 Well, good afternoon everybody. Welcome to this session. My name is Sheila McNeil and I'm delighted to be introducing Nicole Allen, who's going to talk about open education data analytics and the future of knowledge infrastructure. So without further ado, over to you, Nicole. Well, thanks so much. It's exciting to be here and I know that I have picked a very ambitious title for a 15 minute talk, but we're going to dive right in. And I want to know, I'm doing this talk without slides, but I did put together a slide deck with just a couple of resources and the framework I'm going to be talking about. So I'm putting that in the chat right now for anybody who wants to take a look after the talk. So two years ago at this conference, I gave a talk that was entitled holding the line on open and an evolving courseware landscape. And focus was all about how the traditional publishing industry in North America at least was starting to co-opt the open education movement as it began its sort of transition to the digital format. And starting about five years back, we started to see publishers starting to market their products using the same arguments that that OER has used for years, phrases like affordable day one access to high quality course materials or using the kind of statistics about high textbook prices were harming students, causing food insecurity or causing students to get lower grades, which of course are arguments that the OER movement has been using for over a decade. So, you know, recognizing that it's beyond ironic that the same texts with publishers who essentially priced a generation of students out of their course materials would be using that fact to sell more of their products. The fact that they have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on marketing allowed them to sort of get away with that. So the moral of the story, or at least in the talk that I gave two years ago was that the publishing industry is starting to steal OER's lines. And if they're going to do that, we need to start changing the script. At the time, I talked about how, you know, for the open education movement to continue to grow and benefit more students, we really needed to focus on the other things that that openness has to offer, that the traditional model never can, you know, from decolonizing education, supporting innovative pedagogical practices, expanding academic freedom. And this talk today, I wanted to sort of return to this idea of changing the script and talk about it specifically in the context of the need for action against the rise of unchecked data analytics and surveillance in higher education, using a solutions framework developed by my organization Spark directly about that problem to talk about what the opportunities for open education are to sort of be part of that solution. So I recognize that that's kind of a lot, but I promise this is all going to come together at the end. So, you know, I think we've all seen how data analytics has grown in higher education, whether we're on campus or off campus, virtually every aspect of campus life generates massive streams of data, you know, whether that's your behavior doing a zoom call or each time you swipe your key card to enter a dorm or classroom. And, you know, in some cases, universities have things like apps that track where students are on campus. And their vendors lining up around the corner to offer analytic services that analyze this data to predict things, you know, everything from like broadband optimization to energy needs. And, you know, in the US context, even things like the potential for violent incidents on campus. So when it comes to the, you know, teaching and research processes, we're starting to see the major vendors in that space starting to snap up pieces of this data analytics infrastructure, you know, both on the collecting data side and the analysis side. And that's, you know, evident in things like the parent company of Elsevier acquiring things like Mendeley, which is a social networking site for researchers or B press, which supports library repositories. And, you know, that just collects a ton of usage and usage data that can be analyzed for trends that universities might not even be aware of, you know, for example, which researchers are collaborating with each other. So these kinds of processes are also baked into learning management systems and adaptive learning software and publishers and other vendors are in some cases, you know, again, able to know a lot more about what's happening on campus and teaching and learning than, you know, students or faculty ever would, you know, when, where students are logging in to do their homework, you know, their, how they move their mouse when they study, what kind of browser extensions they haven't saw installed in the computer and sort of so on. And with this push that the traditional textbook publishers have been making to move to digital materials, you know, using the OER rhetoric, their end goal is effectively to put a data collecting machine in every student's hands, because that's essentially what a digital textbook is or what digital courseware is. You know, we've seen a really aggressive push in the US from from textbook publishers and system offices and state legislators and, you know, even in the federal government to, you know, effectively set up systems that mandate a shift to digital through automatic billing, which, you know, not only forces the students to purchase the textbooks, but to effectively accept whatever terms of service the publisher has set for those materials, because if their only option is to use a digital textbook, or not take the class, it doesn't leave them with much of a choice. And Billy Meinke and others have pointed out that this is effectively signing students up for surveillance, and is only going to accelerate the amount of data these companies are amassing over time and what they're able to monetize with with data analytics. And of course, some of the surveillance in all of this is quite a bit less subtle, most notably the rise of remote proctoring tools like Proctorio and ProctorU during the pandemic, especially, you know, of course, they exist before then. And, you know, those tools put students through strict and sometimes, you know, mortifying procedures to prove that they're not attempting to cheat on tests and are just like deeply problematic, not just for the privacy issues, but because of the biases that are inherently built into the algorithms that are making decisions about