My talk at Digifest 2019. Sharing findings of my research study about the constraints students face in their academic digital practice

1. Shaping education for a
hyperconnected world
Caroline Kuhn, PhD candidate and associate lecturer @Bath Spa University
@carolak
Member of the GO_GN Network

2. Eyes wide open!
Looking at the constraints
of youth digital practices

3. The context
➔ Deterministic views of young people + tech --> the danger for HEIs working under
such assumptions (Lanclos 2016)
➔ Questions are about ‘what works,’ performativity, and efficiency avoiding the
problematisation of the use of tech in educational context.
➔ The messy present is avoided
➔ Black boxing around the use of tech in education
➔ Potential of tech is mistaken with practice (Hamilton and Friesen 2013)
➔ Students as ‘disembodied learners’ undermines the importance of power relations
and the influence of the context in teaching and learning

4. Student’s conference at Bath Spa University
Students want to be informed about the need for
digital literacies and taught consequently

5. The intensive learning society
(JRC, 2008)
5
…an imaginary
snapshot of how
society might function
with open learning at
the core of what
everyone does all the
time, everywhere.
Image: CC-BY Flickr, Caroline Kuhn
Milles, Shapiro, and Hilding-Hamann, 2008. Learning Spaces in
2020.

6. But student’s voice
is still relatively
unexplored.
What are they
struggling with?
How does ‘open’
looks to them?
Images by Pawel Kuctzynski

7. 7

8. 8

9. 95% don’t maintain
a blog or website
N= 66 Digital profile survey, Jisc Digital Student
9
71% don’t use wiki or
blogs for studying
62% don’t use portfolio or
digital CV
Hegarty, 2015

10. 10

11. Looking at the daily entanglements of students’ use of digital
technology on the ground
11
Research questions:
1. How, why and to what extent do students engage with (open)
digital tools and (open) platforms in formal and informal settings
2. How students make sense of the environment in which they
engage/not engage?

12. 12
I used Critical Realism
and Realist Social
Theory to explore
students’ agency in
digital practices
Images by Pawel Kuctzynski

13. 13
32
undergraduates
in education
studies
Images by Pawel Kuctzynski

14. Visitor and Resident (White & Le Cornu, 2011)
14

15. “We are the forgotten generation”
15

16. 16
No
tools!

17. 17
Findings
Images by Pawel Kuctzynski

18. Academic digital practice
as a space of struggle
Fear
Anxiety
Stress
inaction
Images by Pawel Kuctzynski

19. • The emergent and dynamic
nature of Web
• New norms, rules, ways of
engaging, sharing, contributing
• New risks, threats
• New language
All of this occurring in an alien
space, the academic space
Technological infrastructure
19
Images by Pawel Kuctzynski

20. Student’s approaches to learning:
Strategic, surface and deep learning
(Newble & Entwistle, 1986)
• An explorative mind-set is missing
• They tend to avoid risk
Are students not interested in exploring
new tools?
“It is the new stuff that
puts me off!”
Images by Pawel Kuctzynski

21. Institutional
culture
21
Images by Pawel Kuctzynski

22. 22
Contributing
to the Web
Solving
tasks

23. Why am I
worried?
Images by Pawel Kuctzynski

24. In an age where democracy and freedom are at risk,
critical digital literacies are urgent!
➔ Big tech corporations making all the decisions and
the majority of the wealth
➔ They shape the ideological landscape
➔ The tech companies have become so naturalised that
it is hard to imagine a world without them, limiting our
understanding of what is possible
➔ The feeling of the inevitable makes us powerless, as
we would lack agency

25. George Dyson (a historian of technology)
“Their models are no longer models. The search engine is no longer a
model of human knowledge, it is human knowledge. What began as a
mapping of human meaning now defines human meaning, and has
begun to control, rather than simply catalog or index, human thought.”
“There is a universe of numbers that have a life of their own and we can
only see what these numbers in the form of string of codes can do for
us (sending a text, transferring money, make an appointment) but all the
rest stays hidden”
The digital revolution isn’t over but has turned into something else (Edge)

26. As Audrey Watters reminds us,
★ Technologies are not simple tools but practices
★ political practices with an ideology embedded
★ pedagogical practices with an ideology embedded
WE NEED TO BE CAREFUL!

27. 27
Images by Pawel Kuctzynski
Liquid surveillance!
(David Lyon)

28. How can the use of technology be supported so that it fosters human
dignity and promotes human flourishing enabling self-realisation?
The 4 fundamental principles for human flourishing (Floridi, et al. 2018)
➔ Autonomous self-realisation → who we can become
➔ Enhancing human agency → what can we do
➔ Increasing societal + individual capabilities →what we can achieve
➔ Societal cohesion → interacting with each other + the world
In the current technological environment, issues of social justice,
representation, production, and surveillance should also be understood as
digital literacy issues.

29. Possible ways forward?
Student’s own domain, an open dynamic
learning place that is:
[Jim Groom, Wendy Liu, Catherine Cronin, Audrey Watters,
and open movement]
1. Open + Personal
2. Connecting + social
3. Motivating + emotional
4. Creative + experiential
5. Reflexive + transformational
6. Flexible + dynamic
7. Knowledge manager

30. Image by Kuhn, C. (2018)

31. Thank you!
31

32. ➔ Archer, M., et al. What is Critical Realism? (2017), [Blog] Section Theory. Available at:
http://www.asatheory.org/current-newsletter-online/what-is-critical-realism
➔ Floridi et al., (2018). AI4people. An ethical framework for a good AI society (link to the
paper)
➔ Gillard, C. (2017). Pedagogy and the logic of platforms. New Horizons.
➔ O’Neil, C. (2016). Weapons of math destruction.
➔ Shoshana Zuboff, Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an
Information Civilization, Journal of Information Technology 30, No. 1 (March 2015), 75.
➔ Safiya Umoja Noble (2018). Algorithms of oppression. How search engines reinforce
racisms.
➔ Article by Sofiya Umoja Noble, 2018: Inequality will not be solved by an app.
➔ Article by Evan Osnos, 2018: How much trust can Facebook afford to lose?
➔ Article by Wendy Liu, 2018: Critical Web Literacies,
➔ Article Jessy Hempel, 2018: What happened to Facebook’s grand plan to wire the
world?