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Panopticon, Synopticon, and Omniopticon: A conceptual framework for understanding the utilization of cameras and video recordings in education
Educational Philosophy and Theory
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Surveillance, which is seen as one of the modern disciplinary methods, is first depicted in the metaphor of the panopticon prison. Using this metaphor and referring to Jeremy Bentham, Michel Foucault discussed the disciplinary role of modern power through the act of surveillance. The authority of the surveillance mechanism that develops against the will of the monitored is criticized during these times. With the development of communication tools, surveillance has evolved from the panopticon, in which a few people forcibly monitor the majority, to the synopticon, in which the many monitor the few, with the consent of the monitored. At the present time it reaches to the omnipticon, in which everyone eagerly watches each other. The new media environments have heightened the irresistible charm of surveillance. The concept of privacy has been transformed for this purpose; the distinction between private and public space has vanished and it has almost become a necessity for lives to be made public with their most private moments. This study aims to read the transformation of surveillance technology in parallel with social change. The episode Nosedive of the Black Mirror series, which deals with the possible side effects of extreme technology in our lives, has been chosen as a case study in this work and examined by qualitative content analysis method in terms of how omnipticon-style surveillance works in new media environments and the type of society it will reveal.As a result of the analysis, it was concluded that surveillance in today's society transforms individuals into a subject of performance and success, causing lives to be nothing more than a showcase, focusing on the quantity that determines the value of individuals, and that in this system where there is no room for negativity, individuals actually experience rock bottom while trying to appear happy by consuming.
Public communication has become more important to higher education institutions (HEIs), with many HEIs using social media to communicate with stakeholders. However, scholarship on the subject is scarce and mainly based on single-platform studies and small datasets. Therefore, we conducted a cross-platform study to examine the communication of all Swiss HEIs on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The results were based on two datasets: an automated analysis on data for all Swiss HEIs (n = 42) and their social media accounts from 2004 to 2021 (337,232 posts from 207 accounts), and a manual content analysis on 1,500 posts per platform. By including all HEIs in one country, this study allowed for a comparison of the results by HEI type: universities of applied sciences, universities of teacher education, and research universities. Results show that, in recent years, HEI communication increased on Instagram, but not on Facebook or Twitter. Twitter was used the most by research universities, while most Instagram and Facebook posts were from universities of applied sciences. Universities of teacher education were least active across all platforms. The content of communication across all HEI types was primarily self-referential. Our analysis of how well HEIs used the affordances of social media communication relative to hypertextuality and multimodality revealed a generally high level of adaption. Moreover, our data showed no substantial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on posting activities and engagement with social media posts by HEIs for the two first years of the pandemic.
In recent years, surveillance cameras have become common in the education system,
in early childhood child-care centres as well as in preschools and schools. Public opin‑
ion regarding the usage of security cameras in early childhood institutions is constantly
increasing due to a growing number of incidents exhibiting child abuse by caregivers.
However, meagre attention is given to the use of security cameras in early childhood
child-care centres and preschools in the literature. We examined the opinions of child
care teachers and caregivers about the implications of implementing cameras in childcare centres routines and how they reshape the relationships with parents and caregiv‑
ers in Israeli child-care centres. Seven semi-structured interviews were conducted
with seven child care teachers and caregivers. Results show that practitioners perceive
cameras as generating a disruptive efect on child care centres’ routines. CCTV cameras
may create stressful situations between parents and staf, as well as among staf, raising
issues of mistrust and privacy violation. However, cameras also serve as a means of
establishing mutual trust and maintaining good relationships with parents. This dual
impact should be addressed by policy makers and stakeholders involved, who should
be aware of the overall consequences of CCTV cameras in child care centres prior to
installing such systems.
