The controversy: Practices of tracking, monitoring and analysing student
work and activity have the effect of reducing levels of trust between
students, teachers and administrators in higher education settings.
In
higher education, instrumental goals such as quality and efficiency are
often addressed through high-level technology decisions which need to
be understood in terms of visibility and surveillance. This
talk considers technologically-mediated practices of plagiarism
detection and engagement monitoring in the context of surveillance and
distrust. Logics of surveillance are at work in practices which attempt
to regulate student behaviour through subjecting bodies, as well as
writing and other online activities, to algorithmic scanning and
monitoring. These logics frame students as in need of careful monitoring
to ensure learning and teaching runs smoothly, and they have an impact
on relationships among teachers, students and institutions. Drawing on
Lyon's concept of 'surveillance culture' (2017), I’ll discuss how
teachers, students and university leaders participate in, respond to,
resist and rework their own and others’ surveillance. Critiquing the
idea that monitoring technologies can be used benevolently (for example,
by guiding students gently towards 'good academic practice', or by
helping teachers to watch over their students), I’ll suggest that these
technologies act with and on already problematic conditions of digital
visibility in the university.