Automation Is Coming! Exploring Future(s)-Oriented Methods in Education is out.

Thank you, Ylva Lindberg, Anders Buch for a great collaboration.Thank you, Vetenskapsrådet / Swedish Research Council, and WASP-HS The Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program – Humanities and Society, for their funding.

The article is open-access. Please go to the following link:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42438-022-00349-6

Speaking at the EARLI SIG 27 2022 conference

The theme of the SIG 27 conference is “Online measures at the crossroad of ethical and methodological challenges.” Check out the conference program! The conference is organized by the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI), 

Thank you to the organizing committee for the invitation to speak about our work on ethical and legal challenges with learning analytics in higher education. I look forward to engaging in the dialogue on data, algorithms, and education with this community. 

 

 

Joining Digital Futures from 2022!

Digital Futures is a cross-disciplinary research centre with the vision to solve societal challenges through digital transformation. It was established in 2020 by KTH, Stockholm University and RISE, based on significant long-term support of a Strategic Research Area by the Swedish Government. 

From January 2022, I’ll be part of the Executive Committee and have a special responsibility for the area of societal outreach and engagement. My aim is to bring together different actors from academia, the EdTech sector and the public sector to contribute to nurture conversations on digital transformations toward SDG 4: ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Exciting!

 

 

NEW Grant! Exploring Values in emerging sociotechnical imaginaries of education and learning

The Swedish Research Council, (The Educational Sciences Program) has granted our reserach plan for organizing the 3 following Nordic Workshops 2022-2023:

The first workshop on concepts aims to engage critically with datafication as a social and cultural phenomenon. It seeks to provide a set of concepts to deconstruct current public discourses on future education related to AI and big data, and their emerging sociotechnical imaginaries. In short, we are interested in: Which concepts and notions support nuanced discussions about values reflected in emerging educational sociotechnical imaginaries?

Leader: Prof. Anders Buch, VIA University College, Aarhus,  Denmark. 

Take a look at our website and the keynote’s speakers coming to our first workshop!

The second workshop on interventions focuses on collecting narratives portraying sociotechnical imaginaries by amateur and expert writers with different backgrounds and professional profiles. Such imaginaries will contribute to the creation of alternative visions of learning and education in 2032. The question guiding this workshop is: How do we resist and/or promote narratives about the future of education in the Nordic countries? (For the power of literary imaginaries, see, for example, Lindberg, 2016). 

Leader: Prof. Ylva Lindberg, Jönköping University

The third workshop explores novel methods, beyond survey and case studies methodologies, by building on the concepts explored in the first workshop and the sociotechnical imaginaries fabricated in the Jönköping’s Literary Festival 2022. This workshop focuses on: Which non-paradigmatic methods help identify, reflect and challenge values and ethical concerns in emerging sociotechnical imaginaries?

Leader: Prof. Teresa Cerratto Pargman, Stockholm University

 

Designing for Responsible Learning Analytics: A User-Centered Approach Workshop at EC-TEL 21

Together with colleagues from Australia, Norway, the UK, and Sweden, we are organizing a workshop at EC-TEL on September 20 – a morning session.

The workshop is about ”Designing for Responsible Learning Analytics: A User-Centered Approach” and builds on the successful workshop we organized at LAK 21.

This time we invite participants to play with futuring methods (e.g., design fiction, social design fiction, or other) to create design fiction scenarios envisioning responsible learning analytics in 2031. We will discuss the design fiction scenarios created in groups regarding i-the learning/educational assumptions embedded in the fictive scenarios and ii- the socio-technical, political-economic, and ethical aspects (including environmental issues) that configure and shape such design fiction scenarios.

Questions about the workshop contact me! – tessy@dsv.su.se

Digital Human Sciences @Stockholm University

Thank you to Sonya Petersson for leading us in this journey. The book  published by Stockholm University press is now out and it is open access.

Our research project funded by WASP-HS has contributed two chapters: 

Down load the book here!

Read about the fantastic work that my colleagues are conducting at the DHV-hub
 
Interested in joining the book release?

Register here! The seminar is on the 3rd September 2021

Bokomslag: "Digital Human Sciences: New Objects – New Approaches"

CO-DESIGNING RESOURCES FOR ETHICS EDUCATION IN HCI @CHI21

What a great workshop! OK, it was super late, the workshop started at 23.00 CET but what a committed and engaged group of people. Excellent organization, compelling discussions, and great activity on Miró. My colleague Sharon Lindberg and I presented our position paper on Teaching Tech Ethics in Practice which we would like to further discuss so we can develop our ideas on how to teach ethics for students in computer science and human-computer interaction. 

A list of all the accepted position papers is available here:

Many thanks to:

  • Ajit G. Pillai (The University of Sydney)

  • A. Baki Kocaballi (University of Technology Sydney)

  • Tuck Wah Leong (University of Technology Sydney)

  • Rafael A. Calvo (Imperial College London)

  • Nassim Parvin (Georgia Institute of Technology)

  • Katie Shilton (University of Maryland College Park)

  • Jenny Waycott (University of Melbourne)

  • Casey Fiesler (University of Colorado Boulder)

  • John C. Havens (The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems)

  • Naseem Ahmadpour (The University of Sydney)

 
 

Mapping the Ethics of Learning Analytics in Higher Education

Ethics is a prominent topic nowadays. With the increasing deployment of AI in various sectors of society, conversations about ethics are everywhere. From ethics washing to ethics bashing, a cacophony characterizes a discourse on ethics that reflects various research agendas, political forces, and economic interests.  