Nowadays, social media is a common thing for every generation. Aside from entertainment and education, there are numerous business applications for this technology. By using social media, marketers can display their products in creative ways, such as creating videos. One of the most popular social media is TikTok. The research aimed to achieve more profound effects of TikTok for promoting higher education. The research applied a qualitative description by analyzing the content of a TikTok account (@uhamkapmb). Data were taken from the contents from August to October 2021. Then, the research calculated views, comments, likes, profile views, and video views of the contents and analyzed them. Supplementary, to evaluate @uhamkapmb's TikTok account, the researchers shared surveys about customers' satisfaction with the contents. The respondents were prospective and current students of UHAMKA with an age range of 18 to 25 years. Around 100 respondents were observed, and the data were processed using MS Excel. The result shows a significant increase in September (19.077,84) which is more than in August (6.941,42) and October (8.690,2) 2021. Moreover, the famous content of @uhamkapmb is re-registration. In addition, the customers agree that @uhamkapmb's contents are already complete, precise, easy to reach, and interesting.
Concerns for security and academic performance have led to the increasing use of various surveillance technologies in educational institutions. This article reports an examination of the lived experiences and subjective insights of Nepali school administrators, teachers and students into the practice of closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras. This highlights the challenges of maintaining a surveillance system to minimize risk factors and to create an educational environment in schools. This article based on a qualitative study utilized semi-structured interviews with administrators, teachers and students at three urban schools to explore their perceived value of CCTV surveillance cameras in schools, and non-participant observation to strengthen the data gathered through interviews. Findings indicate that CCTV surveillance cameras in these schools were predominantly aimed at controlling students' and teachers' non-compliant behaviors to promote academic performance. While the study explored how these schools utilized surveillance technology to their advantages, findings contribute to the practical understandings that the technology is equally subject to misuse and can victimize children, given the lack of legal regulations in place.
Public relations represent a unique way of promoting the organization, its services, or products, by promoting communication in the shared space. The purpose of the research is to describe the applicative role of public relations of the universities in enriching the social responsibility, respectively, to identify the perception of PR staff of that role. In this regard, the descriptive approach has been used, applying the questionnaire-based inquiry to a sample of 46 practitioners of PR in 13 Universities (3 Jordanian, 2 Iraqi, 2 Algerian, 2 Egyptian, 2 Emirate, 2 Libyan), which may allow us to formulate conclusions valid to such a process. The results have displayed that the distinguished reception and hospitality ceremonies has been one of the most issues that the public relations of universities try to achieve, followed by enriching the image of universities. The most ways followed by PRs to enhance social responsibility are” meetings and Conferences” and “Courses and Webinars”. The “Trips” and “Interviews on media and broadcasting” has been one of the low used ways. Relating to achievements, it is appeared that “Holding conferences on future job prospects for graduates and possible opportunities” has been the most achievements of social responsibility by PRs of universities", but the studies and reports about social responsibility achieved and published” and university participation in civil society activities” have come at the low- level.
Issue:
Technology is pervasive in medicine, but we too rarely examine how it shapes assessment, learning, knowledge, and performance. Cultures of assessment also shape identities, social relations, and the knowledge and behavior recognized as legitimate by a profession. Therefore, the combination of technology and assessment within medical education is worthy of review. Online proctoring services have become more prevalent during the Covid-19 pandemic, as a means of continuing high-stakes invigilated examinations online. With criticisms about increased surveillance, discrimination, and the outsourcing of control to commercial vendors, is this simply "moving exams online", or are there more serious implications? What can this extreme example tell us about how our technologies of assessment influence relationships between trainees and medical education institutions?
Evidence:
We combine postdigital and postphenomenology approaches to analyze the written component of the 2020 online proctored United Kingdom Royal College of Physicians (MRCP) membership exam. We examine the scripts, norms, and trust relations produced through this example of online proctoring, and then locate them in historical and economic contexts. We find that the proctoring service projects a false objectivity that is undermined by the tight script with which examinees must comply in an intensified norm of surveillance, and by the interpretation of digital data by unseen human proctors. Nonetheless, such proctoring services are promoted by an image of data-driven innovation, a rhetoric of necessity in response to a growing problem of online cheating, and an aversion, within medical education institutions, to changing assessment formats (and thus the need to accept different forms of knowledge as legitimate).
