[Fall Workshop 2024] Navigating Ethics and EdTech Schedule

The DLS aims to advance the post-secondary system’s ability to navigate the digital landscape of post-secondary education in B.C. Based on a recommendation within the DLS to produce guidelines for ethical use of educational technology, the Ministry established a working group comprising representatives and experts from B.C.’s post-secondary system and beyond. This Ethical Educational Technology Working Group has since produced a draft Ethical Educational Technology Toolkit (the Toolkit) designed to provide practical resources and guidance for post-secondary educators, administrators, and institutions. The Toolkit addresses the ethical considerations involved in adopting educational technology, tools, and software to support the growing use of digital technologies in post-secondary education.

This presentation will outline the history of the project, its context within the Digital Learning Strategy, the collaborative process the working group used to develop the Toolkit, and the goals and high-level themes of the draft content. The content of the Toolkit covers topics in the areas of regulatory frameworks and responsibilities related to educational technologies, and ensuring ethical practices in educational technology.

In this project, students reported that though they are concerned with their online privacy and the security of personal information, they are also willing to take the risk of data disclosure to utilize various online tools, including learning management systems and social media for purposes of learning. However, students did expect that institutions were protecting their data and ensuring their privacy when they were studying. This finding was supported by Stewart et al. (2023) who also highlighted that not only the students, but also the instructors, expected the institutions to do more to protect student data. When selecting online tools, instructors need to consider whether the tool will affect students’ privacy, where the data is being stored, what access the third party has, and if student information is shared between systems. In this session I will share the results of my research, and will also highlight some tools and strategies for instructors considering using tools in their own classrooms.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Describe the environmental implications of Generative AI.
• Explore some guiding questions to decide about AI use.
• Develop a personalized AI use philosophy that embodies your environmental values.
• List practical strategies to minimize carbon/water use in working with AI

Considering educational technology, not as a toolset but instead as an intra-active practice offers a possible path forward. Barad (2003, p. 817) explained: It is through specific intra-actions that a differential sense of being is enacted in the ongoing ebb and flow of agency. That is, it is through specific intra-actions that phenomena come to matter — in both senses of the word.

Intra-activity represents ongoing technological processes of both making and being made. It de-emphasizes the importance of scientific and technological ‘things,’ and instead centers questions of how we make and are made. From a socio-material perspective, therefore, it is through our actions that EdTech ethics come to matter (Elias, 2022).

Building on these concepts, as part of our development of a Digital Literacy Microcredential for educators at VCC, we have begun building a Competency Framework for Ethical Action when using digital practice, tools and services. The framework outlines what we hope educational technology users will do at foundational, intermediate, advanced and highly specialized levels of proficiency. In this session, we will share the work that we have completed to date and invite participants to actively engage with the framework and, perhaps, to challenge, extend, change and/ or re-make their own ethical beliefs in the process.

References:
Barad, K. (2003) ‘Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter’, Signs: Journal of women in culture and society, 28(3), pp. 801-831.
Elias, T. (2022). Working with/in the tensions: Educational technology as feminized craftwork. Digital culture & education, 14(4).

Often, we begin with the idea that we can simply “copy” our face 2 face content into an online learning environment and let learners proceed at their own pace. Then we find out the reality is such that without careful, meaningful and thoughtful development, our courses fail to engage our learners for several reasons.

The design and development of a “true” E-course, whether a full course or a micro credential is an emerging space for both instructors and learners. As we make the effort to transfer our courses to online and hybrid platforms to meet the demands and needs of a new demographic, it is fundamental to take design and accessibility considerations into account from the earliest moments.

Like a body, the development of a rich, engaging online learning course requires tendons and a wide variety of “connective tissue” to hold the learning in place and to help send signals and direct motion as learners progress. From clear instruction to the development of thoughtful media or interactive elements to well-developed information, it is key to take concepts of flow, colour and text accessibility, multi-media accessibility (text to type and alt image descriptions) to deliver meaningful, rich and engaging courses.

What’s an Algorithmic Impact Assessment? Like a Privacy Impact Assessment, it’s a process to assess, minimize and prevent harm. Together, they can protect students from AI.

The Government of Canada tool has launched an Algorithmic Impact Assessment tool. In this session, we will get hands-on with it and discuss how we can implement Algorithmic Impact Assessments at our own institutions.