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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Retention & Social Promotion Series, Trending Topics

Pass or Fail: The Economic Cost of Social Promotion and Retention

In this multi-part series, I provide a dissection of the phenomenon of retention and social promotion. Also, I describe the many different methods that would improve student instruction in classrooms and eliminate the need for retention and social promotion if combined effectively.

While reading this series, periodically ask yourself this question: Why are educators, parents and the American public complicit in a practice that does demonstrable harm to children and the competitive future of the country?

Repeating a grade is not that big of a deal, right? Think again! Both social promotion and retention has negative impact on the American economy and social services.

Grade repeaters are more likely to be on public assistance programs, unemployed, or imprisoned. Assessing family income for recent high school dropouts versus recent high school graduates, and looking in particular at households where students were still living at home, the median income for families of dropouts was $12,100, and the median for families of recent high school graduates was $22,700. For college-enrolled high school graduates, the median family income was $34,200.

Although these elements are not to be regarded as causal – low-income families causing dropouts or the need for retention or social promotion – these factors and statistics suggest that large numbers of dropouts come from single-parent households and households run by women. They indicate the social fallout of the education policy. That is, the current system cannot support at-risk students from families where there are challenges in addition to education.

Students who are retained or socially promoted tend to rely more heavily on social services. They usually earn less over the course of their lifetime than those who are not retained or socially promoted. The considerable long-term costs mean society must continue supporting affected students, rather than education serving its purpose and enabling individuals to be self-sufficient. Indeed, a study which examined the NCLB act, warned of a dropout crisis in the United States. The study determined that, every September, approximately 3.5 million young people in America are seen to enter the eighth grade, with roughly 505,000 of this number dropping out over the next four year, an average of more than 2,805 per day of the school year.

Individuals who drop out of school earn approximately $270,000 less than high school graduates over the course of working lives. Having a high school diploma rather than a skills assessment based on a minimum competency test, also helps to determine whether a person can obtain employment and how much money he or she stands to earn. In 1997, the employment rate of men in the twenty-five to thirty-four-year-old range who did not graduate high school was more than twice that of men who did graduate. Among women within that same age-range, the unemployment rate of those without diplomas was three times higher than those with diplomas.

Retention and social promotion policies tend to impact minority students disproportionately, as they are more likely to be retained or socially promoted and drop out of school. Policies of retention and social promotion potentially contribute to racial disparities. The same appears true for low-income families. Although the correlation between retention and social promotion and low-income families is not perhaps as definitive as the link between minorities and these policies, there is still an apparent link and basis for suggesting that there is a connection to poverty and both retention and social promotion policies.

The 21st century, however, is not the age of overt prejudices or even necessarily direct and transparent racial, social, or economic discrimination. The disparities that exist, some of which may be growing more extreme, remain rather well concealed. In structured systems like education, they often go unaddressed until the situation requires affirmative action. The obvious example with education is that the discrimination against a minority or impoverished student, or even one with a learning disability, occurs from the first day they enter the education system and carries on throughout their career.

Indeed, the discrimination remains in effect, largely unnoticed and undetected, until the affected individual is so severely impacted that he or she is unable to demonstrate appropriate understanding of materials that have been the emphasis of their curriculum for a year. There are also secondary costs related to the lack of academic achievement, which includes the individual’s lost interest in school and decreased potential to excel in a variety of areas not requiring demonstration of academic achievement.

Some quantitative assessment of performance of students, as well as educators, administrators, and schools, will always be necessary, and solutions will not be easy to develop or enact. The alternative strategies are complex and require flexible implementation to overcome the subtlety and variety of prejudices that exist. However, the potential of growing costs and the expansion of those costs justifies the efforts.

With the figures at hand, how can anyone suggest social promotion and retention positively impact our economy and society at large?

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Elementary Education, Trending Topics

Why Digital Learning is Reshaping Education

Technology has changed just about every field, including education. Digital learning is reshaping education in unprecedented ways. The ways in which students learn are changing rapidly thanks to technology, and both students and teachers will benefit from it.

There are several specific changes that we can expect to see as digital learning takes over education. For one, the way teachers present information and how students work with that information has changed. Students are asked to be more hands-on and collaborative than ever before. There are also new skills that students must learn, such as digital literacy.

The Flipped Classroom

The traditional model of teachers lecturing in the classroom and students completing practice and homework on their own is changing. Instead, students are learning on their own and using the classroom as a place to dig more deeply into what they’ve learned. This model, known as the flipped classroom, is gaining popularity thanks to the rise of EdTech.

How does the flipped classroom work? Students watch lecture videos or complete readings at home. The following day in class, the teacher clarifies anything students didn’t understand. Students then work with the information to answer questions, complete projects, and do other activities that used to be reserved for homework.

