Educational Triage in Open Distance Learning:

Walking a Moral Tightrope

Paul Prinsloo, University of South AfricaSharon Slade, Open University

OVERVIEW OF THE PRESENTATION

1. Acknowledgements2. The changing context of higher education 3. How do we make moral decisions when

resources are (increasingly) limited?4. Using student data to make more informed

decisions5. Triage – its history and use in education6. Principles for the moral use of student data

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS• All the images used in this presentation

have been sourced from Google labeled for non-commercial reuse. The links are provided at the end of the presentation

• A reworked version of this paper has been accepted for publication in the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL), (Prinsloo & Slade, 2014)

Disaggregation

Disruption

Doing more with less

Higher education

Innovation

Unmooring

Student debt

Revolution

Funding cuts

Tsunami

Unbundling

PrivatisationCrisis

Higher education should…

• Do more with less• Expect funding to follow performance rather than

preceding it• Realise it costs too much, spends carelessly, teach

poorly, plan myopically, and when questioned, act defensively

(Hartley, 1995, p. 412, 861)

HIGHER EDUCATION AS RISKY BUSINESS…

The $ of student failure and dropout

How do we make moral decisions when resources are (increasingly) limited?

TO THE RESCUE: LEARNING ANALYTICS

Triage: Balancing between the futility or impact of the intervention juxtaposed with the number of patients

requiring care, the scope of care required, and the resources available for care/interventions

FOUR MORAL PRINCIPLES GUIDING MEDICAL TRIAGE

1. Respect patient autonomy2. Beneficence3. Non-maleficence4. Justice – care not determined by privilege,

status, race, gender

(Beauchamp & Childress, 2001)

BEYOND JUSTICE • Transparency• Stakeholder

acceptance of rationale

• Mechanism for appeals or challenges

• Oversight

(Joynt & Gomersall, 2005)

Learning analytics as …

“Are students walking around with invisible triage tags attached, that only lecturers can see? Is this fair? Or is it just pragmatic? Like battlefield medical attention, lecturers’ attention is finite. And as class sizes and workloads increase, it is becoming scarcer”

(Manning, 2012, par. 3)

How do we make moral decisions when resources are (increasingly) limited?

FOUR PRINCIPLES TO GUIDE DECISIONS WHEN RESOURCES ARE INCREASINGLY LIMITED

1. Student and institutional autonomy are situated and bounded

2. Beneficence – in the best interest of the student. No access without success

3. Non-maleficence and transparency4. Distributive justice

WALKING A MORAL TIGHTROPE…• The reality of resource constraints • Higher education cannot afford NOT to use student data• Raw data is an oxymoron• Students’ digital data do not provide the full picture

and often lacks context• Our algorithms are not neutral• Student success is the result of mostly non-linear,

multidimensional, interdependent interactions at different phases in the nexus between student, institution and broader societal factors

• We need to move beyond notions of justice, to an ethics of care.

(See Prinsloo, 2009, Prinsloo & Slade, 2014; Slade & Prinsloo, 2013)

THANK YOUPaul PrinslooResearch Professor in Open Distance Learning (ODL)College of Economic and Management Sciences, Office number 3-15, Club 1, Hazelwood, P O Box 392Unisa, 0003, Republic of South Africa

T: +27 (0) 12 433 4719 (office)T: +27 (0) 82 3954 113 (mobile)

prinsp@unisa.ac.za Skype: paul.prinsloo59

Personal blog: http://opendistanceteachingandlearning.wordpress.com

Twitter profile: @14prinsp

Dr Sharon Slade Senior Lecturer and Regional Manager, Faculty of Business and LawThe Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, United Kingdom

T: +44 (0) 1865 486250

Sharon.slade@open.ac.uk Personal blog:http://odlsharonslade.wordpress.com/ www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=53123496&trk=tab_pro

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF IMAGE SOURCES

Title page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tightrope_walking Big data: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DARPA_Big_Data.jpg Triage: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Wounded_Triage_France_WWI.jpg Justice: http://www.corrections.com/ezine/show/474

Beauchamp T. L., & Childress J.F. (2001). Principles of Biomedical Ethics. (5th ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hartley, D. (1995). The ‘McDonaldisation’ of higher education: food for thought? Oxford Review of Education, 21(4), 409—423.

Joynt, G.M., & Gomersall, C.D. (2005). Making moral decisions when resources are limited – an approach to triage in ICY patients with respiratory failure. South African Journal of Critical Care (SAJCC), 21(1), 34—44. Retrieved from http://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajcc/article/view/35543

Manning, C. (2012, March 14). Educational triage. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://colinmcit.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/educational-triage.html.

Prinsloo, P. (2009). Modelling throughput at Unisa: The key to the successful implementation of ODL. Retrieved from http://uir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/6035

Prinsloo, P., & Slade, S. (2014). Educational triage in open distance learning: walking a moral tightrope. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning. In press.

Slade, S., & Prinsloo, P. (2013). Learning analytics: ethical issues and dilemmas. American Behavioural Scientist, 57(1) pp. 1509–1528.

REFERENCES

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