From eye-tracking tools to AI monitoring agents, commercial student monitoring technologies are being increasingly adopted by schools in an attempt to equip educators with instant data on how and what their students are learning. Proponents of such technologies claim that continuous monitoring of student activities can provide teachers with valuable feedback about how their students learn and allow them to better respond to individual student needs. While the dominant concerns about these technologies pertain to their management of student data or their technical limitations, there is also a need to critically evaluate their underlying assumptions about education. How do such technologies affect teaching and learning? Can the possibility of improving students’ performances through monitoring be worth the risks to their mental health? Can the adoption of such technologies inadvertently lead to detrimental educational practices in particular contexts?
This workshop aims to explore such questions by facilitating discussion around what is commonly foreseen as the “idealized” version of student monitoring technology, i.e., one without problems of data security or technical limitations. Discussion will be anchored on a fictional technology called Mindview, which will be described through an advertisement as follows:
Engaging with the concrete fictional example of Mindview will invite participants to draw connections between student privacy and education in ways that extend beyond problems of data protection and technological imperfection. By investigating this “idealized” scenario together, we may be able to better judge how such technologies should be designed today, if at all.
After watching the advert, participants will be given the following prompts for discussion: If you were a teacher: 1. Would you use Mindview? Why? How could it support your teaching? How could it hinder your teaching? 2. If you had to use Mindview, how would you incorporate it into your classroom? Would your teaching be affected by the pressure of standardized testing? How? 3. How do you think Mindview would impact your relationship with your students? 4. How would your teaching be affected if the data was shared with your administrators? If you were a student: 1. Would you be comfortable with your teacher using Mindview? Why? What reservations would you have about its use? Do you think Mindview would help you learn better? Why? 2. How do you think it will affect your relationship with the teacher? 3. How would your learning be affected if the data was also shared with your parents? We posit that these discussion prompts will encourage participants to reflect upon their experiences of surveillance and in their hindsight, propose alternative approaches to monitoring that facilitate holistic and effective learning. To support this, participants will be given blank cards on which they can describe if or how they would like to redesign Mindview. With this exercise, we aim to explore how the points raised in the earlier discussion translate into design. The revised versions of Mindview (or their lack thereof) will serve as the embodiment of alternate “idealized” monitoring systems that are adapted to different situational needs and serve as points of comparison with today’s technologies.
In addition to fostering an exchange of ideas about privacy and education among participants, we aim to use the discussions as a platform to evaluate our own concerns about the use of student monitoring technologies. We hypothesize that although it is valuable for teachers to have more information about their students, such technologies can, despite their best intentions, be counterproductive to both learning and teaching in the following ways: First, we are concerned that such technologies can aggravate student anxiety. For example, students may become more fearful about doing anything that they feel will be judged unfavorably by the teacher. With anxiety levels in students already at an all-time high, such technologies can introduce pressure to perform on even a moment-to-moment basis. Second, we posit that the one-size-fits-all character of these technologies together with administrative pressures can coerce teachers into adopting practices that are not suitable for their particular classes. For example, high financial investment by the school administration into a monitoring technology coupled with systemic pressure to have students perform on standardized tests may force a teacher’s hand into using the technology even if they are reluctant to do so after noticing symptoms of heightened anxiety in their students. Worse, if their students perform poorly (perhaps due to high anxiety), it is teachers who are likely to be blamed for not using the technology well and not the technology itself. Overall, we hope to achieve two goals through this workshop. First, we aim to draw new insights into the relationship between privacy and education that draws on the diverse experiences of the participants as educators and students. Second, we aim to not only examine how or if our concerns are shared by others, but to also test and revise these concerns in response to the experiences and thoughts shared by the participants. This will enable us to develop a more informed critique of student monitoring that is mindful of different educational contexts.