The flipped classroom provides benefits for students and teachers alike. Teachers spend more time helping students with the content they don’t understand. This means more one-on-one help for students and less time listening to boring lectures in class.

Emphasis on Collaboration

Another change brought about by digital learning is a new emphasis on collaboration. Thanks to increased technology in the classroom, students able to collaborate online and work on projects together. With a flipped classroom model, teachers can spend less time lecturing and devote more time to collaborative activities and projects.

Technology has also created a more connected world, where everyone is reachable almost any time of day. Cloud-based apps, like Google’s Drive, allow students to share work and collaborate outside of school. Many teachers are already using social media or education apps to encourage students to communicate about class content or ask questions from home. As digital learning becomes more popular, this kind of after-hours collaboration will only increase.

More Higher-Order Thinking

Thanks to technology, students have instant access to all the information they could ever want or need. There’s no longer a need for students to memorize facts or dates. Today, there is much more emphasis placed on higher-order thinking.

Higher-order thinking occurs when students are asked not just to know a piece of information but to do something with that information. At the most basic level, this can mean analyzing information—comparing and contrasting, for example. At the highest level, students are asked to create something on their own that shows their understanding.

In nearly every classroom today, students are asked to do these types of higher-order thinking tasks. Gone are the days when teachers lectured and students regurgitated information for a quiz or test. Today’s students are learning how to be critical thinkers, a skill that is in-demand in today’s job market.

New Skills

There are other skills that students will need to stay competitive in the 21st century. Digital literacy, the ability to use the internet and other digital technologies, is increasingly important for a wide variety of jobs. As technology becomes a bigger part of education, teachers will devote more time to teaching digital literacy.

In some states, digital literacy is already a part of the curriculum. More states are creating standards for digital literacy just as they would for reading or math.

These are just some of the ways that digital learning is reshaping education. As digital learning becomes a bigger part of the world of education, you can expect to see more changes in classrooms around the world.

How do you envison technology changing education?

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Retention & Social Promotion Series, Trending Topics

Pass or Fail: Social Promotion and Retention’s Effect on Families & Communities

In this multi-part series, I provide a dissection of the phenomenon of retention and social promotion. Also, I describe the many different methods that would improve student instruction in classrooms and eliminate the need for retention and social promotion if combined effectively.

While reading this series, periodically ask yourself this question: Why are educators, parents and the American public complicit in a practice that does demonstrable harm to children and the competitive future of the country?

When a student is subjected to social promotion or retention, he or she is not the only one impacted. If your child was retained, what effect would it have on you, your family and community? Likely, your experiences would be drastically altered, often in quite negative ways.

Families impacted by retention and social promotion policies are disproportionately among already disadvantaged groups. One study identified that children from low-income families, English learners, and Latinos were significantly more likely to be retained than the more demographically “average” student.

Retention rates during the 2009–2010 school year demonstrate that retention is highest among traditionally disadvantaged minorities. Among those deemed most likely to suffer from low academic performance, the rates of retention for black and Hispanic students were 4.2 percent and 2.8 percent, respectively. Among white students, the rate was just 1.5 percent.

Not only are retention and social promotion policies perpetuating social inequalities, they are also enhancing tensions within families by creating the additional stress of academic challenges. Retention and social promotion, or even merely the threat of these practices, places considerable pressure on the individual student.

Among older students, these stresses come into play at a point at which there is naturally occurring strain already. However, even for kindergarteners, retention has been strongly linked to risk factors like poverty, low maternal education, single-parent status, minority status, English language learner (ELL) status, and male gender, with these factors, also associated with poor school readiness.

A study by Wei Wu, Stephen G. West, and Jan N. Hughes explored the relatively short-term and long-term effects of grade retention for first graders and tracked the growth potential in mathematics and reading achievement over four years. They found that there was a large multiethnic sample below the median in literacy at the school entrance, and analyzed the effects of retention on the group studied.

They found that retained children experienced a faster increase in the short term and a faster decrease in the long term in both mathematics and reading achievement than promoted children. Although this data can be difficult to contextualize, the study indicates that retained students are less successful in reading and mathematics than students who are not retained. Retention and social promotion can also exacerbate existing problems within the family structure, although researchers have not examined this thoroughly.

There has been a fair amount of research regarding relationships between families and schools and how, with the right approach, it can prove a key factor in determining the academic success of a student. Similarly, challenges in the relationship between family and school representatives undermine the potential of a student to excel academically. It may be too much to suggest that a problem relationship of this type has a negative impact on a student’s success, but there is certainly indirect evidence that issues undercut a student’s ability to thrive academically.

