The global educational data scientist: Pearson plc and digital methods
Dr Ben Williamson, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stirling
27 May 2016, 12-2pm
1.21, Paterson's Land, School of Education, Holyrood Road, The University of Edinburgh
Sign up here open to all: please bring your lunch.
Emerging digital methods of data collection, calculation, and communication are intervening in how educational institutions and actors are seen, known and acted upon. This presentation will provide an analysis of the methodologies underpinning Pearson plc’s Learning Curve data-bank and its Center for Digital Data, Analytics, and Adaptive Learning. Pearson’s mobilization of digital methods exemplifies a shift towards more software-based, computer-coded and algorithmically-mediated methodologies of ‘educational data science’. I will critically examine Pearson as an important methodological actor with the relevant digital methods of software-mediated statistical data collection, analysis, visualization and interactivity to make contemporary education legible, intelligible, and therefore actionable through highly-targeted pedagogic intervention. Pearson is constructing a ‘big data infrastructure’ for the collection, calculation and communication of educational knowledge, and codifying the insights it generates into software products that are intended to reshape pedagogic practices and ‘personalize’ learning. I will suggest that its remediated methods allow it to see, know and interpret aspects of education in ways which may displace the authoritative knowledge of the educational psychologist, sociologist, historian or philosopher (or the educational policymaker) to the knowledge produced by the educational data scientist or even by automated machine intelligence systems.
About the speaker: Ben Williamson is a lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Stirling. His research tends to focus on the intersections between education governance and digital technologies. He led the ESRC-funded Code Acts in Education project (https://codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/) focusing on the role of software code, algorithms and digital data in education, and has published recent articles on education in ‘smart cities’, data analytics and visualization in education policy, and the policy networks behind the rise of the ‘learning to code’ movement.