Notes from Week 4

What are the characteristics of the platform business model?

Platform business models are tech-driven models that aim to create value by enabling interactions between previously unmatched demand-side and supply-side participants. The main types of platform business models are transaction platforms (e.g. Uber, Amazon, TikTok), innovation platforms (e.g. Apple iOS, Android), integrated platforms (combining transaction and innovation, e.g. Google), investment platforms (e.g. Alphabet). Most people are exposed and/or utilize transaction platforms, using innovation platforms to access said transaction platforms.

Key characteristics:

• High switching costs—users face difficulty when moving to competing platforms, due to invested time, data, or relationships. This creates a “lock -in” effect.
• Network effects—As more users join and actively use the platform, its overall value and utility grow for all participants. Growth can be fast, exponential, and enable market dominance.
  • Co-creation of value through networking activities—Users actively contribute to the platform’s value through their goods, interactions and/or content.
• Digital data as a strategic asset—Platforms collect and analyze vast amounts of user data to improve services and create new value. This data becomes a crucial competitive advantage and source of innovation.
• High connectivity and focus on transactions—Platforms prioritize connecting different user groups and facilitating interactions or transactions between them. Some argue this distinguishes them from traditional business models, but I fail to see how this is different from ordering something from a mail order catalog.
• Importance of information goods and networks—The network facilitates the interactions and/or transactions between buyers and sellers, central to the platform’s value proposition.
• High reach and richness of information—Tech platforms can reach a global user base.
• Set of rules to support interactions—Platforms have rules, closely guarded algorithms, and governance structures to facilitate user interactions, helping to maintain, order, trust, and efficiency.
• “Enshittification”—Cory Doctorow argues this is a key characteristic of platform growth and inevitable decline, with TikTok set to bite the dust: “First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”

What benefits does platformatization offer educational institutions, teachers and learners, and their owners?

Institutions

• Reach more students = increase revenue and boost reputation
• Diverse faculty/staff talent pool to hire from
• Lower education costs
• Lower management of staff costs

Teachers

• Reach more students
• Diversity of institutions to work for
• Increase student diversity
• Improved assessment tools, reduced admin time

Learners

• Diverse faculty and students
• Reduced cost
• Asynchronous learning
• Personalized learning path

Owners

• Enables a world-wide user base (students, teachers and institutions)
• Access to user data, to improve offering and/or sell to third parties

Can these benefits be incompatible?

• Tension builds between organizations that are interested in education as a public good, such as governments, that want open, diverse education systems controlled by schools and corporate partners who push for closed ecosystems that reduce school autonomy.
• Commercialization of education will occur if educational practices are shaped more by commercial interests that pedagogy.
• Surveillance versus assessment: Large tech companies may gain increasing control over student and learning data, potentially using it for purposes beyond education.

What are the consequences of platform monopolies for education?

• Reduced autonomy for schools and teachers—As schools become more dependent on integrated platforms, they may lose the ability to make independent choices about educational tools, methods, and data management.
• Privacy concerns and potential for surveillance—Companies monitoring student and teacher behavior through data flows may not use them for educational benefits.
• Shift from public to private governance—As platform companies set technical standards and conditions, they may increasingly influence how education is organized and governed.
• Standardization versus local relevance—Curricula becomes centralized and certifications carry meaning internationally but at the expense of local context and cultural nuance, e.g. mainstream education emphasizes four seasons but the child may live in a different climate.

How can platforms be used positively?

• A platform is an educational device that should reflect the pedagogy and values of the institution and/or government, e.g. emphasizing user convenience, efficiency, personalized learning, access to diverse resources, enabling worldwide collaboration. Key aspects of the platform should be used for good, such as using data to improve student learning outcomes rather than exacting punishment (e.g. the student doesn’t complete a task and so is chastised) or revenue generation (e.g. selling data to third parties).
• Switching platforms should be easy
• Platform owners should learn about and respect the educational heritage of platforms

Oct 14, 2024

(Pictures from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Alice-in-Wonderland.net)

(Pictures from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Alice-in-Wonderland.net)