In the relationship between family and school, the problems of retention or social promotion are sizeable. From the perspective of family members, and parents, in particular, the risk of retention and social promotion is immensely stressful because of the perception that either one of these policies is indicative of a limited future for the affected child. At least in some cases, parents look at retention or social promotion as an indication that their child is either unlikely to ever thrive academically or that their child is not adequately supported by the education system.

Although there are numerous challenges and limitations impacting the process of assessing the costs of retention and social promotion, as we have seen, the general cost of these policies is apparent from the evidence that is available and from a certain logical analysis of the scenario.

The various stakeholders in education, including students, teachers, education policymakers, parents, and employers, are all undermined by the pass or fail mentality of the current system. We disconnect individual students because of these policies. Disconnection from themselves, education, fellow students, teachers and other educators, their families and eventually from the community at large occurs when retention and social promotion comes into play.

Could you handle your child being retained or socially promoted without the stress and consequences of this decision negatively impacting your family? If you answer yes, you’d find yourself in the minority.

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Matthew Lynch published in Digital & Mobile Technology, Early Childhood & K-12 EdTech, Higher Education, The Hechinger Report, Trending Topics

Do classroom clickers improve learning? It depends.

by Nichole Dobo

Classroom “clickers” quiz students in real time, allowing instructors to gauge student learning and reinforce what is being taught.

New research suggests that the effectiveness of these devices hinges largely on the teaching methods being used with them, not the technology, and that instructors would do well to think about why they are using the devices and whether or not they dovetail with their teaching style.

“It’s super easy to just incorporate clickers into the classroom and to say ‘I am doing something new, something innovative,’ ” said Amy M. Shapiro, a professor of psychology at UMass Dartmouth. “But it’s not that simple.”

The study, published in the most recent edition of the journal Computers & Education, studied clicker use in classrooms of undergraduate students in an introductory biology class and a physics course at a university in the northeast.

The researchers discovered, to their surprise, that these devices encourage some students to focus on rote fact memorization, to the detriment of deeper, conceptual learning. Those students without a background on the topic covered in the course might fixate on the clicker questions when studying, rather than delve deeper into the material of the course, researchers suggested, adding that more study of this novel finding is needed.

The study builds on prior research that generally found that clickers had a favorable effect on student learning. But those earlier studies found it difficult to determine if the improvements in student learning came directly from the use of the clickers. This new research helps fill in the gap by studying how clickers combined with different styles of teaching – lecture halls full of students versus problem-solving in smaller groups, for instance – changed the results of student learning. The study notes that previous research showing positive results with clickers had hypothesized that teaching strategies probably had a major influence on the results. This new research seems to confirm it.

That said, limitations remain. Results could have differed because researchers were comparing courses in different subjects (biology and physics), for example.

The researchers were careful to note that they do no suggest eliminating the technology from the classroom. Instead, they say their research suggests this: The mere use of a technology isn’t enough; careful attention to how devices interact with teaching is required.

Shapiro, for example, said that she uses clickers in a large lecture hall during an introductory level course. There, the clickers are useful in improving attendance (students know the clickers track that), and the course requires a fair amount of rote memorization of new terms. But she does not use clickers in smaller, higher-level courses where students are more engaged in applying what they know to solve problems.

“We suggest that, while clickers are useful in motivating students to come to class, increasing enjoyment of the class, and enhancing rote learning in didactic courses, instructors interested in imparting deeper understanding must be mindful of their overall pedagogy,” the researchers wrote. “Incorporating activities that involve students in active inquiry and problem-solving may be much more helpful than simply offering clicker questions in class, even when the clicker questions are conceptual in nature.”

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news website focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about blended learning.

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech Policy & Reform, Higher Education, Higher Education EdTech, Trending Topics

Want more innovation? Try connecting the dots between engineering and humanities

Sophia Krzys Acord, University of Florida; Kevin S Jones, University of Florida, and Susan D Gillespie, University of Florida

_This article is a part of The Conversation’s series on unique courses. For other articles in this series, read here and here. _

Today’s college students may benefit from an exciting array of subjects to study. But they seem to miss the most important education of all: how to relate their specialization to others in an increasingly interconnected world.

The National Academy of Engineering has categorically stated that today’s engineers need to be more than individuals who simply “like math and science.” They must be “creative problem-solvers” who help “shape our future” by improving our “health, happiness, and safety.”

And in 2001, the engineering accreditation body ABET added a new criterion so as to ensure that students get “the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context.”

The point is that the connections between humanities and science have been lost in today’s separation of disciplines. Indeed, a recent report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences discovered that humanities and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) training majors largely dwell in different silos.

So, where and how did we lose our way? And how can educators and institutions change things?

Separation of disciplines

The founders of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) were well aware of the critical nature of this interdependence.

