Reflections on week 7: infrastructures, credentialing and badging
A summary of Edwards, R. 2015. Knowledge infrastructures and the inscrutability of openness in education. Learning, Media and Technology. 40(3).pp.251-264.
What is the opportunity cost of online education? Although a term traditionally used in accounting, this seems a useful analogy here when discussing the main thrust of Edwards’ argument. “Openness alone is not an educational virtue” (p.253) as the pursuit of openness does not equate to additional educational opportunities. A path taken is a path not taken. Therefore, we need to ask ourselves “what forms of openness are worthwhile, and for whom” (my emphasis) (p.253). Except, what of the circumstances when open education does represent an additional opportunity? I’m thinking of when Dr Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare studies at the University of Oxford, made her Approaching Shakespeare lectures freely available on iTunes. For little to no extra effort on behalf of the lecturer, a series of OERs was created and distributed. I am struggling to think what the opportunity cost of this would be.
Edwards makes the important point that the positive claims made for ‘open education’ need to be checked with the following:
- the availability of electricity and bandwidth (and hardware and software)
- how digital selects data, information and knowledge
- the worthwhileness of the OERs (do they match participants goals and aspirations?)
- what is learnt, rather than what is available (much harder to measure)
- how is knowledge produced?
The paper then goes on to investigate the concept of knowledge infrastructures. Because there is a selection at play with knowledge infrastructures, we need to pay attention to the ontologies developed and deployed: ‘the digital is not a neutral tool for learning, but is an actor in shaping possibilities for education’ (p.259). This is particularly true when considering the increasing important of algorithms in our digital lives. Edwards argues that algorithms can’t be contained by the framework of current disciplines (eg computer science, sociology). They are inscrutable (Barocas, Hood, and Ziewitz 2013). This means that in answering ‘teach students to code’ to the question of hidden knowledge infrastructures is not a satisfactory one.
At this point in the paper, I was thinking, yep, this is great, but there’s a lot of description in this paper, and very little prescription. As such, I was pleased to see the author close with a reference to Edwards et al. (2013) and their ‘strategies for researching the work of the digital in knowledge infrastructures’.
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“Honor is a mere scutcheon” (Falstaff) Henry IV part I.
I’ve been thinking about this (honour is but a badge, as opposed to a badge of honour) when reading Halavais, A.M.C (2012) A Genealogy of Badges: inherited meaning and monstrous moral hybrids, Information, Communication & Society, 15:3, 354-373.
Before reading the article, I thought about what came to mind when someone mentioned badges. I thought of this. And this. And this. So, when Halavais opens his paper with ‘badges have baggage’ I am inclined to agree.
The paper starts as an interesting walkthrough of the history of different types of badges:
- Badge as persona / identity
- Badge as achievement
- Badge as member of a group
- (Because of the history of badges of dishonour, they are rarely found in the online world)
- Badge as grading of skill. This has advantages for the organisation (readily identifiable skill-set) as well as the individual (incremental rewards rather than having to wait years for mastery)
- ‘Campaign badge’. An online equivalent of a campaign badge (the overlay of a Facebook profile pic for example) serves two functions: promoting a political cause and signalling user’s interests and attitudes
- Fake badges – at present (2011) online badges are not valuable enough to bother faking. I shall have to read further to investigate if this is still the case in 2016.
I particularly enjoyed Halavais’ neat summary ‘part of the problem with badges is simply that they continue to look like badges’ (p.367). In other words, they can carry with them both intended, and unintended value leakage.
The author then introduces Jacobs’ argument in Systems of Survival (1992) that the competing values of the guardian class vs the commercial class are complementary on a social scale but when ‘the same actors engage in a combination of values from each syndrome, it produces ‘monstrous moral hybrids’ (p.368). This again reminded me of how Shakespeare explores such issues in his contrasting of the valiant Hotspur and pragmatic Falstaff. Both Hotspur and Falstaff need each other to frame what they are *not* as much as what they are. I found the argument that ’emergent governance’ and ‘stewardship governance’ (Wenger 2004), should not attempt to exert their interests through the same system, else risk ‘significant dysfunction’ (p.369) to be convincing. It also reminded me of one of the contradictions Knox (2013) highlights in Five Critiques of the Open Educational Resources Movement: ‘In proposing that university approval for qualifications will raise the perception of OER, Macintosh, McGreal, and Taylor (2011) appear to acknowledge the status and value of the institution. Yet, in advancing a model of self-directed OER learning, the pedagogical proficiency that undoubtedly contributes to the prestige of the institution is eliminated’ (p.825).
As a postscript, I notice that Mozilla created Open Badges in 2011 – the same year as the Halavais paper. I should like to write a further post on how, and if, we should review the Halavais paper in light of developments in open badges in the last five years.
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