The ethical and social implications of personalization technologies for e-learning

Abstract

A note on versions:The version presented here may differ from the published version or, version of record, if you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the 'permanent WRAP url' above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription.For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: publications@warwick.ac.uk helen.ashman@unisa.edu.au, tim.brailsford@nottingham.edu.my, A.I.Cristea@warwick.ac.uk, michael.sheng@adelaide.edu.au, ab4491@coventry.ac.uk, e.toms@sheffield.ac.uk, vwade@cs.tcd The Ethical and Social Implications of Personalisation Technologies for eLearning What are e-learning and personalisation?One of the major problems facing education in the online world is the sheer volume of information that users are faced with, some of it of variable quality. Finding information has never been easier, but finding appropriate information for the task at hand is often quite hard. Formal education aims to select out the most pertinent and reliable information, coaching the student to learn and then apply their own judgement and reasoning to information.For most of human history, formal education has been primarily provided by human teachers. The rise of computer technology however has seen many human functions moved across to computer software, at times with great success, such as with banking and online sales. Education is one function that has moved online, implemented in e-learning systems. An e-learning system is a system that supports mainly individual learning (but sometimes social learning) over the Internet, allowing access to local or remote organised learning material. The organisation of the learning material is done in view of a learning goal, generally established by a university curriculum or the training demands of a company.The great shift online has had many real benefits. It generates savings in human effort, with the greatest savings for repetitive and undemanding tasks. Also some tasks such as arithmetic, filing and retrieval, are performed better by software, being less error-prone and much faster. Indeed, its speed an enormous capacity makes possible some complex human functions that could not feasibly be performed in anything but software, for example encryption, chemical modelling and real-time calculation of spacecraft trajectories.As with many functions that have moved online, e-learning has had mixed success. It was partly motivated by the belief that it would save on human effort, although this assumes that the tasks involved in teaching are repetitive and mentally-undemanding. Whether it is better than the human equivalent is uncertain, and we discuss this in detail below. It does make possible or feasible some forms of learning such as teaching of enormous numbers of students, and access to the entire Internet of supporting materials.However the move online of learning has occurred in parallel with the reduction of human teachers. This can leave students feeling disenfranchised, like "num...

De platformsamenleving. Strijd om publieke waarden in een online wereld

“…Net zoals Amazon-algoritmes je voorkeuren voor muziek of literatuur berekenen op basis van data over de smaak en voorkeuren van duizenden anderen, worden leerroutes op dezelfde manier voorspeld. Een gevolg daarvan kan zijn dat allerlei aspecten van een onderwerp of vakgebied buiten het zicht van een student worden gehouden, omdat het systeem veronderstelt dat die niet passen bij de interesses van de student (Ashman et al 2014).…”

“…Ook deze sociale interactie kan weer worden gedataficeerd en zo inzicht geven in de collegialiteit of zelfstandigheid van een student. Studenten zijn doorgaans niet op de hoogte van de gedetailleerde data die over hen worden verzameld (Ashman et al 2014); als 'datadonoren' hebben ze ook niet automatisch zeggenschap over wat er met hun informatie gebeurt. Commerciële platformen worden eigenaar van alle gebruikersdata en kunnen die in de meeste gevallen in geaggregeerde vorm opnieuw gebruiken of doorverkopen.…”

“…Het leidde in academische kringen tot veel discussie over de ethische kant van dit soort onderzoeken (Kramer, Guillory & Hancock 2014;Harriman & Patel 2014). Vanuit wetgeving of regulering zijn hier in ieder geval nog nauwelijks richtlijnen voor (Ashman et al 2014). volgens de gebruiksvoorwaarden vaak lijkt alsof studenten zeggenschap houden over hun data, is dit beslist niet altijd het geval (Lindh & Nolin 2016). In de volgende paragraaf komen we hierop terug.…”

Learner’s Perception on Open Learner Model

“…Eventhough the OLM system seems to be a potential system to increase students performance, there are several problems remain, i.e. students' trust [3], privacy [10], and even the user interface [8] and also social and ethical problems [11]. Moreover, this kind of system needs students' computer literacy.…”

“…It is important since the user acceptance could determine the success of such system adoption process. Besides, it can mitigating the risk that may occur during the process such as the knowledge heterogenity of learners [13], the resistance from learner that they feel disengaged with the learning system [11].…”