When the NEH and the National Science Foundation (NSF) were established in the 1950s and ‘60s, the NEH founders wrote:

If the interdependence of science and the humanities were more generally understood, men would be more likely to become masters of their technology and not its unthinking servants.

These founders, hailing from leading universities as well as the US Atomic Energy Commission, IBM Corp and New York Life Insurance, knew that connecting the humanities and sciences helps us make informed judgments about our control of nature, ourselves and our destiny.

Connecting the humanities and science helps us make informed decisions.
Phillip Barron, CC BY-NC

But, since the 1980s, political rhetoric has emphasized the need for less humanities and more STEM education. STEM is painted as a more profitable investment, in terms of job creation and research dollars generated.

A notable example is the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” initiative, which both isolates and prioritizes the STEM disciplines from the humanities, arts and social sciences.

This rhetoric is also evident in the creation of separate political education organizations such as the bipartisan STEM Education Caucus founded several years ago by congressional representatives to strengthen STEM education from kindergarten to the workforce.

This separation of disciplines actually hurts education, and it also hurts our ability to innovate and solve big problems.

Connecting STEM with humanities doesn’t just provide the well-rounded education today’s employers want. As the American Academy of Arts and Science’s 2013 “The Heart of the Matter” report observes, connecting these fields is necessary to solve the world’s biggest problems such as “the provision of clean air and water, food, health, energy, universal education, human rights, and the assurance of physical safety.”

So, separating and prioritizing STEM from humanities ignores the fact that we live in a complex social and cultural world. And many different disciplines must combine to address this world’s needs and challenges.

Bringing the disciplines together

To address this gap, four years ago the faculty from materials engineering and liberal arts at the University of Florida began working with the Materials Research Society. We wanted to put together a new course on “materials.”

Why did we choose materials? Because everything is made of them, every discipline studies them and they are tangible (quite literally) to the average freshman.

An interdisciplinary course on materials prepares students for the challenges of the future.
Internet Archive Book Images

After all, grade school students still learn about the Stone, Bronze, and Iron ages. The Industrial and Information revolutions revolved around new uses for steel, aluminum and silicon. The human past has been shaped by harnessing and consuming materials and energy.

Materials will be important for our collective future as well. So, we thought, this is the future for which we should be preparing students.

And thus our course, The Impact of Materials on Society (IMOS), was born. Taught by a team of nine faculty from engineering, humanities and social sciences, the course explores the close connection between the “stuff” in our lives and our experiences as social beings.

Students discuss how materials benefit global trade and communication but also risk resource exploitation and political conflict. For example, we depend upon rare earths for our cellphones, iPads and wind farms, but accessing these rare earths from limited sources is not sustainable.

So, some of the questions that the course raises are: what materials do we depend upon in our daily lives? Does this dependence have social consequences? What social relationships form around the production and use of these materials? And how do our current uses of materials affect our ability to discover new uses for them?

Students also discuss the ethical and social aspects of using certain materials.
college.library, CC BY

Students are also asked to consider how our values shape our willingness to adopt new technologies. For example, Earl Tupper may have invented Tupperware, but it was Brownie Wise and her home parties with other women who first made his polymer famous!

Each week covers a different material (eg, clay, glass, gold, plastic), its scientific properties, demonstrations, and its past and present impacts.

Working together in multidisciplinary groups, students then contemplate the development of future materials. These include flexible electronic materials that can be used to create wearable sensors that can transmit important information, such as body hydration levels during athletic training. New polymer (plastic) materials made from renewable sources instead of petroleum may have fewer health risks and are more sustainable than today’s plastic cups and bottles.

At the same time, they discuss the ethical and social considerations that might affect the successful production and adoption of these new materials in different contexts.

Gap in education

The course is different from other freshman-oriented courses. It is not a “history course for engineers.” And it is not an “engineering course for humanists.”

It is an interdisciplinary course that uses multiple perspectives to understand materials innovation. A wide range of departments including engineering, anthropology, classics, history, English, sociology and philosophy participate in its teaching.

Students refer to IMOS as a “bridge course” that provides the “connecting dots” between different classes.

And the responses come from students across the different majors. For instance, one engineering major noted, “This class just further proves that you have to understand different aspects of how our world works and not just engineering to be a great engineer.”

Meanwhile a history major observed, “This class gives me a leg up in my other history courses because it reminds me to think about the properties of materials and how they shape our lives.”

These experiences point to a gaping hole in modern education: discipline-specific and general education courses provide important knowledge, but “bridging courses” are needed for students to capitalize upon that knowledge.

To engineer useful technologies, we need to connect scientific study with the cultural competencies of the humanities and social sciences.

Challenges of 21st-century learning

The “Renaissance” ideal was to produce elite men whose broad training prepared them for any endeavor. Thankfully, 21st-century education is more inclusive.

