The postdigital challenge of critical educational research

Friday 6 March 2020
12:30 - 1:30pm. 
Walsall Campus, Room TBC

For more details, please contact educationobservatory@wlv.ac.uk 

In late 20^th century we started using computers for various educational purposes: teaching, student assessment, administrative work… Up to recently, these practices have been restricted by three main factors: computer memory (which determines how much data we can store), processors (which determine how many calculations we can do in a unit of time), and speed of network (which determines how much data we can transfer from one computer to another). Slowly but surely, recent advances in computing have removed many of these restrictions. The ability for (near) real-time processing large amounts of data has brought about the so-called big data turn in educational politics, policy, research and practice, and ‘magical’ results produced by the rapidly growing field of learning analytics have managed to convince many educators to place increasing faith in data. To make things more complicated, a lot of big data analytics now uses various forms of Artificial Intelligence tools. The key difference between the two generations of computer systems is that older tools such as Learning Management Systems are predictable, while the new Artificial Intelligence systems are non-predictable – even their makers cannot predict what they will ‘conclude’.

Postdigital nature these omnipresent tools and methods creates significant challenge for theory, practice, and research in educational sciences. Situated at the intersections between the post-positivist nature of Artificial Intelligence systems, the bio-informational challenge, and political economy of knowledge creation and dissemination, this seminar outlines pressing challenges of postdigital educational research and offers some provisional solutions.

Petar Jandrić (PhD) is Professor and Director of BSc (Informatics) programme at the Zagreb University of Applied Sciences, Croatia. His previous academic affiliations include Croatian Academic and Research Network, National e-Science Centre at the University of Edinburgh, Glasgow School of Art, and Cass School of Education at the University of East London. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Postdigital Science and Education (Springer) journal and book series. Personal website: http://petarjandric.com/.