In this context, Cormac McGrath and I looked at the use of AI in higher education which promises to transform the university into educational institutions driven by evidence-based practices.  What are the risks with such a transformation? How will relations between student-educational institutions be affected? Who will be the most benefited from AI-driven education? Who will be the most affected? 

With these questions in mind, we engaged with a literature review of the ethics of learning analytics in higher education. We are now happy to share the results of this effort in the following open access article published by the Journal of Learning Analytics/Society for Learning Analytics Research.

Here an excerpt from the article:

“Studies that further develop the sociocritical perspectives of Learning Analytics in Higher Education (HE), focusing on the students (Slade & Prinsloo, 2013; Prinsloo & Slade, 2017a) and that engage with the structural power imbalance between educational stakeholders are promising (Chen & Zhu, 2019). In this line of thinking, perspectives that view ethics as matters of care (Prinsloo & Slade, 2017a; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011) and data as a form of power (D’Ignazio & Klein, 2020) will certainly provide insights to reflect on decisions that, while seemingly just and fair, may not necessarily care about the people involved in HE (Johnson, 2018)”. 

 

 

Join@LAK 2021 and participate in the Responsible Learning Analytics Workshop!

Read the call: https://sites.google.com/dsv.su.se/responsible-la/home

We welcome participants to submit position papers discussing ethical dilemmas they have encountered in their practice. These position papers should (a) discuss the context of the case, (b) the ethical concerns, targeting the various stakeholders involved and the principles in tension, and (c) technical, policy, and other approaches that have informed addressing the dilemma, and the effectiveness of these. 

We also welcome participants interested in attending and participating in the discussions (without submitting position papers).

Submissions

  • Submit a 4-6 pages position paper using the  LAK companion proceedings

  • The accepted position papers will be shared in advance with the workshop participants

  • Submissions will be collated on the workshop website. Publication of the workshop contributions is intended in a joint “LAK Companion Proceedings” . 

  • Participants will post-workshop be invited to contribute to a special issue or similar on “Responsible LA”. 

Important Dates

  • Submission opens 1 Dec 2020

  • Submission deadline 9 Feb 2021

  • Notification of acceptance 23 Feb 2021


Submit your position paper or interest in participating via Easy Chair

Workshop goals

  • Introducing “Responsible LA” via concepts and sensitivities coming from the fields of Science & Technology Studies (Puig de La Bellacasa, 2011) and Human-computer interaction (Buckingham Shum et al., 2019; D’Ignazio & Klein, 2019). By Responsible LA, we refer to the need to create LA systems that are just and ethical but also that consider  equity, democratic and solidarity in education. 

  • Promoting discussions on the ethics of data-driven practices from the ground aimed to inform practitioners on the ethical challenges that emerge in practice.

  • Creating a wiki or other type of artifact contributing to a repository of ethical practice, as suggested by Kiitto and Knight (2019).

  • Helping participants to reflect on ethical challenges that speak of a disconnect between research and practice and find research collaboration opportunities.

The workshop outcomes will advance the LA field by informing the community on ethical challenges encountered in practice (during the development, design, and/or use of LA systems). 

One concrete outcome of the workshop will be starting an artifact (e.g., wiki) to document edge ethical cases in general terms, not linked to particular individuals or institutions that will be shared in the community for reflective discussions and further study.

New Project! funded by WASP-HS Human Learning

 

Ethical and Legal Challenges in Relationship to AI-driven Practices in Higher Education

Recent developments have suggested ways of using AI to understand better and optimize student learning, ensure improvements in educational quality, and boost retention rates.

While these unprecedented technical and research developments promise to unlock the black box of student learning and to inform educational institutions about the complexities of educational processes, the use of student data and analytics techniques raises a series of issues that require ethical and legal considerations. However, there is currently little understanding of ethics in relation to deploying AI in the education sector. This is partly due to the scant attention that ethical concerns have received compared to the increased efficiency and cost-effectiveness of such systems.

This project addresses fundamental ethical and legal challenges that AI technologies bring to learning and teaching in higher education. It will contribute knowledge about how to conceptually and empirically approach these challenges, but most importantly, how to deal with ethical issues in practice.

Grounded in post-phenomenological investigations of human-technology relations, this project will contribute to a relational, dynamic, and situated understanding of ethics in everyday education. Bringing together direct and indirect educational stakeholders, the project aims to raise awareness towards responsible use of AI by setting up the Swedish Ethical Observatory for AI in higher education.

Principal investigator: Teresa Cerratto Pargman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Human-Computer Interaction, Dept. of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University
Co-Principal investigator: Cecilia Magnusson-Sjöberg, Ph.D.
Professor of Law and Information Technology, Dept. of Law, Stockholm University

Project members:
Cormac McGrath, Associate Professor of Education, Stockholm University
Liane Colonna, Postdoctoral Fellow, Dept. of Law, Stockholm University
Jaakko Hollmén, Associate Professor of Computer Sciences, Dept. of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University

Scientific Advisory Board