Month: February 2017

A further chip in:

This article from the Guardian is another marker of how quickly legal issues get drawn into technology’s use, misuse and mistakes. Memories of an earlier post about a Church of England bishop who pressed the wrong voting button at General Synod. Here, it’s much more communal, perhaps, much more of an unbounded echo chamber. But, in multiple scenarios, it’s going to be a matter of ‘the case continues’.

Education is also becoming increasingly drawn into legislative discourses: this isn’t driven completely or simply by technology but, again, there are multiple linkages and potential fracture points. I’m a little surprised that this legal dimension is not more evident in the Edinburgh 2016 Manifesto for Teaching Online. Perhaps ‘instrumentalisation’ and ‘surveillance’ hint at it, but the legal dimension within the manifesto’s horizons seems much more pervasive, and infused, than simply these two terms would allow.

I’d spotted this piece, but when I came to Tweet it, Daniel had already flagged it up. A chance for some conversation. First this:

And then this:

It was the tragic-but comic, comic-but-tragic angle I hoped to trace.

The original Guardian article sparking the exchange is here:

I’m aware I’m going with the flow of a pre-publication marketing campaign for a book (see yesterday’s post, on this same book – now, today, I’m fed the chapter sample), a campaign which I’m accessing via digital media, but irony aside, I think this is a cracking read. I’ll probably buy the book… I hope it has footnotes for its claims.

1. The psychological attractions of mixed feedback, where less positive feedback is more.

[Beyond this article, this week I’ve also been sent a petition by a close friend via change.org – and, having signed it, I’ve quickly unsubscribed: even one’s convictions become gamified with ‘like’ options from others. What if I don’t care, I just want to hold this or that option, regardless of ‘likes’? It seems harder to do so, online.]

2. “It’s hard to exaggerate how much the like button changed the psychology of Facebook use.” This section fed my Tweet line, and I think makes the piece worthwhile in itself. The non-neutrality of ‘liking’, even mixed in with its potential for banality, is a theme running through other posts this week in my Lifestream. The article mentions Lovematically, and an online search on that term throws up some fascinating responses and reactions to it.

3. Losses disguised as wins, and the design of games: free games where you can pay to keep on playing; Zodiac and Candy Crush, and the role of ‘juice’ in game design.

In the ‘challenge’ of a game, I’m reminded of what Vern Poythress describes as “a pattern of commission, work, and reward” being the fabric of human biography and history (Redeeming Sociology: A God-Centered Approach 2012: Crossway, Wheaton, p.100): are digital designs connecting with, and making use of, something deep within us all?

4. “Predatory games”: what a lively (and cyborgish) metaphor. “Some experiences are designed to be addictive for the sake of ensnaring hapless consumers, but others happen to be addictive though they are primarily designed to be fun or engaging. The line that separates these is very thin; to a large extent the difference rests on the intention of the designer.” They are two fascinating, fascinating sentences. The questions of (a) ‘the designer’ and (b) intention within design, are not often so bluntly raised. The contrasts with Donna Haraway’s ‘Cyborg’ myth are stark and suggestive. Here, there is talk of ethics, of games even being ‘predatory’. This leads to Tetris, and the comment that “Tetris is a game with a very strong negative motivation. You never see what you have done very well, and your mistakes are seen on the screen. You always want to correct them.”

5. “Humans find the sweet spot sandwiched between “too easy” and “too difficult” irresistible. It’s the land of just-challenging-enough computer games, financial targets, work ambitions, social media objectives and fitness goals. It is in this sweet spot – where the need to stop crumbles before obsessive goal-setting – that addictive experiences live.” And, I’m sure Alter would add, communities should be on his list here, too.

6. “You start playing because you want to have fun, but you continue playing because you want to avoid feeling unhappy.” Is this the human condition? Even a metaphor for games – or ‘Community Cultures’ – not being able to answer our deepest needs?

Laughing to myself, in a still slightly confused way. I *thought* the ‘Community Cultures’ block finished with week 6. Now, at the start of week 7, I’m noticing it has another week to run!

It makes for an extra week in which I will probably go back on my MOOC. I’d merrily wrapped up on that, at the end of last week, and deposited my mini-ethnography. It might well be useful and interesting to return to it for a different ‘take’, or at least another one.

It makes for an extra week’s pause before ‘Algorithmic Cultures’. I’d been very much shifting in my seat ahead of that move, and it’s curious now to have some time on my hands, and not rush on to it.

Just that sensation in response to the *extra* week is an interesting one. I’ll try and self-consciously see what a week of unexpected space creates.

And, please, please, someone tell me if I’m wrong, and ‘Algorithmic Cultures’ is already merrily under way.

I’ve never used Thinglink before, so here’s my first ever attempt, trying to use a visual format for my MOOC report:

Mini-ethnography

I’ve structured it around an airport image, and specifically an airport security image. Like an airport, the MOOC struck me as a temporary site, a transit zone within an ongoing journey of learning.

It also struck me as a policed zone. I encountered this when signing up, via the usual kind of terms and conditions, now experienced as a researcher. I also encountered it via a friendly and constructive email from the moderators, when some learners had queried the nature of my involvement in the MOOC. Having adjusted my involvement according to their suggestions, I also encountered this when confronted (and I choose the verb deliberately) with an aggressive response from one fellow learner. After some deliberation and reflection, I reported it to the moderators as a personal attack. A few days later, the comment was removed by them, and marked as such, which felt like some kind of addressing of this situation (but with no email response from them).

Ethnographically, this encounter had knocked the wind out of my MOOC-learning sails, but also provided the insight I needed for this mini-ethnography.

On the Thinglink, my matched ‘A’ comments seek to contrast the nature of ‘open-ness’ within a MOOC, and some of the tensions within it. My matched ‘B’ comments do likewise regarding entering the MOOC space: the learner’s sense of empowerment and disempowerment, and especially when played through the lens of a rookie on-line ethnographer (albeit one with significant offline experience).

The trio of ‘C’ comments offer the core of my observation. As with any online community, it’s not formed from a tabula rasa. And learners’ expectations come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. I’ve sought to contrast two which I encountered, and I’m pleased with the mirrored wording and mirrored architectural graphics I’ve managed to include. At the heart of my findings, I think the mini-ethnography problematised and extended Kozinets’ typologies for me. I’d found the typologies helpful and illuminating, and still do, but the ethnography has revised my working hypotheses regarding them. I’m more persuaded, after the ethnography, about the importance of course design, scaffolding for learning, and learning facilitations and interventions.

The trio of ‘D’ comments try to capture this, both as a lived experience in the MOOC and as a working hypothesis for further consideration. I’ve tried to use some ordinary-but-unsettling images from the airport scenario to capture something of this. And then, with the ‘E’ comments, I’ve tried to illustrate them with more conventional myths of the airport as site of consumption and mobility, but not completely without the sense of policing and threat. That, for me, attempts to encapsulate the tensions I’m left with from my brief but very stimulating MOOC experience.