Pause before Implementing: Exploring the [Surveillant] Impacts of Technology
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by Morgan Banville
This blog post previews an exciting chapter from a new book that will be available for preorder on June 4, 2024 by Routledge titled, Global Perspectives on Teaching with Technology Theories, Case Studies, and Integration Strategies.The book itself focuses on current research on how teacher education and training programs around the world are preparing teachers to integrate and apply learning technologies across subjects, grade levels, and regions.
A little about me
My name is Morgan Banville, and I am an Assistant Professor of Humanities at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. My research focuses on the intersection of surveillance studies and technical communication. In particular, I research the usage and perceptions of biometric technologies in specific sites of surveillance, such as healthcare.
My chapter in the collection, “Exploring the [Surveillant] Impacts of Technology: A Case for Meaningful Integration,” reflects my experience as a Ph.D. student in Rhetoric, Writing, and Professional Communication at East Carolina University (2019-2023) during one of the peaks of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Furthermore, this collection asked authors to focus on their experiences in secondary education. I received my Masters in Secondary Education in 2019, and I am licensed to teach grades 5-12 English in Massachusetts.
The Exigency
Because this book reflects global perspectives, my chapter is situated in the context of the United States secondary education and explores examples of the impacts that increased surveillance technology has within the classroom. The chapter is organized by situated global examples and discussion topics and questions, all which inform an assignment to guide instructors—technical communicators—in critically examining how technological choices impact students within and outside of the classroom. Throughout the chapter, I refer to instructors as technical communicators: across levels and subjects, they communicate and negotiate specialized information, especially to and with students. I argue that because technical communicators are, “uniquely poised to function as public intellectuals” (Bowdon, 2004, p. 325); teacher-educator programs and educational research would benefit from exploring surveillance studies and emerging technologies through a social justice perspective. I believe that our role as technical communicators is to function as knowledge-makers, influencers, and creators to communicate with audiences. Specifically, this chapter explores how instructors, or technical communicators, may critically examine the technologies and applications that they introduce into the classroom space (whether this is for students, or educational programming).
From my background in secondary and higher education, predominantly teaching students ages 17-22, I gained insight into the ways in which some instructors were quick to implement technologies into the classroom without critical examination of potential surveillance impacts. Globally, instructors (understandably) rushed to move their courses online, and with those courses came an introduction to ‘new’ applications. For example, many instructors began to implement applications such as Zoom and Cisco Webex to host their synchronous courses and meet with students. Further, instructors began to increasingly implement invasive remote proctoring technologies such as Proctorio and Respondus to monitor students as they took online exams. This chapter is a response to what I label as the “COVID-19 technological rush.” The ‘rush’ for instructors across the globe to implement technological applications into their classroom spaces created severe consequences. I argue that instructors need to critically examine the applications that they introduce into the classroom space, questioning topics such as intellectual property, privacy, and informed consent as it relates to the opportunity for students to opt in/out of the technology. Through case examples, I question: what are the surveillant impacts of the technologies and applications that were used in the classroom space during the COVID-19 pandemic?
The COVID-19 pandemic shined a light on the lack of accessibility in secondary education. This chapter explores how in the hurried response to increasing technology usage in education, it is vital for instructors to understand the tools available, how to effectively integrate the technologies into teaching and learning, and the affordances they can provide beyond the non-digital options. I argue that technical communicators (instructors) should discuss with students how and why bodies are impacted by surveillance technologies that we choose to introduce in the classroom space. Surveillance systems further disenfranchise students when implemented within the classroom space; technologies, applications, and learning management systems are useful and are often helpful tools but must be critically analyzed. Many of the technologies, as will be mentioned in the chapter’s case examples, proved to be inequitable for students across the globe.
A Call to Pause
Providing access for students, emphasizing equity and collaboration, and designing technologies and courses to be diverse and just, are ways teacher-educators and researchers may approach technological application evaluation(s). Such principles are replicable, that is, at the core of critical questioning of technologies and their implications, the cases in practice that I reference throughout the chapter can be transferable to various classroom contexts and levels globally. From my own positionality, the specific examples presented explore my role as a university instructor who taught virtual and hybrid during the COVID-19 lockdown. I also describe a few specific technologies that were implemented in my settings, and why they should have been critically examined prior to implementation.
With the shift to hybrid and virtual during the COVID-19 pandemic, a mass rush to innovate new platforms, applications, and technologies emerged. Many of the ‘innovations’ were implemented or introduced within classrooms across the globewithout being critically evaluated for their surveillant impacts. Further, students experienced hyper-surveillance outside of the classroom: biometric technologies, for example, severely influenced disciplinary regulation with students being required to allow remote proctoring services to access to their homes, faces, iris, and more. This created not just an invasion of privacy, but also severe discriminatory impacts for students who were deemed ‘non-compliant’ because the biometric technologies could not scan their faces, nor account for other instances where their keyboard strokes or irises acted outside of the ‘norm.’
Based on the situated examples within the chapter, specific cases in practice, and assignments, as technical communicators we can critically examine how the choice of technology impacts students within and outside of the classroom space. More importantly, through care work and transparency, we can learn how to effectively integrate technologies into teaching and learning. We should all consider the tools and technologies we bring into the classroom: what are the global surveillant impacts of such applications, and what are their impacts on technical communicators, and students?
For an open access link to the chapter, click here.
A Note: I define surveillance as “the collection of both visible and invisible data/information derived from those being observed, suggesting an application of power over the observed audience, who are often not informed of such collection” (Banville, 2023, p. 32). Technological impacts on students refer to in/visible surveillance and ethical concerns, particularly the ways that surveillance technologies are not neutral and are discriminatory (see for example Noble, 2018 and Benjamin, 2019).
References
Banville, M.C. (2024). Exploring the [Surveillant] Impacts of Technology: A Case for Meaningful Integration. Global Perspectives on Teaching with Technology: Theories, Case Studies, and Integration Strategies. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003406631-3
Banville, M.C. (2023). Am I who I say I am? the illusion of choice: Biometric identification in healthcare (Order No. 30603350). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (2830119112). Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/am-i-who-say-illusion-choice-biometric/docview/2830119112/se-2
Bowdon, M. (2004). Technical communication and the role of the public intellectual: A community HIV-prevention case study. Technical Communication Quarterly, 13(3), 325-340. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15427625tcq1303_6
Jones, N.N. (2016). The technical communicator as advocate: Integrating a social justice approach in technical communication. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 46(3), 342–361. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047281616639472
Walton, R., Moore, K., & Jones, N. (2019). Technical communication after the social justice turn: Building coalitions for action. Routledge.