Implications:
The use of online proctoring technology by medical education institutions intensifies established norms, already present within examinations, of surveillance and distrust. Moreover, it exacerbates tensions between conflicting agendas of commercialization, accountability, and the education of trustworthy professionals. Our analysis provides an example of why it is important to stop and consider the holistic implications of introducing technological "solutions", and to interrogate the intersection of technology and assessment practices in relation to the wider goals of medical education.
In recent years, online learning has received more attention than ever before. One of the most challenging aspects of online education is the students' assessment since academic integrity could be violated due to various cheating behaviors in online examinations. Although a considerable number of literature reviews exist about online learning, there is no such review study to provide comprehensive insight into cheating motivations, cheating types, cheating detection, and cheating prevention in the online setting. The current study is a review of 58 publications about online cheating, published from January 2010 to February 2021. We present the categorization of the research and show topic trends in the field of online exam cheating. The study can be a valuable reference for educators and researchers working in the field of online learning to obtain a comprehensive view of cheating mitigation, detection, and prevention.
The pandemic situation continues to influence teaching and learning in higher education, with students oftentimes participating in synchronous videoconferencing sessions as a means to interact with peers and instructors. The frequently noted non-use of webcams by students incited the current study, investigating usage behavior as well as potentially related course variables and individual characteristics. N = 3,527 students from a German university took part in an online survey at the end of the regular summer term 2020 (August 2020). Findings indicate that students’ webcam usage behavior was related to personal thoughts and feelings (e.g., privacy), to course characteristics (e.g., group cohesion), and it differed due to specific groups (gender, study level). With the ongoing importance of videoconferencing in higher education, this study provides a foundation for further investigation into this synchronous learning context.
The technological revolution has filtered into the field of education and among other things, affects communication between parents and teachers in schools and in kindergartens. A digital method for interpersonal communications enables the immediate transfer of messages to a large number of recipients, which is efficient and ensures transparency of actions and policies. The WhatsApp application is now widely used in correspondence between parents and schools, including in kindergartens. The research investigated how kindergarten teachers in Israel use the social media "WhatsApp" in communication with their parents. Using a quantitative research approach, a specially designed questionnaire was distributed online as a Google.docs document to 161 kindergarten teachers in the North of Israel. The kindergarten teachers reported that they were open to change and willing to adopt new technologies that can help them in their work. However, it appears that the main adoption and use of the WhatsApp tool is for the transmission of information or kindergarten experiences to the parents. The kindergarten teachers felt that the WhatsApp application was advantageous due to its easy accessibility and speed of communication and testified to more sharing and involvement of the parents in the kindergarten activities and work. Nevertheless, several questions led to concerns about the mutual availability of the information that is transmitted, the type of information, and the extent of need for the use of this tool in the present era.
Since, in some higher education institutions, it is not mandatory for students to turn their webcams on during online classes, teachers have complained that their students have adopted this behaviour once the educational activities moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Considering this, the present research aimed to identify the reasons behind students’ choice to hide their faces during online classes and find possible solutions to remedy the situation to enhance the educational process’s sustainability. Thus, this article presents the results obtained by applying an online questionnaire between December 2020 and January 2021 among the students pursuing an academic degree, recording 407 responses. The results highlighted the fact that more than half of the students participating in the study reported that they do not agree to keep their webcams on during online classes, the main reasons being anxiety/fear of being exposed/shame/shyness, desire to ensure privacy of the home/personal space, and chances that other people might walk into the background. The relevance of the research, besides the scarcity of studies on the topic, is also given by the fact that finding and understanding the reasons for this behaviour are, in fact, the first steps in undertaking regulatory interventions on it.
