EdTech’s Precarious Futures
In the NORRAG Blog, Kean Birch asks what material limits the EdTech sector is likely to come up against in its pursuit of data as a value-creating asset:
There’s a lot going on in EdTech, once you start looking; not all of it is going to be good for teaching or learning, and not all of it is going to be good for universities and faculty. In fact, there are a range of unintended or unexpected consequences from this expansion of EdTech that we simply can’t predict.
An important issue that has come up during our fieldwork are the attempts by EdTech companies to find a use for all the personal and user data they are collecting, whether deliberately or accidentally. Most EdTech products and services end up producing data in one form or another, and many assume that there is "gold in data," as one informant told us.