Download pptx - Ethics, ePortfolios, and Badges: Envisaging Privacy and Digital Persistence in Student-Level Learning Evidence

Ethics, ePortfolios, and Badges: Envisaging Privacy and Digital

Persistence in Student-Level Learning EvidenceJames E. Willis, III, Ph.D.

Research AssociateCenter for Research on Learning and

TechnologySchool of Education

Indiana University - Bloomington

Joshua QuickGraduate Research Assistant

Center for Research on Learning and Technology

School of EducationIndiana University - Bloomington

Why Add Badges to ePortfolios?

• Can provide additional useful information– Specific claims and detailed evidence – Context in which content was created– Standardize the inclusion of additional information

without cluttering eportfolios• May simplify the process of defining

competencies• May offload summative credentialing functions

– Allows more formative and transformative functions• Can connect eportfolio content to competencies

and grades– Learners stack badge URLs in maps or gradebook

• Can increase value of portfolio content by circulating independently

Badges and ePortfolios:Some Connections

• Granular learning data persisting as educational evidence:–Mineable– Findable–Usable

For and against students?

https://www.linkedin.com/topic/ethics

Publicly-Accessible Learning Evidence and Data

• Efforts to digitalize and catalogue learning artifacts

• Complexities of privacy, ethics, and evidence

• Importance of discussion – Everyone thinks of ‘ethics’ differently–Multitude of voices to unearth values,

latencies, and competing agendas

1. When educational data persists, and can be linked to other individual data sources, what are the possible outcomes?

Example: An earner decides to remove a cluster of digital data, including badges from a social media site and data from an eportfolio, but finds that copies of the data exist on issuers’ websites. The earner cannot make the data disappear.

Source: Willis, III, J. E., Strunk, V. A., & Hardtner, T. L. (2016). Microcredentials and educational technology: A proposed ethical taxonomy. EDUCAUSE Review. Retrieved from: http://er.educause.edu/articles/2016/4/microcredentials-and-educational-technology-a-proposed-ethical-taxonomy

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/cios-need-to-re-brand-themselves-as-drivers-of-digital-innovation-says-eys-david-nichols/

2. What obligations do institutions have to protect, retract, or alter learning artifacts in the near and far future?

Example: A student embeds open digital badges in her eportfolio, but doesn’t realize the badge is only valid for one year. After a year, the microcredential is revoked and displays an ‘invalid’ message. A potential employer, carefully examining the eportfolio, discovers the invalid badge and decides not to hire the student.


https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/achieving-digital-state-mind-greg-morgan-

3. What are practices to help students learn how to control their own learning artifacts?


Example question: At what point does the expectation of privacy give way to publicly verifiable evidence?

http://www.simplicant.com/blog/digital-recruitment-strategy-tips/

4. When evidentiary narratives form regarding a student’s ability, and then become public, can students come to hold false beliefs about their own capabilities? Example: A student receives positive feedback in his social media for his badges and an employer hires him for the evidence contained in his university eportfolio (i.e. an expertise). This surprises the student, however, because the public recognition of his skills differ widely from his own self-perception.

http://e15initiative.org/themes/digital-economy/

5. When learning evidence is linked between eportfolios and badges, do new ethical questions regarding student privacy emerge? Example: A new data-crawler algorithm carefully examines learning evidence contained in a student’s eportfolio and linked badges. This algorithm pinpoints three deficiencies in the student’s overall educational understanding. Ads with specific suggestions of educational content (to make up for the identified deficiencies) begin appearing in various websites the student sees.

http://www.idselpaso.com/

Summing Up

Importance of ethical discourse

Thinking about the future, measuring the past

Intersection of our learning and educational technologies will create new questions

Thank you!

James E. Willis, III, Ph.D.Research Associate


School of Education Indiana University -

Bloomington

Joshua QuickDoctoral Student


School of EducationIndiana University -

Bloomington@Willis3James