The emergence of the coronavirus diseases 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has transformed traditional classroom education to online learning worldwide. Challenges to this sudden transformation include protecting student privacy while using online medical education services. Consequently, dealing with challenges to online medical education became a heated debate at Alfaisal University. This study aimed to determine the challenges of using webcams during online classes and the ensuing implications for medical education during the COVID-19 pandemic. A cross-sectional study was conducted during the 2020-2021 academic year. The study investigators developed and validated a self-administered online questionnaire that targeted preclinical and clinical medical students at Alfaisal University, which is a private not-for-profit academic institution that was founded in 2008. Alfaisal University consists of five colleges: Medicine, Business, Engineering, Pharmacy, and Science. A total of 319 medical students completed the study questionnaire, with a response rate of 25%. The median age of the study sample was 21 years, with 63.3% females; 78.1% were in preclinical (first to third) years and 21.9% were in clinical (fourth to fifth) years. Of the respondents, 76.5% reported not using webcams when communicating via social media and 64.3% preferred blended learning, i.e., a combination of face-to-face and online learning. An overwhelming majority (91.5%) of study respondents were against using webcams in online classes for reasons including privacy (88.4%) and anxiety (64.4%). Privacy was the main concern of study respondents. Information about online privacy, including information being collected and how it will be used, should be provided to the students. Effective strategies to improve online learning experiences and protect the privacy of students should be explored.
Enrollment in courses taught remotely in higher education has been on the rise, with a recent surge in response to a global pandemic. While adapting this form of teaching, instructors familiar with traditional face-to-face methods are now met with a new set of challenges, including students not turning on their cameras during synchronous class meetings held via videoconferencing. After transitioning to emergency remote instruction in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, our introductory biology course shifted all in-person laboratory sections into synchronous class meetings held via the Zoom videoconferencing program. Out of consideration for students, we established a policy that video camera use during class was optional, but encouraged. However, by the end of the semester, several of our instructors and students reported lower than desired camera use that diminished the educational experience. We surveyed students to better understand why they did not turn on their cameras. We confirmed several predicted reasons including the most frequently reported: being concerned about personal appearance. Other reasons included being concerned about other people and the physical location being seen in the background and having a weak internet connection, all of which our exploratory analyses suggest may disproportionately influence underrepresented minorities. Additionally, some students revealed to us that social norms also play a role in camera use. This information was used to develop strategies to encourage –without requiring– camera use while promoting equity and inclusion. Broadly, these strategies are to not require camera use, explicitly encourage usage while establishing norms, address potential distractions, engage students with active learning, and understand your students’ challenges through surveys. While the demographics and needs of students vary by course and institution, our recommendations will likely be directly helpful to many instructors and also serve as a model for gathering data to develop strategies more tailored for other student populations.
This chapter examines the global marketing environment of today's higher education institutions (HEIs). (Semi) Autonomous HEIs and business schools are increasingly behaving like for-profit organisations as they seek new opportunities and resources to prioritise revenue creation. Therefore, they are diversifying the portfolio of their student populations by recruiting domestic and international students. In this light, this contribution deliberates on contemporary integrated marketing communications that are intended to support HEIs to promote their quality, student-centred education as well as their high-impact and meaningful research in global markets. Moreover, it reports on how HEIs' marketing endeavours will be able to forge fruitful and collaborative relationships with industry stakeholders; foster student mobility and engagement in exchange programmes, as they can create partnership agreements with other institutions, among other strategic avenues. These issues imply that tomorrow's educational institutions will have to keep investing in adequate resources, competences and capabilities to leverage themselves amid intensifying competition in challenging socioeconomic environments.
Facial recognition technology is now being introduced across various aspects of public life. This includes the burgeoning integration of facial recognition and facial detection into compulsory schooling to address issues such as campus security, automated registration and student emotion detection. So far, these technologies have largely been seen as routine additions to school systems with already extensive cultures of monitoring and surveillance. While critical commentators are beginning to question the pedagogical limitations of facially driven learning, other this article contends that school-based facial recognition presents a number of other social challenges and concerns that merit specific attention. This includes the likelihood of facial recognition technology altering the nature of schools and schooling along divisive, authoritarian and oppressive lines. Against this background, the article considers whether or not a valid case can ever be made for allowing this form of technology in schools.
