We’ve written about the risks of pandemic-inspired disaster capitalism and we certainly had second (third, fourth) thoughts about herding our faculty into the LMS.
- Primacy of surveillance tools and technology (yes, e-proctoring, but also invasive use of analytics, etc).
- Increase in control/compliance mechanisms (punitive testing structures, forced camera on, etc).
Building the community in Summer Camp also allowed us to have a space to talk about the troubling rise of these tools that we saw. We were able to:
- explain the lack of e-proctoring;
- discuss the low bandwidth needs of our students;
- discuss emergent research on “zoom fatigue”;
- explore equity and accomodations;
- encourage gentler assessment practice; and
- challenge assumptions about online learning.
It’s hard to assess impact, but we did shape impact for many and more importantly established a conversation about the ethics of edtech on our campus. (Did we impact faculty response to an inclusive-access textbook model that emerged a few months later?)