#AoIR2024 Industry

Session Chair: Fiona Louise Scott
 
Presentation 1
 
Educated users: Refining manners through social media corporate curriculums
Niall Docherty⁽¹⁾, Matías Valderrama Barragán⁽²⁾
1: University of Sheffield, United Kingdom; 2: University of Warwick, United Kingdom
 
This paper will scrutinise modes through which social media companies create, disseminate and deliver free digital literacy curriculums to educators, parents, caregivers and users. Following the thought of Norbert Elias, we consider these practices as part of broader attempts to _refine the manners_ of human groups according to (contingent) values and beliefs, and which serve the capitalist interests of powerful global institutions seeking to inculcate them in doing so. Using Meta’s _GetDigital_ digital literacy program and Instagram’s _User Guides and Programs_ as empirical case studies, we ask: What is the specific content of social media curriculums of safe, healthy and educated use? And how do these educational resources inculcate certain habits and manners, for whom, and with what implications? Our findings indicate that the type of digital literacy constructed through these resources is a distinctly responsibilized prospect, operating through self-control, and verified in relation to neoliberal behaviourist ideologies. We argue that by loading the pressure on individuals to protect themselves against the ‘toxicity’ of platforms, social media companies seek to absolve themselves from the responsibility to address the potentially harmful aspects of their services themselves. We argue that this constitutes a performance of corporate responsibility, responding to the criticisms that have been levelled at platforms in recent years, while diverting attention away from the exploitative capitalist logics motivating their operations. In highlighting the cultural, normative and political limits of social media corporate curriculums, our paper ultimately highlights the need to develop alternative critical, creative and independent digital literacies in response.
 
 
Presentation 2
 
Amateur Podcasts and Self-Narrativization: Personal Storytelling and Identity in Digital Pedagogy
Meghan Grosse, Sara Clarke-De Reza
Washington College, United States of America
 
In this paper, we explore how student-generated podcasts that adopt the personal storytelling form that characterizes the genre can serve as an opportunity for self-narrativization. Through an illustrative case study analysis of 5 podcasts, we show how podcasting can serve as an effective measure of student content knowledge acquisition, and, more importantly, a form through which historically disenfranchised students can make sense of their own identities in relationship to educational psychology course concepts. Drawing on scholarship from curriculum theory, cultural studies, and new media studies, we argue that meaningfully integrating podcasting assignments in undergraduate education classes can create the conditions for the reflective, autoethnographic work that serves as a cornerstone of effective teaching practice.
 
 
Presentation 3
 
ALL IVYS, NO SAFETIES: THE DRAMA OF COLLEGE DECISION REACTION VIDOES ON YOUTUBE
Bethany Monea
University of the District of Columbia, United States of America
 
Each year, hundreds of high school seniors record their reactions to being accepted to or rejected from colleges and upload their "College Decision Reaction" videos to YouTube, where they garner millions of views and hundreds of comments, usually from other students with college aspirations. This paper analyzes a curated dataset of these videos (N=100) and their comments to investigate: 1) What technical features, compositional choices, and discourse patterns recur within the landscape of college decision reaction videos, and how do they constitute and sustain an online community? and 2) How is specialized knowledge about the college application and decision processes circulated within this online community? What beliefs and behaviors regarding college choice are perpetuated there? Preliminary analysis of a subset of these videos has revealed patterns of discourse and design that constitute a robust online community where otherwise uncommon knowledge about college choice is circulated and where potentially harmful beliefs and behaviors about the college application process are perpetuated. As college enrollment declines in the U.S., and as inequities in access to college counseling affect first-generation and minoritized students' postsecondary enrollment, it is important to better understand the implications of college decision reaction videos, not only for students but for the higher education industry as a whole, from admissions departments to private tutoring services that advertise heavily within this online space. This paper's analysis of the online community of college decision reaction videos is an important first step to better understanding the changing and increasingly online landscape of college choice.
 
 
Presentation 4
 
PROTOTYPING AN EDTECH ASSESSMENT TOOLKIT: TOWARDS TECHNICAL DEMOCRACY
Kevin Witzenberger⁽¹⁾, Teresa Swist⁽²⁾, Kalervo Gulson⁽²⁾
1: Queensland University of Technology, Australia; 2: University of Sydney, Australia
 
New forms of facial recognition, aggression detection systems, bus routing optimization software, generative AI detection, and online exam proctoring: the edtech industry is rapidly increasing its influence over schools and universities by introducing new AI-powered products and services. As the ubiquity and complexity of AI systems intensifies, deliberation among practitioners about immediate and long-term risks is becoming ever more challenging.
To help education practitioners and administrators critically explore these systems and deliberate about their consequences, this paper presents the prototype of an edtech assessment toolkit. The toolkit is embedded in a body of work aiming to make technical democracy a key feature in the design, implementation, and use of public sector AI systems. This prototype brings awareness to the potential of participatory design to explore the accountability, transparency, and governance of AI-based systems through collective forms of experimentation.
The paper itself consists of four parts. First, it puts forward a framework for technical democracy to govern AI systems through shared uncertainty. Secondly, it presents how the toolkit has been co-created to encourage collective learning and experimentation. Thirdly, it highlights three tools that have emerged from a series of workshops, collaborations, and dialogues: the counter-archive, the issues register, and the possibilities matrix. The paper finishes by discussing how this methodology produces an exploratory tool for enacting technical democracy design experiments to interrupt the design and implementation of AI into the public sector by making spaces that value dissensus over consensus in an age of automated decision-making.