This article provides a history of private sector tracking technologies, examining how the advent of commercial surveillance centered around a logic of data capitalism. Data capitalism is a system in which the commoditization of our data enables an asymmetric redistribution of power that is weighted toward the actors who have access and the capability to make sense of information. It is enacted through capitalism and justified by the association of networked technologies with the political and social benefits of online community, drawing upon narratives that foreground the social and political benefits of networked technologies. I examine its origins in the wake of the dotcom bubble, when technology makers sought to develop a new business model to support online commerce. By leveraging user data for advertising purposes, they contributed to an information environment in which every action leaves behind traces collected by companies for commercial purposes. Through analysis of primary source materials produced by technology makers, journalists, and business analysts, I examine the emergence of data capitalism between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s and its central role in the contemporary information economy.
E-learning and distance education have received a great attention in today's life. The key challenge in e-learning is the assessment of students in online exams. This is because, cheating in online exam is so easy. Hence online proctoring is necessary to prevent cheating in online exams. At the present time online proctoring is not automatic and it is done manually by human. In this paper we propose an automatic cheating detection method in online exams by processing the student's webcam images. The proposed method has been tested on real students and the evaluation results shows that it can be applied in online exams effectively.
Privacy, surveillance, and government abuse of data are concerns of many people in our complex digital world. ‘Big Brother’ in the title of this article is a metaphorical warning about the consequences if government uses modern technologies to maintain power and control people. Issues related to the abuse of data and surveillance are not new in the academic literature and mass market media, the current threat is however greater. Technology has advanced to the point where George Orwell’s dystopian ‘Big Brother’ vision of a totalitarian state is possible. Because of technology advances, barriers associated with collecting and processing real-time data about many millions of individuals have been removed. This article explores how the capture and use of new data streams, and processing with AI and predictive analytics can support government control of its citizens. Some components of a system for thought control and real-time surveillance are already in use. These components like cameras, sensors, No SQL databases, predictive analytics, and artificial intelligence can be connected and improved. Decision support researchers must understand the issues and resist attempts to use information technologies to support current or future totalitarian governments.
Travel abroad provides college students with a unique learning experience. When plans to take undergraduate community health nursing students from the United States to Haiti were cancelled due to health and safety concerns, faculty piloted international videoconferencing with a nursing program in Haiti as an alternative. During this semester-long course, students in both countries assessed a local community using the Community as Partner framework and compared findings during videoconferences with their international peers. Despite communication challenges such as language barriers and limited internet access in Haiti, evaluative data suggests that all students valued learning with their nursing student peers in another country. For future international videoconferencing endeavors, especially with under-resourced communities, we provide recommendations in the following categories: 1) Building relationships with a partner school, 2) Technology, 3) Pedagogy, and 4) Facilitating interactions between students.
This paper aims to provide an overview of surveillance theories and concepts that can help to understand and debate surveillance in its many forms. As scholars from an increasingly wide range of disciplines are discussing surveillance, this literature review can offer much-needed common ground for the debate. We structure surveillance theory in three roughly chronological/thematic phases. The first two conceptualise surveillance through comprehensive theoretical frameworks which are elaborated in the third phase. The first phase, featuring Bentham and Foucault, offers architectural theories of surveillance, where surveillance is often physical and spatial, involving centralised mechanisms of watching over subjects. Panoptic structures function as architectures of power, not only directly but also through (self-) disciplining of the watched subjects. The second phase offers infrastructural theories of surveillance, where surveillance is networked and relies primarily on digital rather than physical technologies. It involves distributed forms of watching over people, with increasing distance to the watched and often dealing with data doubles rather than physical persons. Deleuze, Haggerty and Ericson, and Zuboff develop different theoretical frameworks than panopticism to conceptualise the power play involved in networked surveillance. The third phase of scholarship refines, combines or extends the main conceptual frameworks developed earlier. Surveillance theory branches out to conceptualise surveillance through concepts such as dataveillance, access control, social sorting, peer-to-peer surveillance and resistance. With the datafication of society, surveillance combines the physical with the digital, government with corporate surveillance and top-down with self-surveillance.
