Education International
for rights, privacy and security. The most concerning issue for HE moving forward is whether these practices become normalised in the post-COVID environment because technological solutions are easier, and more cost effective.
6. Academic freedom and autonomy One of the unique areas of concern that has emerged from COVID-19 in the HE context is around guaranteeing academic freedom of staff and students. Instructors have had little say in the unilateral decision to pivot to online learning, and have largely had to accept the tools provided by their HE systems to do so. The expansion of data analytics, AI and predictive technologies potentially also challenges the autonomy of staff to make professionally informed judgments about student engagement and performance, by delegating assessment and evaluation to proprietorial software that can then prescribe ‘personalised learning’ recommendations on their behalf - ‘robot teachers’ acting in programmed pedagogic environments that are fundamentally reconfiguring education by making pedagogical and policy decisions typically left to teachers and policymakers (Zeide, 2017). Another issue is the link between intellectual property (IP) rights over digital teaching content and academic freedom. In the traditional teaching environment it is customary for academics to hold ownership over what they produce, as control over content is essential for the exercise of academic freedom, but in the digital environment - where teaching materials are uploaded to LMS platforms, lectures delivered over videoconferencing and captured by recording software - content ownership and IP are less clear.155 Moreover, concerns raised about videoconferencing and exam proctoring software - by both staff and students - have sat in tension with the need to protect privacy and also the need to deliver continuity of learning and assessment.156 The academic freedom issue has also emerged in the context of platforms such as Zoom, YouTube and Facebook censoring classes and events, as online learning has become vulnerable to corporate control and the policing of the internet for controversial or critical thought.157 Commercial providers have terms of service that grant them significant 155 Maloney, E.J. and Kim, J. 2019, 12 June. Intellectual Property and Digital Learning. Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/technology-and-learning/intellectual-property-and-digital-learning 156 Critical Business. 2020, 6 Jul. Zoom out: Why universities need autonomous technological capacities. USS Briefs: https://medium.com/ussbriefs/zoom-out-22f505559f65 157 Wilson, J.K. 2020, 23 September. Zoom, YouTube, and Facebook Censor Event at SF State. Academe blog: https://academeblog.org/2020/09/23/zoom-youtube-and-facebook-censor-event-at-sf-state/
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