Surveillance Pedagogy: It's what EdTech Sells

Surveillance capitalist ed tech sells surveillance pedagogy. Fear and surveillance is no way to teach. https://t.co/o9C7tihu2l

— David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) May 7, 2018

Don't spy on your students. Build pedagogical approaches premised on trust and respect.  Maximize the best practices rather than letting potential bad actors frighten you into building your teaching approaches around scaring students, spying on them, stopping cheating, etc.

I wrote about this in The Atlantic:

Back in reality, technologists are largely focused on the Internet of Things in which all the objects with which people interact on a daily basis—Google Glass and Apple Watch, for example—are gradually becoming computers, robots, and phones. The technologist Bruce Schneier calls it a “world-size robot.” The upshot? Quotidian objects that are actually computers will soon enter classrooms. It's still fairly easy to spot students using their cell phones in class—but when the smart pen or smart textbook sends messages directly to the contact lenses of students, teachers aren’t likely to even notice.

If the simple banning of devices from classrooms isn’t possible, then what? One option is to assert rigorous control over all information flow—a practice that could be described as panopticon pedagogy. As the education writer Audrey Watters has shown, ed-tech companies are all-in on surveillance, eagerly promoting models that capture every website, click, and time spent working. But students would inevitably find workarounds—using cellphone hotspots, for instance. More critically, controlling data use in class runs counter to optimal pedagogy.

Ultimately, we can spy on our students or we can trust them. I don't think we can only sorta spy on them.  And while the tools to spy on them can potentially be useful in a culture based on trust and respect, they make it harder to create that culture.

Teaching is hard. Tech won't fix it. Tech can break it.

Adventures in Universal Design: A Farewell to In-Class Tests

I have decided to stop giving in-class tests under any circumstances. Here's my essay, from the Chronicle:

I’ve been inching away from the blue book for years, but it’s time to go cold turkey and match my praxis to my principles. Whatever pedagogical gains the in-class test might bring — and I’ll argue they are few and increasingly less relevant — I can no longer justify forcing people with disabilities to disclose their conditions in order to receive basic test-related accommodations....

It’s become routine, rather than rare, for students to begin the semester by presenting their professors with documented requests for accommodation.

That it’s become routine is great but far from perfect. Not only do students have to disclose disability to their professors —who are no more immune to ableism than to any other sort of bias — but the most common form of accommodation extends the disclosure to classmates. Many students with invisible disabilities (such as anxiety disorders or ADHD) require quiet rooms and extra time to work on a test. I’m thrilled to provide both. On the other hand, when the whole class gathers to take an exam, with one student conspicuously absent, everyone notices.

If there were important benefits to taking HISTORY classes in the room, then the accommodation model might be relevant. There aren't, I argue, so I'm done.

That doesn't mean you have to be done, but I guess I would like you to think about it.

Simulating Police Training - What's the pedagogy here?

My friend RC alerted me to this piece on a police training simulator for learning how to reduce misuse of force when encountering autistic people or people with various mental disabilities. It touts the virtues of the virtual playback versus role-playing-based training.

Through the simulator, deputies are immersed in true-to-life scenarios — exactly the kind of situations they often find themselves in: A father calls the police because his bipolar daughter is off her meds and is destroying the kitchen; a man is wandering around a parking lot with a knife talking to himself; an angry young veteran, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, is walking down the middle of the street.

The simulator’s operator changes the scenario’s outcome based on how the deputy responds – and the system recognizes and records each type of response, whether it’s with a taser, pepper spray, a gun or verbal interaction. Just like in real like, no situation is ever the same

“The key here is decision-making. We can test and practice-decision making among deputies in a way that wasn’t possible before,” Lt. John Gannon said.
And Gannon can watch it all unfolding, as if he was on the call himself. He can see if a young deputy misses a knife sitting within arm’s reach of a suspect, or unnecessarily escalates a situation involving someone with mental illness. Then the supervisor and deputies can debrief, going frame by frame through the situation to discuss what was done right or wrong.

“How often do you have a chance to go back and see what someone did, see what someone missed?” Gannon said. “Rather than role-playing, rather than having them learn on the job, we can have them learn and make their mistakes here.”

A few thoughts.

1. The pedagogy of police training continues to fascinate me. The police trainers I've talked to are often critical of the method but not empowered to try active learning models. It's mostly talk at officers, dumping information in lecture format. 
2. This simulator, like the more standard role-playing, is obviously active learning.
3. I don't see the evidence in this piece, although it's interesting, that a simulator is better pedagogically than role-playing. In standard role-play scenarios officers work with actors who then go back after and debrief on what the officers did well or poorly in their decision making.
4. Decision making in tense situations is hard.
5. Finally ..

The piece concludes with this insight:

Lessons Learned:

Some of the same techniques can also help deputies when they are responding to someone with PTSD, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

“You don’t always have to shoot, taze, pepper spray — sometimes talking works,” Deputy Shawn Walters said.

That's true. The key is to take that insight out of disability-related training and apply it to every encounter, because people don't broadcast their disabilities to the world. It's why I'm skeptical of diagnosis-based training in general. It says: Apply these specific resources to specific cases.

I like police training models which use insights from the disability world to help officers fundamentally change the way they think. 

The Giant Lecture Course and the Big University

Over on Chronicle Vitae, a group of students at the University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign, have written a spectacular piece - "A lecture from the lectured."

