Techno-science products for Education. What is on the horizon?

Schools are bombarded with products and courses that claim to be informed by research in Neuroscience and/or Digital Technology. Despite warnings from the OECD, the Royal Society (UK), the Wellcome Trust (UK) and Deans for Impact (USA), about the over extrapolation of science it is unsurprising that schools ‘buy into’ these products. A web of interrelated influences is determining how schools make spending decisions: government’s unrelenting pressure for school improvement, government’s adulation of techno-science (as a driver of the economy), the marketing might of the techno-science industry, the media’s tendency to hype innovation claims.

Affective Computing is one techno-science product that will arrive in the education marketplace. In the life world we express emotion, and interpret emotion in others, in a variety of ways. Affective Computing technologies are machines programmed to collect and interpret that information. The HE Horizon report for 2016 has just been published and it predicts a time to adoption of 4-5 years. The Horizon reports are collaboration between the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (HE), Consortium for School Networking (K12) and are a useful source for a history of techno-science in education (1). Reports have been produced yearly, for Higher Education since 2004 and from 2009 for K-12. Each report draws on the expertise of a large international community of experts who collectively identify six emerging technologies for potential impact on Education, two within 1 year, two within 2-3 years, and two within 4-5 years. In general Horizon predictions: ubiquitous wireless in 2005, social networking in 2007, mobiles and cloud computing in 2009, electronic books in 2011, tablet computing in 2013, have been realised.  K12 has mostly mirrored the HE sector albeit with a lag of up to three years.

Technology forecasts made in the Horizon reports deserve attention before their arrival in the educational marketplace. Education has undoubtedly benefited for example, adult part time distance education students who use technologies such as mobiles and forums for discussion and collaborative activities with peers, from a place and at a time that is convenient. These technologies allow institutions to offer pedagogy that was not previously available to Distance Education. By contrast, virtual worlds have been much less successful. Second Life (SL), a commercially owned platform that provides users with facilities for constructing virtual objects and a virtual representation of self (avatar) was launched in 2003.  Most HE institutions in the UK invested financially in SL estate however; by 2011 it was largely abandoned by Education. SL was trumpeted as a superior online context when compared with text based forums.  The key claim, that it provided an immersive online experience, drew on ideas about ‘embodiment’ (neuroscience) and  ‘presence’ (communication) that were uncritically translated to learning contexts.

Emerging technologies such as SL tend to attract journal special issues and dedicated conferences yet critique of their educational value is sub-optimal. For example, Stanford University will host the first conference on ‘wearables for learning’ in November 2016 (2) Wearable technologies are incorporated into jewellery, clothing, footwear and were first listed as an emerging technology in the 2013 Horizon report. In the call for submissions the 19 topics are more focused on how to develop and introduce wearables to education than why the technology may be of value. Educational products that work best are those that target a problem already identified by practitioners for example, being able to offer a socio-cultural pedagogy to students studying at distance, the sophisticated video software from IRIS so that teachers can appraise and discuss real life practice and student behaviours with colleagues (3).

What are the educational problems that Affective Computing could address? Affect is not a constant and a practical strength of Affective Computing is its monitoring capability. However, a major limitation is that Affective Computing requires a computer mediated learning context for example: a VLE, an intelligent tutoring system, wearables. Affective Computing relies on data collected by other digital technologies, a case of a technological development being determined by the availability of other technologies. There are other issues; the ethics of quantifying the student, the validity of the physiological data collected, and the substantial question of how to theorize affect. A techno-scientific solution for mental health needs in the form of Affective Computing would be attractive to policy makers but is Affective Computing technology fit for purpose? To avoid being passive receivers educational researchers and practitioners need to infiltrate the specialised journals and technology conferences to challenge motivations and critique the value of these products for practice.

