Education is not an app

Education is not an app is the title of a new book by two professors named Jonathan (Poritz and Rees) who are both at Colorado State University – Pueblo. One is a historian and the other a mathematician. Interestingly the front-matter page lists the publication and copyright as 2017. Apparently this is not uncommon (according to my librarian spouse who is knowledgeable in such matters). I occasionally read Jonathan Rees’ blog (“More or Less Bunk”) so overall the content and tone of the book was not surprising, at least to me. The thrust of the book, according to the authors is to view educational technology through the lens of political economy. The book focuses mainly on the impact to teachers, and warns faculty to pay heed and get involved in technology decisions on their campuses. The authors are not Luddites, and they both use and support the use of technology; but they are wary of its over-reach and its use as a medium of control.

The title of their book reminds me of this famous Jean-Marc Cote picture from the “Vision of the Year 2000” series, as seen around 1900. For those of you who actively read the pundits on educational technology on both sides of the “divide”, many of the topics touched on will be familiar. There is a requisite chapter on MOOCs, and it’s been interesting to see Coursera recently announce (just a couple of weeks ago) its movement towards the business world aimed at employee (re)training and development. This follows in the footsteps of Udacity. It’s hard to make money given their business models in the open field of education to those who otherwise can’t afford it. So these moves are not surprising.

Chapter 2 is titled “Online Education: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”. One vignette jumped out at me. The problem of cheating (a plague possibly invented thanks to the “official” system of education) is exacerbated in online education. The authors point out that it is easy to find (on the internet of course) folks to “write entire papers from scratch for them… [or] take entire online courses for you if the price is right.” That leads to the next problem in the mounting arms race when trying to stop the cheaters. “Basically, guaranteeing that nobody in an online class cheats requires setting up a miniature police state that affects every student in a class.” The example and claims of ProctorTrack are described. There are face scans and knuckle scans (I had to look up the latter!), not to mention close monitoring of keystrokes and potential attempts to search online, copy and paste, take a screenshot, etc. And universities are contracting with such companies to do this! Since this is an arms race, there are also plenty of internet sites with advice to students of how to get around the “security”. It’s like a dystopian sci-fi movie, except it’s already here.

Chapter 4 made the most impact on me. The authors advocate for the use of free/libre/open-source software in higher education. There is an excellent parody of a Calculus II end user license agreement (EULA), well worth reading. They also trace the beginnings of the copyright era and its movement to what is known as the Mickey Mouse era. (This comes from the extension of the copyright on Mickey Mouse as a character, currently to 2024 from 2003. I learned much more about DMCA and DRM, the tactics of RIAA and MPAA. (Yes, there are a lot of acronyms but they are well-explained.) More arms-race stuff related to encryption and decryption strategies. And of course, the bottom line here is the bottom line.

I have to admit that reading this chapter made me want to switch my main work computer to running Ubuntu (Linux) and eschewing my beautiful Mac on OS X. (I already use the Unix Terminal on my Mac frequently.) There was also a call to I.T. departments to support diversity and creativity, use open source systems, and not to constrain oneself both monetarily and flexible-use-wise with paid “enterprise” systems. The big Learning Management Systems are criticized, I think fairly for the most part, by the authors. In the early days I hacked my own HTML website where I delivered course materials. Then I tried WebCT briefly (and hated it). I started using Blackboard when I was team-teaching, and I tried it in several other classes hence. I’ve now reverted back to my own HTML hacking. It’s very annoying to come up against “oh, the system doesn’t allow you to do that” and to have to click all over the place to get to what you need.

The step that I have not yet taken is to get rid of the textbook entirely in all my courses. I teach one semester of P-Chem (stat thermo) entirely from my own handouts, but I still teach the other semester (quantum) using an excellent textbook (McQuarrie). Currently G-Chem is tied to a Pearson textbook with the accompanying Mastering Chemistry online homework. I have become increasingly disillusioned with these constraints, although it’s not to say they’re all bad – there are some good features in both the book and the online homework. I suspect that the more we tie ourselves to them, the more that the overall teaching and learning experience will be eroded – and we will make ourselves, the human teachers, obsolete. Education will become stratified – mass education (in the style of “Electronic Taylorism”, the title of Chapter 6) for the masses, and elite education for the elites, with an ever-widening gap between those who can pay and those who cannot.

That is a dystopian future indeed. Jean-Marc Cote may not be so far off.