George Veletsianos, PhD

Category: speculative futures

What’s the future like? Speculative Methods in Networked Learning workshop

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On May 13, 2020

In futures, scholarship, speculative futures

Jen Ross and I are leading a workshop on speculative methods as part of the 2020 Networked Learning (online) conference. It takes place on May 19 at 8am Pacific (4pm UK) and it’s free to attend. Our session will be held in this Adobe connect room: https://c.deic.dk/aristotle/

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, United States. Unsplash.

The workshop will last 55 minutes. Our schedule is as follows:

Workshop Description

The goal of this workshop is to introduce participants to speculative methods and explore their application to the field as a way of imagining potential futures and scenarios for learning, design, and technology. We define speculative methods as “research approaches that explore and create possible futures under conditions of complexity and uncertainty” (Ross, 2018). We aim to facilitate a broader conversation regarding the future of technology and networks in education through the exploration of the use of speculative methods as research methodologies.

Recent years have seen increased interest in and discussion of education futures. Some of the emergent discussions include conversations around how technologies manifest themselves in our daily lives and educational experiences (Aagaard, 2018), and what may be appropriate pedagogies to equip learners for the future economy (Facer & Sandford, 2010). As Ross (2017) argues, envisioning futures also “inform[s] us about what matters now in the field, what issues and problems we have inherited and what debates define what can or cannot be currently thought about or imagined” (p. 220).

Considering that the current state of education, at all levels, is situated within a context of ever-evolving social, cultural, political, and technological shifts, there is a need for networked learning scholars and practitioners to explore various ways that they can imagine and design future potentials and realities. The use of speculative methods enables researchers to ascertain and discern between probable, possible, and preferable trajectories (Bell, 2017) to offer evidence-based guidance when making current decisions related to networked learning, and to explore what may or may not be possible in their own contexts. They also give us tools for taking critical perspectives on the nature of the future itself, and how we think about and work towards particular education futures (Facer 2016). In prior iterations of this workshop (Veletsianos, Belikov, & Johnson, 2019), participants appreciated being able to think creatively about the future and identify micro, meso, and macro obstacles to reaching them.

Intended Audience

Individuals interested in critically exploring and designing education futures. These include students and academics (who may be interested in applying this method to their scholarship), and practitioners such as learning designers or administrators (who may be interested in using this method in institutional change-making efforts). This workshop is appropriate for anyone with an interest in designing and developing learning environments, creating new learning experiences, exploring the opportunities and challenges created by new or current technologies, leading conversations at their institutions around potential futures for their programs and departments, and exploring a variety of other potential futures for their work and scholarship.

Speculative futures: Social media surveillance at higher education institutions

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On February 7, 2020

In futures, speculative fiction, speculative futures

In continuing to explore speculative futures (see Gig Profs) it seems important to note that what I am posting are by no means predictions of the futures. Rather, they’re extensions of events, news, practices, and technologies that comes across my desk. To this end, I’ll include some footnotes at the end of each artifact to highlight the connections between artifact and events/news/etc. I hope to use these futures not only to highlight dystopian and utopian futures, but to explore ways for universities to aim towards better, richer, and more equitable futures.

Here’s today’s artifact. It’s a fictitious email sent from a risk and brand management company providing services to a university.

Future email describing negative sentiment toward institution and stating which individuals are related to it

Footnotes

  1. See 3/4 down the page of this news item showing a similar email from a media relations team pertaining to a SOGI event at UBC.
  2. Fama.io is a software that purports to screen for “toxic workplace behaviour.” Here’s an example of an individual whose background check included a report from this (heads up: extensive swearing).
  3. After analyzing university social media guidelines, Lough & Samek (2014) write: “Across the guidelines, framing of social media use by academic staff (even for personal use) as representative of the university assumes academic staff should have an undying loyalty to their institution. The guidelines are read as obvious attempts to control rather than merely guide, and speak to the nature of institutional over-reach in the related names of reputation (brand), responsibility (authoritarianism), safety (paternalistically understood and enforced), and the free marketplace of [the right] ideas.” — Lough, T., & Samek, T. (2014). Canadian university social software guidelines and academic freedom: An alarming labour trend. The Digital Future of Education, 21, 45-56.

Speculative futures: Gig Profs

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On January 20, 2020

In futures, speculative fiction, speculative futures

The future that Tim Maughan describes in Zero Hours – involving zero contact hours, bidding on multiple contracts with multiple employers, pitting workers against each other, lack of transparency, unknown work hours, and so on – is one that (unfortunately) isn’t too far off from the current path that sessional and adjunct faculty are currently placed on.

In imaging what the current situation may look like in the near future, I came up with the dystopia shown below. I’d love to hear your reactions to this. Is such a future far-fetched?


Speculative fiction in edtech and digital learning research

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On August 21, 2019

In flexible learning, future education, futures, sharing, speculative fiction, speculative futures

https://twitter.com/veletsianos/status/1161317005418516480?s=20
Speculative fiction

I am increasingly drawn to the writing of speculative fiction as a way to study, imagine, and critique the future of education. Jen Ross (who, incidentally and fortuitously, is developing an Education Futures pathway, and would love your feedback) recently argued for engaging speculative methods in digital education research, and that work has been very helpful.

While some may discount these approaches and view them as a far-cry from “serious” scholarship and “real science,” Plowman argues that “narrative isn’t just a shaping device: it helps us think, remember, communicate, and make sense of ourselves and the world…The role of narrative is not therefore simply aesthetic, it is central to our cognition from earliest childhood.” Importantly, many fields already engage storytelling and narrative for both pedagogical and knowledge-discovery purposes. For instance,

  • one of the most popular books in instructional design is the ID CaseBook which presents numerous case studies of individuals engaging with typical instructional design problems and issues
  • here’s a bit of work done on using story completion methods in qualitative research
  • and some work in sociological fiction, including some speculative fiction

But, what would speculative fiction concerned with the future of education or some aspect of digital learning look like? Here’s just a few examples:

What are your thoughts the use of fiction for scholarship? Have you read any other fiction set in the near-future that deals with education?

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