Week 1
Welcome to the first week of the unit. Each week there will be a number of required tasks indicated at the top of the page for this week. It is important you try these before the seminar and read the material on this week's page.
Read the preface of Big Data in Education
Read the timetable & assessment information on the Blackboard site for the unit.
Think about the questions at the end of the page in advance of the seminar.
What do you expect to happen over the next year? What do you expect to happen over the next twelve weeks as students on Digital Education Futures?
What does it mean to talk about the future? The literal meaning of the word is “a period of time following the moment of speaking or writing” or “time regarded as still to come”. In this sense to talk about the future is simply to talk about what hasn’t happened yet but what we expect will or might happen. To talk about the future of education means to talk about what we expect will or might happen in education in the coming years.
Consider your own experience as new students on the MA DTCE.
What do you expect to happen over the next year? What do you expect to happen over the next twelve weeks as students on Digital Education Futures?
There are some expectations which are likely to be accurate such as studying for two semesters, undertaking a graduation and exploring Manchester in your free time. There are other expectations which might less accurate because there will inevitably be some things in the next year which surprise you, hopefully in positive ways.
Consider your own experience as new students on the MA DTCE.
What do you expect to happen over the next year? What do you expect to happen over the next twelve weeks as students on Digital Education Futures?
There are some expectations which are likely to be accurate such as studying for two semesters, undertaking a graduation and exploring Manchester in your free time. There are other expectations which might less accurate because there will inevitably be some things in the next year which surprise you, hopefully in positive ways.
We all have expectations about the future but it is far more difficult to make predictions which are reliable. There is a long history of trying to use magical means (such as a crystal ball) to predict the future which reflects the fundamental difficulty of knowing what is going to happen. But the fact we can’t know what is going to happen does not mean we cannot say anything meaningful. By focusing on technology it becomes easier to trace out potential developments.
What we will be exploring together in this unit
In this unit we explore the technological developments currently taking place within education in order to ask questions about where these might lead in the future. It is called futures (plural) to recognise that there are many possible outcomes and that we have the capacity to influence which future comes to be realised. There are many people, networks and organisations trying to influence what the future will look like in order that it will serve their interests and reflect their ideas. In this sense we will bring together the social and the technical to understand the changes underway within education and where these might lead in the future. The main focus of our exploration will be big data and related technologies.
'Big Data' is a term with a lot of hype around it. If you hope to end this unit by knowing exactly what big data is, what it is not and exactly what to do with it, you will be disappointed! The first thing to recognise is that there are no certain agreements on what is meant by big data. The next thing to recognise is that if we did agree on what to do with big data - how to capture it and analyse it, by the time we agreed, the tools used to capture and analyse data would have changed and we would have to start again. This is a complex subject but a helpful way to approach it is to think about the devices and services you use each day which produce data which can be used to understand your behaviour.
The American journalist Kenneth Cukier played a leading role in promotion the concept of 'big data'. In this talk he introduces the idea and explains why it is so significant.
- 4.5 billion Google searches estimated today
- 478 million tweets estimated today
- 20.72 billion card transactions in the UK
- 1.7 billion Uber rides per quarter
What you will hopefully learn from this unit is what factors we need to be aware of that contribute to debates about what big data is and how it could be used in ethical ways in education. You will learn how to learn more about these factors. In order to do this, we will have to also understand what we mean by 'ethical' and 'education', as well as asking what is data, how is it captured, stored, manipulated, analysed, presented and used in the world. We will ask: how does this apply to the education sector, from government policy, through edTech development strategy to classroom practice and how can we take this into account in designing for learning?
Often the debate about data use in education is focused heavily on doing analytics on existing data. But this misses a huge aspect of the data cycle and provenance is central to the first half of the unit - where does the data we use come from? Who has decided what and how data is captured in the first place? Often this provenance has in turn been informed by earlier data, so exploring the full cycle is essential to understanding the debates around analytics. This points us towards the question of who is involved in this cycle and what they are trying to achieve. These questions help shed light on which futures they might wish to see and which futures they might wish to avoid.
For a general introduction to Big Data watch this short video. It is not focused on education, but considers Big Data more broadly. If you found the TED talk shared above difficult to follow then please try rewatching it after this introduction.
You can begin to think about the intentions for learning analytics and what it enables. This is a short overview video about big data and its influence in education. While watching the video consider the kind of language used when advocating these approaches that big data is enabling. What is valued in education according to this video?
The trail of data we create
"When we wake up in the morning, we check our e-mail, make a quick phone call, walk outside (our movements captured by a high definition video camera), get on the bus (swiping our RFID mass transit cards) or drive (using a transponder to zip through the tolls). We arrive at the airport, making sure to purchase a sandwich with a credit card before boarding the plane, and check our BlackBerries shortly before takeoff. Or we visit the doctor or the car mechanic, generating digital records of what our medical or automative problems are. We post Blog entries confiding to the world our thoughts and feelings, or maintain personal social network profiles revealing our friends and tastes."
Lazer, D., Brewer, D., Christakis, N., Fowler, J., & King, G. (2009). Life in the network: the coming age of computational social. Science, 323(5915), 721-723.
Lazer, D., Brewer, D., Christakis, N., Fowler, J., & King, G. (2009). Life in the network: the coming age of computational social. Science, 323(5915), 721-723.
What data footprint have you left this week?
Consider the different devices, platforms, services and systems which you use in your everyday life. This can be everything from using a credit card, searching the internet, posting on social media or ordering a taxi. What data footprint have you left this weeK? What does this reveal about you?
What does it mean to say big data is both technical and social?
In this week's reading Ben Williamson says that "Big Data is simultaneously technical and social". What does it mean to say that it is technical? What does it mean to say that is social? What is the significance of it being both technical and social?
How could big data improve education?
What are some examples of how big data can be used in education? How would these improve education? Can you think of any potential downsides to their use? The video below might give you some ideas.
