Learning Management Systems and Data Justice

[Mobius]

This article brings up good points, but gets lost in the plot. Authors' premise is "this could happen, but we don't know." Also brings up issues of students' lack of Internet at home, which doesn't really fit into the issue of "data justice."

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/canvas-surveillance/

[Hibush]

Universities need to be on their toes regarding data security and privacy with all the vendors of computer-based services. The LMS, Microsoft, Zoom etc. The authors are asking this question about the LMS Canvas, which is reasonable.

Apparently the Rutgers IT department did not give them a satisfactory answer, so they brought their concern to The Nation instead of Rutgers administration.

The Nation provides coverage of the news from a perspective that is underrepresented on TV and the national daily newspapers. But to get this piece published, the authors apparently had to salt the article with a couple of tropes, big business is nefarious, and social-class oppression.  While those tropes are worth coverage, trying to make that connection in this article really weakens the argument to me.

How much does the relationship between university IT security department and the big vendors vary? Big universities have to have sophisticated staff and practices around data security because they are under constant digital attack, have lots of data they need to keep secure, and a lot of data that they want to make public or selectively accessible. They also have faculty who study the latest problems and opportunities in big data analytics. I would expect that a company like Canvas would not have contracts with a bunch of these places if they couldn't answer the data security questions. The published ToS may not be the end of the agreement. That is worth finding out.

[dr_codex]

Universities need to be on their toes regarding data security and privacy with all the vendors of computer-based services. The LMS, Microsoft, Zoom etc. The authors are asking this question about the LMS Canvas, which is reasonable.

Apparently the Rutgers IT department did not give them a satisfactory answer, so they brought their concern to The Nation instead of Rutgers administration.

The Nation provides coverage of the news from a perspective that is underrepresented on TV and the national daily newspapers. But to get this piece published, the authors apparently had to salt the article with a couple of tropes, big business is nefarious, and social-class oppression.  While those tropes are worth coverage, trying to make that connection in this article really weakens the argument to me.

How much does the relationship between university IT security department and the big vendors vary? Big universities have to have sophisticated staff and practices around data security because they are under constant digital attack, have lots of data they need to keep secure, and a lot of data that they want to make public or selectively accessible. They also have faculty who study the latest problems and opportunities in big data analytics. I would expect that a company like Canvas would not have contracts with a bunch of these places if they couldn't answer the data security questions. The published ToS may not be the end of the agreement. That is worth finding out.

Even small places are under constant attack. Last time somebody shared the numbers with me, it was about 100,000 attacks a day on our small college system.

My IT guys will be happy to hear that they are sophisticated.

[spork]

[. . .]

Big universities have to have sophisticated staff and practices around data security

[. . . ]

I work at a non-big university with seemingly non-sophisticated staff. "Security" is the mantra used by IT to make it difficult for faculty to use software that is commonly used elsewhere for research and teaching.

We have Canvas. I have no idea how it compares security-wise to other LMS products. Before Canvas, we had Blackboard. IT preferred Blackboard because, at least at the time, it was hosted by university servers, whereas Canvas was cloud-based and thus outside of IT's control. Given our IT department's apparent competence level, I am glad it exercises less control over the LMS than it otherwise might.

[marshwiggle]

This article brings up good points, but gets lost in the plot. Authors' premise is "this could happen, but we don't know." Also brings up issues of students' lack of Internet at home, which doesn't really fit into the issue of "data justice."

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/canvas-surveillance/

This is the only specific concern that I could find in the article:

As a result, precarious academic workers are surveilled by administrators. Faculty and adjunct instructors at Rutgers told us about colleagues and educators at other schools who had been monitored by program directors. We received reports in the course of our research of anonymous adjuncts who suspected they had been monitored by program directors

I'm pretty concerned about digital privacy, but for all of the angst in the article, they didn't provide much in the way of concrete examples of potential problems. (They mentioned exam proctoring- institutions do need ways to ensure integrity of the exam process. I've yet to hear an example of a legitimate privacy concern related to this.)

[Biologist_]

I was surprised by this sentence:

"According to instructors, before the pandemic necessitated remote online learning, these technologies provided little benefit to education beyond archiving class materials."

If there was little benefit, why the heck did I (and many colleagues) put so much effort into building interactive homework problems in the LMS? Apparently the authors have a very limited view of what an LMS can do. To be fair, that may be related to how poor Canvas is for practice problems or formative assessment.

[marshwiggle]

I was surprised by this sentence:

"According to instructors, before the pandemic necessitated remote online learning, these technologies provided little benefit to education beyond archiving class materials."

If there was little benefit, why the heck did I (and many colleagues) put so much effort into building interactive homework problems in the LMS? Apparently the authors have a very limited view of what an LMS can do. To be fair, that may be related to how poor Canvas is for practice problems or formative assessment.

I'm guessing these same instructors were the ones trying to teach remotely in a manner that is as similar as possible to what they did in person, rather than leveraging the advantages of remote instruction.

[Caracal]

I was surprised by this sentence:

"According to instructors, before the pandemic necessitated remote online learning, these technologies provided little benefit to education beyond archiving class materials."

If there was little benefit, why the heck did I (and many colleagues) put so much effort into building interactive homework problems in the LMS? Apparently the authors have a very limited view of what an LMS can do. To be fair, that may be related to how poor Canvas is for practice problems or formative assessment.

I'm guessing these same instructors were the ones trying to teach remotely in a manner that is as similar as possible to what they did in person, rather than leveraging the advantages of remote instruction.

You know what I didn't have a lot of time and energy for this past year? Completely reworking all of my courses to teach in formats that I don't want to use in the future.

[marshwiggle]

I was surprised by this sentence:

"According to instructors, before the pandemic necessitated remote online learning, these technologies provided little benefit to education beyond archiving class materials."

If there was little benefit, why the heck did I (and many colleagues) put so much effort into building interactive homework problems in the LMS? Apparently the authors have a very limited view of what an LMS can do. To be fair, that may be related to how poor Canvas is for practice problems or formative assessment.

I'm guessing these same instructors were the ones trying to teach remotely in a manner that is as similar as possible to what they did in person, rather than leveraging the advantages of remote instruction.

You know what I didn't have a lot of time and energy for this past year? Completely reworking all of my courses to teach in formats that I don't want to use in the future.

The point is, there are some people who look at something new and say, "Is there anything about this I can use to make my life easier?" while there are others who say "Don't make me change anything!"

People who will only get dragged kicking and screaming into any kind of change are going to feel constantly under threat, while people who are willing to consider changes which will be disruptive but might have long term benefits can be optimistic about the future.

[Biologist_]

I was surprised by this sentence:

"According to instructors, before the pandemic necessitated remote online learning, these technologies provided little benefit to education beyond archiving class materials."

If there was little benefit, why the heck did I (and many colleagues) put so much effort into building interactive homework problems in the LMS? Apparently the authors have a very limited view of what an LMS can do. To be fair, that may be related to how poor Canvas is for practice problems or formative assessment.

I don't think clarification is needed, but just in case... I put a lot of effort into interactive homework problems in the LMS for years before the pandemic. There was much benefit.

I can think of a number of colleagues who considered the LMS to be integral to their pedagogy prior to the past year. There was a time when I just posted files for my students, but that was long ago.