DPU Emdrup, Tuborgvej 164, 2400 København NV, bygning D, lokale 118.

Videolink til DPU Aarhus, Nobelparken, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 4, Aarhus C, bygning 1483, lokale 556 ”Inspiratorium”.

Computer says 'no': the digital automation of classrooms

One of the key digitisations of schools and universities over the past 20 years has been the ongoing absorption of small (often imperceptible) digital automations into everyday educational practices and processes. Now, we find ourselves in education settings where instances of checking, noticing, choosing, and deciding that might once have been the responsibility of a teacher and/or student are increasingly delegated to technology.

While such automations can often pass unnoticed, this presentation reflects on the implications and outcomes arising from the delegation of seemingly small education tasks to software. Drawing on a few recent empirical case studies from Australian schools, the presentation explores the rationales why digital automations of education are being enacted in classrooms, alongside the resulting gains and losses that are being experienced by students, teachers, school leaders and other stakeholders.

These examples highlight the importance of such digitisations – not least in terms of the changing nature of teaching as knowledge work, the data-related reductiveness and harms of automation, and reconfigurations of power that are taking place in the name of digital efficiencies, precision and standardisation. Above all are questions about future automations, and the need for greater discussion about which aspects of education we might be prepared to devolve to technology … and which aspects of education we are definitively not willing to hand over.