Worldwide, schools are increasingly turning to technology to monitor the school environment with a view
to providing a safer environment and improving school discipline. The use of surveillance technology in
society is not new and the public will often find themselves on camera in public places and at public events
in the interest of public safety and security. However, the use of surveillance devices such as webcams in
classrooms to monitor student behaviour and observe teacher performance raises concerns about privacy and
data protection. This article considers the role of surveillance technology, in particular webcams, in school
safety and discipline, and the balance between making schools safe and respecting peoples’ right to privacy.
Issues relating to privacy and data protection with reference to relevant aspects of Commonwealth law and,
in particular, law pertaining to schools in Western Australia are discussed. The article concludes with some
guidelines for developing school polices on the acceptable use of surveillance devices in schools.
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are one of the most prominent trends in higher education in recent years. The term ‘MOOCs’ represents open access, global, free, video-based instructional content, videos, problem sets and forums released through an online platform to high volume participants aiming to take a course or to be educated. With time and place flexibility, MOOCs gathers scholars and ‘like-minded fellow learners around the globe’. Although it has a great prominence in its implementation, there is a lack of research studies and critical papers examining its current situation around the world. For this aim, beginning with the definition and a brief history of MOOCs, this paper examines it from various dimensions: pedagogical and technological implementations around the world and its research focus. Therefore, a literature review on MOOCs characteristics, timeline of its development and a blend of practical issues with the experiences of well-known MOOCs providers are presented.
This study explores the subculture of teachers and teaching on TikTok, known in the vernacular as ‘TeachTok’, through a daily walkthrough method, a digital ethnography immersion, and an audio-visual content analysis to understand how teachers participate in the micro-celebrification process. By curating a framework that assesses teachers' identities on social media, from May to July 2021 we closely monitored the accounts of 12 teachers alongside the general discourse of teaching on the platform to understand how they discussed their ‘responsibilities’, ‘commitment’, ‘authority’, and ‘recognition’ among their communities. ‘TeachTok’ was observed to adopt micro-celebrification practices through empathetic, resilient and storytelling dynamics.
One of the phenomena that lecturers who switched to online distance
learning during COVID-19 reported is the refusal of students to turn on
their cameras during online classes. This study aimed to examine the
factors that predict the opening of cameras in class. The study examined
this issue regarding three types of predictors: resistance factors, learning
environment factors, and personal factors. The population included 205
students from higher education institutions in Israel who studied online
during the COVID-19 period. Data were collected using an online
questionnaire and analyzed using quantitative and qualitative methods.
The findings show that camera opening among students during
academic classes is indeed relatively low and only partial. The study also
revealed four rejection factors to turning on cameras and personal
characteristics, such as gender and self-image, that predict students’ rate
of turning on cameras. However, the more the lecturers demanded to
open cameras, the higher the students’ responsiveness, and the smaller
the classroom, the greater the willingness to turn on cameras. Finally, the
findings may help lecturers better understand the students’ perspectives
of camera use in online classes and develop effective strategies to
increase turning on cameras by students.
During a tumultuous period marked by a global pandemic, forced lockdowns, and educational institutions going ‘digital by default’, TikTok has emerged as a key platform for teachers to connect and share their experiences. These digital practices have been widely celebrated for providing teachers with an outlet during a challenging time, though little is known about the particulars of TikTok's appeal among teachers and their followers. This article focuses on a teacher from South Australia, ‘Mr Luke’, whose upbeat TikTok videos capturing ‘#teacherlife’ have seen him grow a significant following. Drawing on interviews with Mr Luke and an Australian pre-service teacher who follows him, we consider their thoughts on TikTok and its relationship to professional practice. We identify key factors that have enabled TikTok's popularity among educators, with implications for both teacher education and social media scholarship.
Scientists, researchers and academia, independently of their area of study, should communicate their scientific knowledge, results, achievements and impact in a clear and accessible language, using the adequate tools in order to facilitate the spread of information among a larger audience. But when we refer to medicine and biology, this turns out to be even more important because is one area that impacts directly on all citizens, independently if we are talking about technical, medical, scientific research, marketing, public relations or science education communication (Guide to Science and Medical Communication, https://www.mastersincommunications.com/).
