3. Conduct EdTech Audit

Making ethical decisions about technologies, or technoethical decisions, can be challenging because there are an array of possible questions, concerns, and issues. We draw on three different approaches developed by contributors to our Civics of Technology project to help ask the types of critical questions necessary to avoid harm to those in our classrooms, communities, and world. The three approaches include (a) conducting a technoethical audit, (b) conducting a discriminatory design audit, and (c) asking our 5 critical questions about technology. We hope that the earlier dystopian imagining activities will spur students to think critically about the technology they audit. Ultimately, students and educators should draw conclusions about ethical issues and make decisions about whether to use a technology as is, modify settings or uses of a technology, or not use a technology. They then may take informed action to encourage other classrooms,  districts,  or communities to use, modify, or exclude particular technologies.

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  • Technoethical Audit

    There have been several versions of questions developed for teachers and students to conduct technoethical audits of edtech. The first set of questions appeared in the Krutka, Heath, and Staudt Willet (2019) article below, but we have simplified them here. Teachers and students can use, modify, and adapt these questions for technoethical audits appropriate to their context.

    1. How is the environment affected by this technology?

    2. How does the design of this technology impact people?

    3. What are the company’s business practices (ex: labor, profits)?

    4. What laws/policies apply to this technology?

    5. What are the intended effects of this technology?

    6. What are the unintended, unobvious, and disproportionate effects of this technology?

    7. Is the creation, design, and use of this technology just, particularly for minoritized or vulnerable groups?

    8. In what ways does this technology encourage and discourage learning?

    9. How would your experience change if you did not use this technology?

    10. Considering your answers above, are there hazards associate with this technology that should stop its use?

    Handout

  • Discriminatory Design Audit

    The following four discriminatory design audit questions below were adapted out of Ruha Benjamin’s 2019 book, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. We recommend reading this book or watching documentaries like Coded Bias (2020) for examples of discriminatory design. Krutka, Seitz, and Hadi conducted this example audit of Zoom at the beginning of the pandemic as schools turned to the service for remote teaching and learning. Teachers and students may use, modify, and adapt these questions for their own contexts.

    1. Are social biases engineered into the technology?

    2. Do default settings allow for discrimination against more vulnerable groups?

    3. Does the technology recognize or treat groups differently in ways that cause disproportionate harm to vulnerable groups?

    4. Does the technology reinforce social biases even though it purports to fix problems?

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  • Five Critical Questions About Tech

    Humans tend to be optimistic about technologies because immediate benefits are often obvious. These five critical questions about technology can be used for critically inquiring into the collateral, unintended, and disproportionate effects of technologies, including educational technologies.

    These questions were adapted by Dan Krutka and Scott Metzger from a 1998 talk referenced below by Neil Postman. You can find more infrormation about these questions on the Curriculum page of this site. Teachers and students may use, modify, and adapt these questions for their own contexts.

    1. What does society give up for the benefits of this technology? 

    2. Who is harmed and who benefits from this technology?

    3. What does this technology need?

    4. What are the unintended or unexpected changes caused by this technology?

    5. Why is it difficult to imagine our world without this technology? 

    Handout

  • Baldwin Test

    The Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law uses the Baldwin Test, named after James Baldwin, to encourage transparency and something closer to truth when describing technology. It includes 4 commitments:

    1) Be as specific as possible about what the technology in question is and how it works.
    2) Identify any obstacles to our own understanding of a technology that result from failures of corporate or government transparency.
    3) Name the corporations responsible for creating and spreading the technological product.
    4) Attribute agency to the human actors building and using the technology, never to the technology itself.

    Charles Logan added 3 elements:

    5) Name the technology’s theory (or theories) of learning.
    6) Describe the technology’s effects on pedagogy.
    7) Highlight the technology’s impacts on the environment.

    Students could then write a transparent press release or annotate an educational technology company’s press release or website. Click the link for more explanation and examples from Charles.

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EdTech Audit Examples

  • Foregrounding technoethics: Toward critical perspectives in technology and teacher education

    Introduces the technoethical audit in discussion of the recently introduced Teacher Educator Technology Competencies (TETCs).

    Technology & Teacher Education, 2019

    Read It

  • Example of technoethical audit of Google Classroom.

    Evaluates Google Classroom and Google Meet with a technoethical audit.

    Italian Journal of Educational Technology, 2021

    Read It

  • Don't be evil: Should we use Google in schools?

    Example of technoethical audit of the range of Google services.

    TechTrends, 2021

    Read It

  • How do we oppose racist Zoombombs?: A discriminatory design technology audit.

    Example of discriminatory design audit of Zoom from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Teaching, technology, and teacher education during the COVID-19 pandemic: Stories from the field | 2020

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Background readings

We offer four background “readings” to think about the biases of educational technologies. First, an article by Marie Heath and Pamela Segal that challenges race-evasive assumptions about edtech. Second, a video by Dan Krutka that tries to answer the question, what is educational technology?

 

Heath, M. K., & Segal, P. (2021). What pre-service teacher technology integration conceals and reveals:“Colorblind” technology in schools. Computers & Education, 170, 104225.

Benjamin, R. (2019). Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the New Jim Code. Polity;