But it still requires intellectual and cognitive flexibility to harness large amounts of data.

This doesn’t mean simply knowing everything, even though we live in the “Age of Google.” Today, students need the ability to make connections across disciplines.

Celebrated innovators such as Einstein, Ada Lovelace and Steve Jobs credit the intersection of disciplines for their inventive thinking.

More boundary-crossing opportunities in higher education can break open the disciplinary silos. And that alone will unleash critical thinking and innovation.

The ConversationAdditional contributors to this article are University of Florida faculty Sean Adams, Marsha Bryant, Florin Curta, Mary Ann Eaverly, Bonnie Effros and Ken Sassaman, and Materials Research Society Outreach Coordinator Pamela Hupp.

Sophia Krzys Acord, Associate Director, Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere; Lecturer in Sociology and Criminology & Law, University of Florida; Kevin S Jones, Chair Professor, University of Florida, and Susan D Gillespie, Professor, University of Florida

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in Digital & Mobile Technology, Early Childhood & K-12 EdTech, Higher Education, Trending Topics

How mobile phones are disrupting teaching and learning in Africa

Gina Porter, Durham University

Mobile phones have become ubiquitous in Africa. Among younger users, basic phones are most common. But more pupils are accessing smartphones that can connect to the internet – and taking them along to school.

Phones are often used in school whether they’re allowed or not. Although they can enable valuable access to information, they also bring new responsibilities and dangers. It’s remarkably common for classes to be interrupted by both pupils’ and teachers’ phones. Access to pornography as well as bullying and harassment through phones is widely reported.

We have conducted a study of young people’s mobile phone use in Ghana, Malawi and South Africa. Our findings emphasise the central place that mobile phones occupy in many young people’s lives. Before the mobile phone arrived in Africa, few people had access to landlines. The mobile phone represents far more of a communication revolution in Africa than in richer countries.

Researching phone stories

The study, involving a group of university researchers from the UK and Africa, was funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council and Department for International Development. It covers many aspects of young people’s phone use, from generational relations to job searches and health advice. Use in school has emerged as a leading issue, echoing concerns around the world.

We conducted more than 1,500 face-to-face interviews and focus groups with young people, teachers, parents and key community members across 24 locations – eight in each country. These varied from poor city neighbourhoods to remote rural hamlets.

We followed this up with a questionnaire to about 3,000 young people aged between nine and 18 and 1,500 young people aged between 19 and 25 in the same 24 locations.

The survey of children aged nine to 18 years shows that mobile phone use is much higher than ownership figures might suggest. Ownership of phones was lowest in Malawi, the poorest of the three countries. Here only 8% of children in the survey owned their own phone, compared with 16% in Ghana and 51% in South Africa. Nonetheless, in Malawi 35% of children said they had used a phone in the week before the survey. In Ghana the figure was 42% and in South Africa it was 77%. Children often borrow phones from each other, their parents, other family members and neighbours.

Children’s use of phones

Some pupils, particularly in South Africa, use their phones to access sites like Master Maths for help with homework. But the positive benefits mostly seem to be limited to mundane tasks such as contacting friends to check on homework or using the phone as a calculator. Much information from pupils and teachers was more negative: academic performance affected by disrupted classes – due to teachers as well as pupils using their phones – disrupted sleep because of cheap night calls, time wasted on prolonged sessions on social network sites, and harassment, bullying and pornography.

Class disruption from pupils’ phones used to be mostly from ring tones when calls were received. Now, for those with smartphones, messaging on WhatsApp or checking Facebook have become common classroom activities. Teachers’ phone use in class can be equally disruptive, as some teachers admitted. A call comes in, or they make a call, and whether they step outside or take the call in class, the end result is that the lesson is interrupted and – as more than one told us – “You forget what you are going to deliver.”

In Malawi, 60% of enrolled pupils said they had seen their teacher using a phone in lesson time during the week before the survey. The corresponding figure for Ghana was 66% and for South Africa 88%. Pupils are rarely given such an opportunity to comment on the behaviour of those in authority over them but even if not all were truthful, these figures are of concern. Many head teachers also spoke about the problem of teacher phone use, saying they found it difficult to regulate.

Other problems include disturbing levels of pupil bullying and harassment. In the survey of enrolled pupils who use a phone, 16% in Ghana, 28% in Malawi and 55% in South Africa said they had received unwanted, unpleasant or upsetting calls or texts. This was almost equally true for boys and girls.

Distribution and viewing of pornography is also widespread, as older boys were often willing to disclose. A few – even primary school pupils – mentioned sexting.