They open by citing pieces that sneer at students today for being distracted, boring, and un-intellectually curious, then respond with appropriate scorn.

 At a university like ours, where thousands of students compete to fulfill their general-education requirements, it is lecture after lecture after lecture. For three to four hours of our day, we sit in cavernous rooms — with up to 800 strangers — where the professor doesn't know our name, let alone ask us to speak.

They then describe their experiences, including some good ones with great lecturers, but far too often they complete their gen eds through these massive lectures in which they feel anonymous. Of course they don't pay attention.

They also recognize the economics

We will admit that the problem is not that the lecture is inherently a horrendous format. We've had bad small discussion-based classes where no one has done the required reading. We've sat through awkward silences when no one wants to add to the discussion.
But for us, the lecture seems too much the default option for educating a lot of us at the cheapest price.

That's the key to me. This class format persists not because anyone can defend it pedagogically. We all know that even in a class based on what Derek Bruff calls "continuous exposition,"such exposition is better delivered to 25 students, bored as they might be, than to 250. At the giant university, though, that's not really affordable. The whole enterprise depends on the economics of the giant intro class for undergraduates.

We know it's the worst acceptable way to teach.
We know students learn less in giant lecture classes.
We know a few profs who can pull it off, because they are good performers.
But we know that most profs can't.
We know that reward structures at the giant university focus almost entirely on research productivity (and the elusive outside offer).

And maybe this was ok when the giant publics were cheap but good. They still can be good, despite these big classes, but they aren't cheap any more.

I don't know how to fix this, but I do know that the recent spate of essays spitting scorn at students who check Facebook during a lecture aren't going to help.

Sunday Roundup: Four Important Posts on Disability

I finished a major corporate (disability-related) project this week and am hard at work on a major non-profit (disability-related) project now. That, plus teaching, plus the book, has slowed me down in terms of writing for mainstream media, but I trust that the depth of these bigger projects is more than worth it.

In the meantime, though, instead of blogging less, I'm taking ideas that might have made for publishable essays and placed them here. This week featured four posts that I think matter.

1. How Not to Kill Someone in Mental Health Crisis. This is a video, from the UK, of a person with a machete not being killed by London police. It's instructive and important.
2. Disability, Trauma, and the Assault at Spring Valley High - If 25% of all American children have experienced trauma, it means we have to rethink fundamental systems in our schools.
3. Peter Singer's Tells - A controversial philosopher who argues that the correct ethical decision in the case of disability is euthanasia/abortion, reveals that he doesn't think those positions should be such a big deal. To him, they're old news.
4. Adventures in Universal Design: Handwriting Notes and Take-Home Tests - My approach to universal design for learning. We're learning the wrong thing from the research on handwriting.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Adventures in Universal Design: Handwriting Notes and In-class Exams

We cannot say: The best pedagogy is handwriting because science, if that "best pedagogy" excludes so many people with disabilities. #ableism

— David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) October 26, 2015

We must say: Let's figure out what it is about handwriting (means) that produces good learning (ends) and universalize those ends. #pedagogy

— David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) October 26, 2015

Last night I had a long twitter argument about universal design in the classroom. Here's my position:

I do not intend to ever give another in-class exam, even though I acknowledge there is research that being forced to memorize and study may have beneficial results on learning. I will also not ban laptops in the classroom (I have experimented with turning off wi-fi in the classroom, but I'm not convinced that's the right away forward), despite the research suggesting that handwriting is better for learning than laptops.

The problem is that we, as teachers, make these decisions based on surface-level reactions to highly mediated studies. We see - handwriting better! We respond - ban laptops! And since we don't really like our students clacking away on keys and using Facebook, having a study to confirm our pre-existing biases against laptops. And similarly many of us found the process of having to study for exams then sit them in a classroom clarifying and powerful

But there are problems - First, technology is becoming so deeply embedded in our lives that it's increasingly unlikely we can hermetically seal the classroom from it. Sure, we can ban laptops. But not "fingernail computers" or "eye contact computers" or whatever the future holds.

Second, whatever comes next tech wise, right now there are millions of disabled students for whom handwriting is either sub-optimal or impossible. The ADA gives people with clearly diagnosed conditions the power to accommodate, and that's an awesome power indeed, but first it leaves people out, and second it suggests that disabled students are doomed to a "second-best" pedagogy. That's not acceptable to me.

Importantly, I think these studies (if true. Remember the replication issue in psych) do not demand we limit our pedagogy to reward one type of neurotypical student. Instead, these studies say figure out WHY in-class tests have advantages and figure out WHY handwriting and has advantages - then work very hard to achieve those advantages in diverse ways.

For my take home exams, I try to replicate some of the pressures of the in-class exam, because my understanding of the research is that the in-class exam is a useful way to push students to internalize information. For note-taking, I discuss why and how

For note-taking, here's Josh Eyler (a man who knows vastly more about the scholarship of learning than I do):

@Lollardfish Oh, I like this! Ends = allowing for selectivity & synthesis. So let's help students learn to take notes like this on laptops.

— Joshua Eyler (@joshua_r_eyler) October 26, 2015

There's nothing magical about a pen and paper. What happens is that when using a pen and paper, students can write less, so they think harder about what to write, and thus take better notes and begin the process of internalizing what's important. This can be replicated with laptops.

We can do this. We can focus on ends - better learning - and not the means we figured out in eras past to achieve those ends.