Beetham, H; Collier, A, Czerniewicz, L; Lamb, B ; Lin, Y; Ross, J ; Scott, A-M; Wilson, A (2022). Surveillance practices, risks and responses in the post pandemic university. Digital Culture & Education, 14/1. https://www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/volume-141-papers/beetham-2022
At an early After Surveillance meeting, we identified a need for research and policy contributions that could help people in universities think through issues around surveillance. In February 2022, one response to this need was published in the excellent open access journal, Digital Culture and Education.
The paper was a collaborative effort from eight of the network members: Helen Beetham, Amy Collier, Laura Czerniewicz, Brian Lamb, Yuwei Lin, Jen Ross, Anne-Marie Scott and Anna Wilson. Our process was adapted from one that Laura and colleagues developed for their many-authored paper on Equity, Inequality and Covid-19 Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning (Czerniewicz, L., Agherdien, N., Badenhorst, J., Belluigi, D., Chambers, T., Chili, M., de Villiers, M., Felix, A., Gachago, D., Gokhale, C., Ivala, E., Kramm, N., Madiba, M., Mistri, G., Mgqwashu, E., Pallitt, N., Prinsloo, P., Solomon, K., Strydom, S., Swanepoel, M., Waghid, F. and Wissing, G. (2020). A Wake-Up Call: Equity, Inequality and Covid-19 Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning. Postdigital Science and Education, 2(3), 946–967). Like all collaborative writing, the process highlighted what is joyful in collegial practice and what requires negotiation and care. Among the things we worry may be at risk in a climate of surveillance and quantification are these practices of collegiality and the values of mutual trust and ‘accountability without accounting’ that leave room for work to emerge that is more than the sum of its parts. Our process for this paper aimed to work towards such emergence. We began in late 2020 with a series of questions, which all network members were invited to respond to:
- Why do we need to be paying attention to surveillance in HE now? If you think this is a priority amongst other burning issues to address – including austerity budgets, casualisation of academic labour, inequality etc – why is this a priority?
- There are a number of inter-related issues regarding surveillance, privacy, data ethics and trust in HE globally. Can you provide specific examples? What do they say about the state of play and possible trajectories for higher education?
- Do you know of examples of practice, policy or activism that are inspiring optimism about any of these issues? How can more of these be enabled?
- What are the risks involved in taking action on these issues?
We also asked people to let us know what role they would like to have in developing the paper (all those who responded chose to be part of the author team).
From the responses to the questions, the co-authors began an iterative process of developing the paper. The process moved among us according to who had the time and resource to attend to it at different stages. Ultimately, we integrated our respective contributions to develop the key risks and responses that eventually structured the paper:
| Risks | Responses |
| Risks to learners and learning relationships
Risks to academics and professional staff Reinforcing the extractive economy Increasing inequalities
|
Resistance
Education and awareness-raising Institutional and professional engagement Regulation Investment in alternative, open and public approaches |
And we closed with some recommendations for future research that we argued needs to be broad-ranging, deep, developed, funded, co-ordinated and both globally and locally contextualised:
- the models of provision that are being afforded at the nexus of technology, data and neoliberal discourses;
- the roles and contestations of players in a shifting teaching and learning ecosystem;
- the role and agenda of learning analytics;
- the student experience in terms of the lived experiences of the “quantified” student;
- how data-driven technologies affect student motivation and the quality of assessment;
- how students navigate unbundled services and how students reassess issues of privacy and online privacy;
- how teaching work is monitored or quality assured;
- how datafication is shaping and being shaped by teaching and learning activities as well as the differences across roles and conditions of service e.g. tenured/casual staff and those on academic terms or not.
We welcome feedback on the paper!