Promoting responsible phone use in school

Many head teachers have asked us how to promote responsible phone use in school. Here are some suggestions:

Pupil phone use: It is important to have a clear school policy on pupil phone use, to inform parents about this and to explain the reasoning behind it. If the school has decided to allow pupils to bring their mobile phone to school – for instance, because of travel problems – but not to use it in school, then pupils could be required to put a name tag on their phone and deposit it with a staff member, using a register, before school begins. In this case parents or carers must be given a phone number for urgent messages.

If the school allows pupils to use mobile phones in class as calculators or to access the internet, pupils and their parents could sign an “acceptable use” agreement each term. This would promote effective use of class time and their own and other pupils’ safety.

Pupils also need reminders not to publish personal information on the internet and to tell their teacher, a parent or carer if they access any information that worries them. Parents must be encouraged to help their child follow the school’s guidelines. Asking them to sign an acceptable use agreement together with their children will help.

The ConversationTeacher phone use: Teachers’ mobile phones should be switched off and left in a safe place during lesson times. If teachers are using their phones when pupils are banned from doing so, pupils may become resentful. Staff should not contact pupils from their personal mobile phones or give their mobile phone numbers to pupils or parents. This would help teachers maintain sound professional practice.

Gina Porter, Senior Research Fellow, Durham University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in Digital & Mobile Technology, Early Childhood & K-12 EdTech, Higher Education, Trending Topics

Fighting online trolls with bots

Saiph Savage, West Virginia University

The wonder of internet connectivity can turn into a horror show if the people who use online platforms decide that instead of connecting and communicating, they want to mock, insult, abuse, harass and even threaten each other. In online communities since at least the early 1990s, this has been called “trolling.” More recently it has been called cyberbullying. It happens on many different websites and social media systems. Users have been fighting back for a while, and now the owners and managers of those online services are joining in.

The most recent addition to this effort comes from Twitch, one of a few increasingly popular platforms that allow gamers to play video games, stream their gameplay live online and type back and forth with people who want to watch them play. Players do this to show off their prowess (and in some cases make money). Game fans do this for entertainment or to learn new tips and tricks that can improve their own play.

When spectators get involved, they can help a player out.
Saiph Savage, CC BY-ND

Large, diverse groups of people engaging with each other online can yield interesting cooperation. For example, in one video game I helped build, people watching a stream could make comments that would actually give the player help, like slowing down or attacking enemies. But of the thousands of people tuning in daily to watch gamer Sebastian “Forsen” Fors play, for instance, at least some try to overwhelm or hijack the chat away from the subject of the game itself. This can be a mere nuisance, but can also become a serious problem, with racism, sexism and other prejudices coming to the fore in toxic and abusive comment threads.

In an effort to help its users fight trolling, Twitch has developed bots – software programs that can run automatically on its platform – to monitor discussions in its chats. At present, Twitch’s bots alert the game’s host, called the streamer, that someone has posted an offensive word. The streamer can then decide what action to take, such as blocking the user from the channel.

Trolls can share pornographic images in a chat channel, instead of having conversations about the game.
Chelly Con Carne/YouTube, CC BY-ND

Beyond just helping individual streamers manage their audiences’ behavior, this approach may be able to capitalize on the fact that online bots can help change people’s behavior, as my own research has documented. For instance, a bot could approach people using racist language, question them about being racist and suggest other forms of interaction to change how people interact with others.

Using bots to affect humans

In 2015 I was part of a team that created a system that uses Twitter bots to do the activist work of recruiting humans to do social good for their community. We called it Botivist.

We used Botivist in an experiment to find out whether bots could recruit and make people contribute ideas about tackling corruption instead of just complaining about corruption. We set up the system to watch Twitter for people complaining about corruption in Latin America, identifying the keywords “corrupcion” and “impunidad,” the Spanish words for “corruption” and “impunity.”

When it noticed relevant tweets, Botivist would tweet in reply, asking questions like “How do we fight corruption in our cities?” and “What should we change personally to fight corruption?” Then it waited to see if the people replied, and what they said. Of those who engaged, Botivist asked follow-up questions and asked them to volunteer to help fight the problem they were complaining about.

We found that Botivist was able to encourage people to go beyond simply complaining about corruption, pushing them to offer ideas and engage with others sharing their concerns. Bots could change people’s behavior! However, we also found that some individuals began debating whether – and how – bots should be involved in activism. But it nevertheless suggests that people who were comfortable engaging with bots online could be mobilized to work toward a solution, rather than just complaining about it.

Humans’ reactions to bots’ interventions matter, and inform how we design bots and what we tell them to do. In research at New York University in 2016, doctoral student Kevin Munger used Twitter bots to engage with people expressing racist views online. Calling out Twitter users for racist behavior ended up reducing those users’ racist communications over time – if the bot doing the chastising appeared to be a white man with a large number of followers, two factors that conferred social status and power. If the bot had relatively few followers or was a black man, its interventions were not measurably successful.