As Co-Chair of the UK Political Studies Association Teaching and Learning Network, the author worked on a webinar series for Politics and IR academics on teaching and learning online. The aim was to meet the development needs of academics suddenly tasked with moving into online teaching due to Covid-19, thus addressing the teaching and learning needs of students at the same time. This short essay highlights the key learning points.
As part of the Special Section: Technology & Pandemic, this article examines the experience of teaching and learning via Zoom. I examine how technologies mediate the learning process with the postphenomenological notions of embodiment and hermeneutic relations. This section serves as a basis for understanding the transformation of that process into online learning. The next section is named “the Zoom-bie”—a combination of the words Zoom and zombie. The figure of the Zoom-bie provides me a way to critically review the new practices experienced in the spring semester of 2020. After analyzing the variations of the learning process with a fresh look at embodiment and hermeneutic relations, the last section titled “the digital classroom” examines this transformation from an alternative point-of-view, that of the classroom as a technology-saturated background.
Objective
This study investigated the impact of the Webinar on deep human learning of CHD.
Materials and methods
This cross-sectional survey design study used an open and closed-ended questionnaire to assess the impact of the Webinar on deep learning of topical areas within the management of the post-operative tetralogy of Fallot patients. This was a quantitative research methodology using descriptive statistical analyses with a sequential explanatory design.
Results
One thousand-three-hundred and seventy-four participants from 100 countries on 6 continents joined the Webinar, 557 (40%) of whom completed the questionnaire. Over 70% of participants reported that they “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that the Webinar format promoted deep learning for each of the topics compared to other standard learning methods (textbook and journal learning). Two-thirds expressed a preference for attending a Webinar rather than an international conference. Over 80% of participants highlighted significant barriers to attending conferences including cost (79%), distance to travel (49%), time commitment (51%), and family commitments (35%). Strengths of the Webinar included expertise, concise high-quality presentations often discussing contentious issues, and the platform quality. The main weakness was a limited time for questions. Just over 53% expressed a concern for the carbon footprint involved in attending conferences and preferred to attend a Webinar.
Conclusion
E-learning Webinars represent a disruptive innovation, which promotes deep learning, greater multidisciplinary participation, and greater attendee satisfaction with fewer barriers to participation. Although Webinars will never fully replace conferences, a hybrid approach may reduce the need for conferencing, reduce carbon footprint. and promote a “sustainable academia”.
In the last decade, social media have become important tools for educator professional development, learning and community. While education has traditionally proven to be an isolating profession, technologies such as Twitter offer opportunities for educators to collaborate beyond their school, district, region and nation. Education-related Twitter hashtags play a key role in facilitating professional connections and interactions between geographically-dispersed educators with common interests and needs. To better understand this phenomenon, we examined more than 2.6 million tweets posted to 16 such education-related hashtags over a 13-month time period. We compared and contrasted synchronous and asynchronous uses of the hashtags, as well as the balance of tweets and retweets, among other characteristics of the hashtag usage. Across the combined hashtags, there was an increase in traffic and trends towards more retweeting and less original tweeting and link sharing. There were substantial differences in the traffic associated with the various hashtags. We discuss our findings in relation to the professional learning and development literature and consider implications for the research and practice of prospective and practicing teacher development in online spaces.
Harsh and reactionary school security measures, including policing, surveillance technology, and emergency preparedness strategies increased substantially in the two decades following the mass shooting at Columbine High School in 1999. These strategies have limited empirical support for preventing violence in general and mass shootings, in particular. Instead, they have proven to be problematic, often doing more harm than good by criminalizing student misbehavior, contributing to negative school climate, and having psychological impacts on students’ perceptions of safety. In recent years, many schools have started to explore promising alternative approaches, including threat assessment, positive behavioral interventions, restorative practices, and improving relationships between students and adults. This article reviews the trends in school security from the 1990s through the present, drawing on national data from the U.S. Department of Education and scholarly research on school security. Our specific focus will be on the changes in school security that have been made to prevent or minimize the impact of potential school shooters. We also discuss the consequences of the school security boom and the future directions to ensure school safety.
