In one of my last reflecting posts I already depicted two topics which were really important to me during IDEL: Space and Technology. There were a lot of inspiring and excellent readings, I found many anchor points to come back to in my future studies. For my last blog post now I’d like to return to the course and pick a few more subjects I discovered and which impressed me particularly. It is openness, because it is an old concern of mine, transculturalism, as ‚diversity‘ is just a limited term, and a critical first approach to data analysis and data science.

Data and behaviour

Although or maybe also because I missed a big part of the data analysis weeks during the first days of the covid-19 breakout in Europe I was struck by one article in particular. It’s ‚Machine behaviourism: future visions of ‚learnification‘ and ‚datafication‘ across humans and digital technologies‘ by Knox, J., Williamson, B. and Bayne, S (2020).

In their article, the authors explain how the datafication of education and the focus on the learner as a behavioural being originates from the behaviourist idea. In other words, a concept that reduces people to their behaviour. In other words, a concept that reduces people to their behaviour. What is important for me is that behaviourism assumes that behaviour can be trained or changed more or less arbitrarily. I don’t want to doubt this, because the behaviourists around Skinner have shown this in numerous experiments. And behavioural psychology also understands behaviour as something that can be changed which in the case of a mental disorder it can actually help to find one’s way in everyday life. However, if you assume in a technology-supported course that measuring student behaviour can shed light on learning, then there is a misunderstanding about what learning actually is. Learning is a complex process that combines neural, i.e. physical, emotional, psychological, professional and social aspects, and therefore cannot be reduced to pure behaviour. Nevertheless, I find the topic exciting and would like to explore the question of how data science can integrate the wider aspects and context into data analysis. I am also interested in the political aspect in this context, namely how it might be possible for individuals to own their data and how they can voluntarily make it available to science. I think it is important that people understand what happens to their data and what they can do with it themselves.

Crossing interpersonal boundary: Transculturalism

Heterogeneity of the classes has always been something teachers used to complain about, how difficult it is to teach when the members of a class or a group are so different from one another. Heterogeneity is negative, it is a deficit, it makes things difficult. Doesn’t it?
Diversity however has been mentioned differently in my experience. It is a rather positive term. People differ in age, gender, race, culture, education, context. But still, it is difficult to deal with it. I experienced diversity as an enriching and inspiring element not only in some courses I was a participant in, but also in my own classes where I worked with teachers. What was revealing to me in IDEL was the article by Nelson and Parchoma about transculturalism (Nelson, D. and Parchoma,, G. (2018), Toward theorizing spatial-cultural ‚othering‘ in networked learning and teaching practices)  If diversity identifies the differences and presents them as acceptable, the term transculturalism implies a going beyond, a process of change, an approach to the other, an understanding of the other. The authors speak of ‚Third Space‘ as a place or meeting place where these tensions are collaboratively processed and overcome, where it becomes possible, where values and meaning are discussed and negotiated, where otherness can thus be overcome.
For me, this article is very inspiring, especially in the current crisis (or must I say in the current crises?), and I am glad that overcoming human differences in education is a topic in science and research.

Openness

Openness is a topic that has been with me for a long time and which ultimately brought me to the Internet and to my professional occupation with digital networks in education. So far I have always experienced openness primarily as something positive, as empowering and liberating. It frees me from the narrow limits of education, from predetermined paths and enables me to study in a completely self-directed and self-confident way. I also like the openness of the movement, the activist, the political dimension. Well, I learned that it is not that simple, but basically it is still true for me.

During the IDEL course now, I was able to broaden my horizon considerably on this topic (as on all others!) and understand that openness is also based on closure, like mentioned in the Manifesto, and that it is partly deceptive. When reading John S. Brown and  Richard P. Adler’s article in the educause magazine, I see the idealists, the social interactionists, I see some pillars of the ‚movement‘. When I read the scientific articles on that same topic, it is a different picture. Here we have to define what openness means in a scientific, social, economic, political way. We have to understand that openness does not automatically mean justice for all those who can’t afford the traditional higher education. When reading Bayne et al. (2015) on openness and the need for a critical approach, I have to admit that I did not understand it profoundly so far. Consequently, the topic will stay with me. I want to understand what positive effects openness in education can have and how, if the movement is not enough. What does it take, and how can we move away from the economization of education to make the world a more just place?

So now I close my reflection with a question. It is not the only question I have, but one of many. And that’s a good thing, because my studies will keep me busy, more questions will come up and direct my attention to more interesting and exciting issues in digital education.