Raising additional questions

Bots’ abilities to affect how people act toward each other online brings up important issues our society needs to address. A key question is: What types of behaviors should bots encourage or discourage?

It’s relatively benign for bots to notify humans about specifically hateful or dangerous words – and let the humans decide what to do about it. Twitch lets streamers decide for themselves whether they want to use the bots, as well as what (if anything) to do if the bot alerts them to a problem. Users’ decisions not to use the bots include both technological factors and concerns about comments. In conversations I have seen among Twitch streamers, some have described disabling them for causing interference with browser add-ons they already use to manage their audience chat space. Other streamers have disabled the bots because they feel bots hinder audience participation.

But it could be alarming if we ask bots to influence people’s free expression of genuine feelings or thoughts. Should bots monitor language use on all online platforms? What should these “bot police” look out for? How should the bots – which is to say, how should the people who design the bots – handle those Twitch streamers who appear to enjoy engaging with trolls?

One Twitch streamer posted a positive view of trolls on Reddit:

“…lmfao! Trolls make it interesting […] I sometimes troll back if I’m in a really good mood […] I get similar comments all of the time…sometimes I laugh hysterically and lose focus because I’m tickled…”

Other streamers even enjoy sharing their witty replies to trolls:

“…My favorite was someone telling me in Rocket League “I hope every one of your followers unfollows you after that match.” My response was “My mom would never do that!” Lol…”

What about streamers who actually want to make racist or sexist comments to their audiences? What if their audiences respond positively to those remarks? Should a bot monitor a player’s behavior on his own channel against standards set by someone else, such as the platform’s administrators? And what language should the bots watch for – racism, perhaps, but what about ideas that are merely unpopular, rather than socially damaging?

The ConversationAt present, we don’t have ways of thinking about, talking about or deciding on these balancing acts of freedom of expression and association online. In the offline world, people are free to say racist things to willing audiences, but suffer social consequences if they do so around people who object. As bots become more able to participate in, and exert influence on, our human interactions, we’ll need to decide who sets the standards and how, as well as who enforces them, in online communities.

Saiph Savage, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, West Virginia University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in Digital & Mobile Technology, Early Childhood & K-12 EdTech, Higher Education, Trending Topics

How can we learn to reject fake news in the digital world?

Thomas P. Mackey, SUNY Empire State College and Trudi Jacobson, University at Albany, State University of New York

The circulation of fake news through social media in the 2016 presidential election has raised several concerns about online information.

Of course, there is nothing new about fake news as such – the satirical site “The Onion” has long done this. Fake news satire is part of “Saturday Night Live”‘s Weekend Update and “The Daily Show.”

In these cases, the framework of humor is clear and explicit. That, however, is not the case in social media, which has emerged as a real news source. Pew Research Center reports that Facebook is “the most popular social media platform” and that “a majority of U.S. adults – 62 percent – get news on social media.” When people read fake news on social media, they may be tricked into thinking they are reading real news.

Both Google and Facebook have promised to take measures to address the concerns of fake news masquerading as real news. A team of college students has already developed a browser plug-in called FiB to help readers identify on Facebook what is fake and what is real.

But these steps don’t go far enough to address fake news.

The question then is: Can we better prepare ourselves to challenge and reject fabrications that may easily circulate as untruthful texts and images in the online world?

As scholars of library and information science, we argue that in today’s complex world, traditional literacy, with its emphasis on reading and writing, and information literacy – the ability to search and retrieve information – are not enough.

What we need today is metaliteracy – an ability to make sense of the vast amounts of information in the connected world of social media.

Why digital literacy is not enough

Students today are consumers of the latest technology gadgets and social media platforms. However, they don’t always have a deep understanding of the information transmitted through these devices, or how to be creators of online content.

Researchers at Stanford University recently found that “when it comes to evaluating information that flows through social media channels,” today’s “digital natives,” despite being immersed in these environments, “are easily duped” by misinformation.

Digital literacy may not be enough.
Digital devices image via www.shutterstock.com

They said they “were taken aback by students’ lack of preparation” and argued that educators and policymakers must “demonstrate the link between digital literacy and citizenship.”

The truth is that we live in a world where information lacks traditional editorial mechanisms of filter. It also comes in various styles and forms – it could range from digital images to multimedia to blogs and wikis. The veracity of all this information is not easily understood.

This problem has been around for a while. In 2005, for example, a false story about a political figure, John Seigenthaler Sr., was posted by an anonymous author on Wikipedia, implicating him in the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. Seigenthaler challenged this fake entry and it was eventually corrected. Several other hoaxes have circulated on Wikipedia over the years, showing how easy it is to post false information online.