This paper critically examines the ways in which ClassDojo is altering the disciplinary landscape in schools through the datafication of discipline and student behaviour. ClassDojo is one of the most popular and successful educational technologies and is used internationally. It is a school-based social media platform that incorporates a gamified behaviour-shaping function, providing school communities with a centralised digital network in which to interact. We argue that ClassDojo’s datafying system of school discipline intensifies and normalises the surveillance of students. Furthermore, it creates a culture of performativity and serves as a mechanism for behaviour control.
Free link to full-text: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/P446cBEmgrX8pNNy4eCP/full?target=10.1080/17439884.2018.1558237
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are one of the latest innovations in higher education. They represent a classic example of a phenomenon called disruptive innovation. This article traces the origins of MOOCs and the reasons for their rapid development in digital education. MOOCs may or may not survive in their present form, but by considering the issues they seem designed to confront, those who work in higher education can gain valuable insight into what forces are shaping the future of the field and how we can proactively engage in that shaping process.
The potential influence of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on higher education institutions is much discussed and debated, with some arguing that MOOCs are a disruptive innovation that will radically change existing models of higher education. However, analyses of whether and how MOOCs might disrupt higher education models are relatively scarce. This paper analyses whether MOOCs should be considered a disruptive innovation according to the concept’s defining criteria. It compares characteristics of disruptive innovation with current developments in MOOCs, suggesting three perspectives – performance, benefits, and market – that can be used as a lens and analytic framework to explore and evaluate current practice. The findings indicate that MOOCs do not match all the characteristics of disruptive innovation as they are commonly identified in the literature. However, MOOCs may be a sustaining innovation that establishes new markets for learners who are not served by universities.
Deception and dishonesty in online exams are believed to link to their unmonitored nature where users appear to have the opportunity to collaborate or utilize unauthorized resources during these assessments. The primary goal of this study was to investigate the deterrent effect of Webcam-based proctoring on misconduct during online exams. This study involved an experimental design in comparing an experimental group and a control group. Both groups attended the same course, used the same e-learning system, with the same instructor, and took the same set of online exams. One group was monitored by a Web-based proctor while the other was not monitored. The results indicated no statistically significant difference between the scores of the two groups, although the non-proctored group had slightly higher scores. There was a statistically significant difference found on the time taken to complete the online exams where the proctored group used significantly less time to complete their exams. The results of a post-experiment survey indicated that those who were not proctored perceived to have experienced greater levels of opportunity to engage in misconduct than those who were monitored by a Web-based proctor.
The increased use of the internet and information technology to enable online transactions, distribute information and customer reviews through ecommerce and social networking sites, online advertising, and data mining is both creating efficiencies and challenging our privacy. This paper highlights the growing fear that current federal and state laws in the United States are not adequate to protect the privacy of the data collected while we process electronic transactions or browse the internet for information. The notion of efficiency and cost-benefit are used to justify a certain level of privacy loss, thus treating privacy as a commodity to be transacted rather than a right to be defended. To address developing concerns about personal privacy invasions, we discuss the role and limits that both government regulation and self-regulation play in protecting our privacy.
This article offers an academic critique of new media culture, as viewed comparatively with George Orwell's 1984. The author makes the argument that a number of plot elements of 1984 are reflected within contemporary Western societies. The assertion is made that these parallels have developed as a consequence of new media technologies. An over-arching position is taken that real-world governments have utilised new media technologies in ways that make themselves comparable to Orwell's fictional ‘Big Brother’. The author begins by describing the socio-political landscape at the time Orwell wrote the novel. The next section addresses recent examples of ways in which government agencies have used new media technologies as a surveillance tool. The author posits that the US government uses new media technology as a propaganda tool. Through use of new media, the USA attempts to limit the ability of people to reject its narratives. In the final section, the author details the ways in which new media technologies are contributing to the destruction of language and knowledge. The author's concluding argument is that the negative effects of new media technology can only be ameliorated through critical thought.