whether students behavior looks like, quote, cheating, you know, which can penalize students for natural eye movements or even just their appearance. And, you know, as we know from from scholars like Safiya Noble, there's no such thing as an unbiased algorithm. Algorithms contain the biases of the humans who built them and the whatever, you know, errors are built within the data that they analyze. And the result is discrimination against people who are already marginalized in our society, you know, whether that's people of color, you know, women of color specifically, lower socioeconomic status, you know, those with disabilities, and the list goes on. And, you know, whether we're using these algorithms in academic assessment or the admission process or adaptive learning or, you know, other parts of universities, it's already showing how the unchecked use of data analytics is pushing higher education farther away from its supposed role as a, you know, a great equalizer, which is the way it's often described, at least in the North American context. So we've talked a little bit about how these tools are harmful to individuals, individuals, but it has a collective impact to you. When universities are allowing these kind of tools into various decision making roles, they're effectively seeding control over over how they're making decisions to companies like Elsevier and Pearson, who have a vested interest in making money off of this data. And without the ability to really see inside what's happening within algorithms, and of course, that's rarely possible because they're proprietary. It's really difficult to know how, you know, vendors are going to be collecting data or processing it or using it in ways that are harmful to students or contrary to the mission of the institution as a whole. You know, for example, there's increasing attention on reports by Sarah Landon and others that vendors like Elsevier and Thompson Reuters that regularly sell products to higher ed institutions and libraries are selling billions of data points that they've gathered through, you know, various products that they have to ICE, which is the immigration enforcement agency in the United States, which is of course, you know, deeply, deeply problematic. And, you know, there's no evidence that this is happening. But, you know, imagine if companies like Proctorio are doing that, you know, companies that have literally seen inside students' houses or seen their IDs in order for them to take a test and get a grade and get their degree. And, you know, what happens is these products and vendors become more deeply embedded in how institutions function. So all of this to say, there is a very urgent need for higher education to act around the use of data analytics and surveillance and take action to sort of get control of how these products are being deployed. And this is where I want to start bringing it back to open education and talk about how openness can be part of the solution. So this conversation really is an opportunity for open education because it's taking the conversation out of sort of the traditional space where we're just focusing on teaching and learning, and it connects it to infrastructure, strategic planning, you know, broader equity issues at the institution that, you know, aren't directly linked to the teaching and learning process. So obviously, openness doesn't solve all of these problems. But linking it to these larger issues can be a way to advocate for the importance of open education and sort of embedded in larger pieces of the institution's conversation. So my organization Spark has produced a landscape analysis and solutions framework for institutions to take back control of their digital infrastructure from the publishing industries, increasing attempts to acquire it. And the framework falls into three parts. And I'm going to mention what an open education can help address the framework. The first set of actions is risk mitigation, or actions that can be taken right now to slow down and mitigate the harms of these kinds of technologies, whether that's conducting a data inventory or updating your privacy policies, centralizing decision making, or contracting, you know, things, things that can be done right now to mitigate the risks of these resources. And in this category, I would say that the biggest opportunity for open education is to really present open pedagogy and open educational practicing practices as an alternative to proctoring. So rather than subjecting students to surveillance, invest in professional development and course redesign that assists instructors to develop assessments that leverage renewable assignments or discussion or other open practices that don't rely on proctoring. And institutions can also increase transparency by making sure that students are aware of the terms of service when they're signing up for a course. So the second category of actions is strategic choices. So these are the sort of, you know, ethical dichotomies that are presented by the use of data analytics and need to have a campus wide conversation about what's right for the campus culture, you know, for example, what is the right balance between human and AI decision making, you know, recognizing that that both are important and, and, you know, can help accelerate higher education's missions. And, you know, things like decisions between qualitative and quantitative metrics and research or evaluation or faculty evaluation. And we may have our opinions on this, but it's important for, you know, each campus culture to sort of grapple with them. And I think the debate where open education can play a role here is around the like trust versus verification and how institutions handle academic integrity. So does higher education start from the posture of trust, assuming that students act with integrity, unless it's proven otherwise, versus taking a posture of dishonesty, assuming students are trying to cheat unless you create an environment to make that really hard. So I see this very much as analogous to the decisions between openness and closeness. So, you know, you put a license on a material trusting that people are going to use it responsibly rather than keeping it locked down. So, you know, not even the well intentioned people can use it. So, you know, the ethos of openness can be very useful in navigating these difficult issues. So finally, the last area of actions is around community solutions, which leverage the collective needs and market power of higher education