On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 6:48 PM, William Stein <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Mon, Sep 19, 2016 at 6:37 PM, kcrisman <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Some of you may be interested in this article by Paul-Olivier Dehaye: >> https://www.aaup.org/article/mooc-platforms-surveillance-and-control > > > It is a rant against the main trends in modern computing. Paul perhaps > underestimates the value of "big data" to improving user experiences, and > the extent to which people place a very, very high value on convenience.
I think it raises some valid concerns regarding universities' responsibility to protect student privacy, and the difficulty of doing so through third-party, closed source, profit-driven MOOC platforms. Forcing students to consent (the inherent conflict between "force" and "consent" here being intentional) to the terms of use of a MOOC platform in order to take a course could be problematic. I think this is a real problem worth calling out. I think polemical lines like "professor comments are centralized into a partner portal, which only contributes to this groupthink through insidious self-censorship and vain self-presentation" distract from that point. That said, if one is very concerned about privacy and "surveillance" issues in a MOOC, I have to assume they have never visited an American high school :) Best, Erik -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
