Having looked at an example of the theories of instrumentalism and essentialism in a previous blog, I want to try and come to grips with posthumanism by using a similar format.

Critical posthumanism is the way forward in the debate around digital education and the use of technology, according to Bayne in her article about the Teacherbot (2015).  She describes several other lines of thinking that have been put forward up until now, but all have a humanist background or undertone. Looking at technology from a humanist perspective leads to “a landscape of resistance or embrace” (Bayne 2015) because the teacher is seen as the subject and the technology as the object rather than a more holistic view of the two working together and shaping each other and the work that they are performing as well.

If we truly want to engage in a meaningful debate about the use of technology in education, we need to move past the view that the technology can be a ‘fix’ or a ‘replacement’ for the teacher. This idea implies that the current way of teaching, with human teachers, is in fact not good enough and can be improved by adding technology, which can be seen as the solution. The way to achieve the next level in the debate then, is to see the human and the nonhuman at once; ”trying seeing double” or the critical posthumanist perspective.

Feedback is a big part of teaching, but not just feedback for the students, feedback for the teachers themselves is a popular tool for self-improvement. A lot of feedback is now automated. It lends itself well to the use of technology since it can speed up the process considerably. Before, a teacher would maybe hand out papers that students could complete, these would then have to be gathered again and either read by the teacher or maybe input into software by an administrator, all these steps are now missing and automated feedback can truly streamline the process. Two clinical teachers (one with a background in IT) have developed a feedback website^: https://medicalfeedback.org/ that they have made available for others. It is a very clever system that allows the tutor to gather feedback electronically through the use of QR Codes which can be shown to the students during or after the session that they have taught. The students scan the code and complete the feedback which the teacher can collect by accessing the website.

This is technology that has been shaped very clearly by the designers who are also its users and it is still a work in progress; the Clinical Educator Programme uses it and we have asked if the feedback could be seen in csv format as well as PDF to make collating easier, which has now been made possible by the designers. As such it seems like a good example of the human and the non-human working together to improve education; a posthumanist application, you could say.

Sian Bayne (2015) Teacherbot: interventions in automated teaching, Teaching in Higher Education, 20:4, 455-467, DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2015.1020783 (p 455-457)

Seeing double / Femke Morrison / An introduction to digital environments for learning (2020/2021)[SEM2] by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0