to really regain larger control over larger pieces of infrastructure. So, for example, like algorithms that could allow for some transparency under community governance and, you know, also developing common policies and contract negotiations strategies that could keep sort of the worst practices of vendors in check. And in this area, I think the biggest opportunity for open education is just to start talking about OER as content infrastructure. You know, curriculum is just important as the pipes and sidewalks that underpin our universities. And it's the necessary scaffolding on which teaching and learning is built. And it's I think we need to start talking about it that way. And the pandemic showed us how it's literally dangerous to count on external vendors to supply that infrastructure. You know, it's one thing when you can pass around a print copy of a textbook without any limitations, but when it suddenly becomes unsafe to touch objects held by another person, it's a problem when the gatekeeper to course digital course materials refuses to sell a license to a digital copy of the library, for example. So talking about OER is content infrastructure that can truly be owned and controlled by the community and not rented by commercial players is, you know, a really sort of exciting direction that we can take OER. It's not to say that it's simple. Certainly, there are examples like open stacks or the great work happening at Carnegie Mellon University. But, you know, higher education should be thinking about OER is critical infrastructure worth investing in. So just to sum up, you know, what I've presented here are some ways that data analytics and surveillance are sort of harming higher education in some ways that open education can be leveraged as a direct solution to those harms. And I'm happy to engage in any questions or discussion at this point. That was great. Thank you so much, Nicole, so much to think about there. And I think that reflects quite a lot of the themes that particularly from the opening plenary today as well. So thank you. We do have one question from Jonathan here. And he's saying, is it fair to say that a strong push for a floss and infrastructure classroom offices and student devices would be a big step in the direction that you've been advocating in your presentation? Yeah, so hey, Jonathan, thanks for the question. And I would say that it can be part of it. So the way that Spark has approached this question of like, what is community owned infrastructure? I think the first step is just like governance and making sure that the pieces of infrastructure are controlled by the community, regardless of sort of how they're built, how they're licensed, how how they're owned, or I guess possessed. How about that? So I think floss definitely is one pathway to that. And, you know, in many ways, like things, things like algorithms, making those open or, you know, having pieces of infrastructure that that can be locally adapted and used. And certainly in the case of content infrastructure, I think open licensing is very important. But I would say that, you know, it's one pathway, but not the only the only pathway. And I was really struck just while we're waiting for some more questions come through in the comments section. And by just that that notion of changing the script because of, you know, in some ways it's flattering in a way that some of the the narrative from where you are have been taken by the public shows because they're obviously working. But how we reclaim that then is really important. So you talked about community and curriculum. And I think this is more a comment than a question. But I think one of the things that we need to do now is actually there has been quite a lot of focus on technology over the past year. But also the importance of humanity, I think, has come through really strongly as well, hasn't it? So I think it's how we do that, how we say that, you know, you can't just buy the solution. You have to talk with people about how we are going to move forward, how we're all going to develop together and bring in these other things as well. Yeah, so thank you for the comment. And I think this is yeah, an area where open education really has done a lot of deep thinking about, you know, how to bring care and humanity into the teaching and learning process. And I think that's that's sorely needed in these conversations. And, you know, as with everything, it's a dialectic, it's a shift in one direction, and then a shift in another. And the pandemic certainly forced us to very rapidly adopt some of this technology, because it was the sort of easiest ready made solution that vendors were very happy to, you know, line up around the corner to offer. But, you know, now we need to start correcting in the other other direction and just like really understand the true harms and ways that they can be mitigated. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I think that that is the trick as we all go forward, isn't it? It's how we do that and how we get people to listen and I get this conference and presentations like this are just so, so important in doing that. But going back to I think also with surveillance, I think this there's a there's a wider issue there in terms of pandemic surveillance in general and how it's slipping in and lots of different areas here in the UK. We're talking about COVID passports quite a lot. If you've had, you know, your vaccinations, which is incredibly discreet, you know, if you're under 50, you're not going to get a vaccine, your first vaccine for another couple of months at least. But that seems to be acceptable. And you know, I think that's kind of fighting back against what is actually set acceptable, what that's not really caring for the society. And also it costs so much. Sometimes the money we spend on these things, particularly in the UK with the UK government, this is a huge waste of money as well. But sorry, that's all right. But I think we've got to fight back that because surveillance is just kind of, you know, kind of coming in like the fog, isn't that just everywhere in cities? Anyway, well, we're almost at time. Thank you so much, Nicole. There was so much to think about in there. Fantastic presentation. And I know we've got another couple of questions there in the chat, but we can pick them up in the other conference areas as well. But if we could all give me, give Nicole a virtual round of applause. Thank you so much. And thank you all for joining this session. Thank you.