. However, there are several of these areas where it seems the point of view of the report does not take on the best interest of those most affected by equity issues.
Another problem in the report appears between pages 6-7 where the report seems to be implying that conservative attitudes in schools are to blame for misusing the well-intentioned technology solutions offered to them. It was surprising to find this in the report, and we hope the authors can clarify this point, which sounds like a deficit theory approach to looking at why innovation fails at schools. The other way of framing this would be to recognize that tech innovators sometimes design their products away from understanding the actual contexts and barriers they might face in schools, and sometimes create products the teachers on the ground never thought they needed, nor decided they wanted once they appeared. Those aren’t issues to blame schools for, although we totally understand how difficult it is for innovation to spread at educational institutions. Thankfully, other parts of the report emphasize the importance of involving various stakeholders in designing educational technology innovations and Maha mentioned this critique on Twitter and this thread is Justin Reich’s response (where he does suggest tech companies don’t account for school cultures while designing their solutions).
Additionally, the report is disappointing in its approach to data privacy as a matter of equity in learning technologies in that it is largely not mentioned in the report at all. As a matter of fact, in a section on page 17 calling for the research of targeted subgroups, the report goes as far as to call US federal protections of minors on the internet a “barrier” without detailing these laws in any way. While it is true that there is great potential in edtech research, real issues exist, on a global scale, about who owns our data, what access we get to our own data, and how our data can be used to influence us. While there are, at times, greater protections in place for student data these protections have often not kept up with the possibilities afforded by platforms that increasingly surveil their users. To call for innovations in technology and research without an equal charge for new thinking in ethics and law is problematic to say the least.
Having said all this, we think the report is valuable because:
It provides references to actual research to support its conclusions, with brief descriptions of the studies and their findings. In some cases, the brief descriptions are too abstract for the reader to imagine the concrete ways inequity was found in that study; however, readers who are interested can choose to follow the studies on their own, and we appreciate that the brevity helped keep the report itself brief
It provides case studies of successful practices which address some of the issues raised. Some of these are more clearly described than others, but on the whole are really helpful and readers can follow the references. One case of particular interest was how MITx/EdX worked to reduce the global achievement gap in MOOCs (p. 14).
The report is not striving for universality. There are parts in the report that clarify how sometimes it is important to design for each particular context on a case by case basis. It was good to see this, with examples of how it could work.
The report compared similar technologies/interventions and how different implementations might result in outcomes that differed greatly in terms of increasing or reducing equity (e.g. MOOCs vs Open textbooks).
Where the report concludes with suggested principles for more equitable edtech, there is recognition of the barriers to implementing those principles (things like laws preventing data collection, and the need for data sharing agreements across stakeholders).
Looking at the list of participants in the workshops, it is noticeable that:
The majority of Educational participants are from the US, which, process-wise, seems to contradict the ethos of equity, but we assume there is still a lot of diversity within those institutions, and we recognize the logistical difficulty of holding a more international workshop; as co-directors of Virtually Connecting, may we suggest a virtual version of these workshops be conducted with a more international audience?
There were several participants from corporate entities. Kudos to the authors and participants that the report mostly does not seem to have had a corporate influence from that. Perhaps the main area this shows is in the repetition of how well-intentioned the technology providers are.
It is unclear how the participants in the workshops were selected. It would be useful to know. However, transparency on list of collaborators on the front page and list of participants on the last page was offered.
What did you think of the report? Tell us in the comments
“Rust never sleeps!” flickr photo by RiverRatt3 https://flickr.com/photos/44458147@N00/5619062686 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license