1 http://www.nmc.org/nmc-horizon/

2 http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/servlet/event.showcfp?eventid=55214&copyownerid=46939

3 http://www.irisconnect.co.uk

Experience in online networks- some massive

For one week in 2012 the emotional content of Newsfeeds from 689,003 Facebook users was manipulated; by reducing the number of positive expressions, or the number negative expressions. The findings were reported in PNAS http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.short?rss=1&ssource=mfr

The publication resulted in a huge outcry about the ethics of Facebook manipulating Newsfeeds in this way - see  here  and here  and comments posted directly to PNAS, as to whether Facebook users actually  give  'informed' consent for this kind of experiment and what the consequences for individuals could be. It is a debate worth having. However it seems that it was at the expense of a critical look at the authors ( A.D. Kramer, J.E. Guillory, and J.T. Hancock) claim about 'emotional contagion on a massive scale'.  From the perspective of  someone interested in social learning at a distance using computer mediated communication the article missed some key points about the emotional experience of  'written' interpersonal interaction .  So I wrote a letter to PNAS but it will not be published (yes it was rejected).  Neverthess here it is.

The outcome of the manipulation was as follows;  a reduction of positive expressions produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts with the opposite pattern occurring when negative expressions were manipulated. The authors claim that these findings show that emotional contagion can be elicited in the absence of nonverbal cues and that given the link between emotion and well being the finding could be important for public health. There are implications in another domain, education, specifically for social learning online.  In higher education an increasing number of universities and MOOC platforms are providing facilities for students to communicate with each other remotely using social media, e.g. text based forums.  The opportunity for students to  ‘learn by discussion’, to collaborate with each other on a shared task, ‘learning by collaboration’, are extremely effective ways of achieving depth of understanding (3) and also equip students for the teamwork skills required by modern organizations. However, the emotional valence of the experience is an important factor.  Reports that social interaction online is less satisfactory and experientially ‘uncanny’ (1,4) is why the findings of (2) are relevant.  Interpersonal interaction defines social learning however (2) claim that for their study contagion and social interaction are disentangled.

Two constructs are challenged: the conceptualization of emotional contagion and mimicry, assumptions about ‘direct interaction’. A taxonomy, on which to base the definitional nuance of the emotional experience that results when others share one’s emotional experience: mimicry, contagion, personal distress, affective empathy, cognition empathy, sympathy, and the criteria that distinguish each, has been formulated (5). Mimicry and emotional contagion are both characterized by affective behavior while emotional contagion involves affective experience and isomorphism. Although affective behavior was elicited the authors (based on the cross-emotional encouragement effect) concluded that mimicry, as an explanation, was not sufficient. However claiming contagion is not substantiated; they do not have any data to confirm that affective experience and affective isomorphy occurred.

That ‘emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction’ is the significance claim. However, conceptually ‘direct interaction’ is underdeveloped.  ‘Direct interaction’, as when individuals meet face-to-face, involves two shared aspects, time frame and place. Asynchronous interaction means conversational turns may be disrupted and response is usually delayed, while interacting in an online space means that multisensory information is not available and real time context is not shared. The specification of all these factors is crucial when evaluating emotion communicated online through writing.  For Facebook, a written communication from ‘friends’ will sometimes results in  ‘friends’ moderating their responses (the data that the authors collected).  That is the essence of human communication: the use of written language and metacognition. The usefulness of the study lies in the foregrounding the power of language. However, the value of this approach, theoretical and practical, will depend on substantial integration with research in two fields, emotion and computer mediated communication.

(1) BAYNE, S. (2008) Uncanny spaces for higher education: Teaching and learning in virtual worlds. ALT-J  Research in Learning Technology, 16, 197-205.

(2) KRAMER, A. D. I., GUILLORY, J. E. & HANCOCK, J. T. (2014) Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 111, 8788-8790.

(3) LAURILLARD, D. (2012) Teaching as a design science. Building pedagogical patterns for learning and technology., New York, London, Routledge.

(4) ROBINSON, K. (2013) The interrelationship of emotion and cognition when students undertake collaborative group work online: An interdiscplinary approach. Computers & Education, 62, 298-307.

(5) WALTER, H. (2011) Social Cognitive Neuroscience of Empathy: Concepts, Circuits and Genes. Emotion Review, 4, 9-23.