Indeed, in 2007, FactCheck.org, a website that monitors the accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players, urged readers to ask critical questions in response to a false story that had been placed about House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. At the time, people were being misled into believing that Pelosi was proposing a tax on retirement funds and others to help illegal immigrants and minorities.

In 2016, FactCheck.org published a set of practical steps to encourage closer reading and critical thinking.

As we see it, metaliteracy is a way to achieve these goals.

So, what is metaliteracy?

Digital literacy supports the effective use of digital technologies, while metaliteracy emphasizes how we think about things. Metaliterate individuals learn to reflect on how they process information based on their feelings or beliefs.

To do that, first and foremost, metaliterates learn to question sources of information. For example, metaliterate individuals learn to carefully differentiate among multiple sites, both formal (such as The New York Times or Associated Press) and informal (a blog post or tweet).

Metaliterates learn to question the sources of information.
Jon S, CC BY

They question the validity of information from any of these sources and do not privilege one over the other. Information presented on a formal TV news source, such as CNN or Fox News, for instance, may be just as inaccurate as someone’s blog post. This involves understanding all sources of information.

Second, metaliterates learn to observe their feelings when reading a news item.

We are less inclined to delve further when something affirms our beliefs. On the other hand, we are more inclined to fact check or examine the source of the news when we don’t agree with it. Thinking about our own thinking reminds us that we need to move beyond how we feel, and engage our cognitive faculties in doing a critical assessment.

Metaliterates pause to think whether they believe something because it affirms their ideas.

Metaliteracy challenges assumptions

Metaliteracy helps us understand the context from which the news is arising, noting whether the information emanates from research or editorial commentary, distinguishing the value of formal and informal news sources and evaluating comments left by others.

By reflecting on the way we are thinking about a news story, for instance, we will be more apt to challenge our assumptions, ask good questions about what we are reading and actively seek additional information.

Consider the recent example of how fake news was put out through a single tweet and believed by thousands of readers online. Eric Tucker, a 35-year-old cofounder of a marketing company in Austin, Texas, tweeted that anti-Trump protesters were professionally organized and bused to Trump rallies. Despite having only 40 Twitter followers, this one individual managed to start a conspiracy theory. Thousands of people believed and forwarded the tweet.

This example shows how easy it is to transmit information online to a wide audience, even if it is not accurate. The combination of word and image in this case was powerful and supported what many people already believed to be true. But it also showed a failure to ask critical questions within an online community with shared ideas or to challenge one’s own beliefs with careful reflection.

In other words, just because information is shared widely on social media, that does not mean it is true.

Developing deeper understanding

Another emphasis of metaliteracy is understanding how information is packaged and delivered.

Packaging can be examined on a number of fronts. One is the medium used – is it text, photograph, video, cartoon, illustration or artwork? The other is how it is used – is the medium designed to appeal to our feelings? Does professional-looking design provide a level of credibility to the unsuspecting viewer?

Metaliterates learn how to discriminate between fake and real news.
Hand image via www.shutterstock.com

Social media makes it easy to produce and distribute all kinds of digital content. We can all be photographers or digital storytellers using online tools for producing and packaging well-designed materials. This can be empowering.

But the same material can be used to create intentionally false messages with appealing design features. Metaliterates learn to distinguish between formal and informal sources of information that may have very different or nonexistent editorial checks and balances.

They learn to examine the packaging of content. They learn to recognize whether the seemingly professional design may be a façade for a bias or misinformation. Realnewsrightnow, for example, is a slickly designed site with attention-grabbing but often false headlines. The About page of the website might raise questions, but only if a reader’s mindset is evaluative.

Becoming a responsible citizen

Because social media is interactive and collaborative, the metaliterate learner must know how to contribute responsibly as well.

Metaliterate individuals recognize there are ethical considerations involved when sharing information, such as the information must be accurate. But there is more. Metaliteracy asks that individuals understand on a mental and emotional level the potential impact of one’s participation.

So, metaliterate individuals don’t just post random thoughts that are not based in truth. They learn that in a public space they have a responsibility to be fair and accurate.

So how can we become metaliterate?

Schools need to urge students to ponder these questions. Students need to be made aware of these issues early on so that they learn how not to develop uncritical assumptions and actions as they use technology.

They need to understand that whether they are posting a tweet, blog, Facebook post or writing a response to others online, they need to think carefully about what they are saying.

The ConversationWhile social media offers much promise for providing everyone with a voice, there is a disturbing downside to this revolution. It has enabled sharing of misinformation and false news stories that radically alter representations of reality.

Thomas P. Mackey, Vice Provost for Academic Programs, SUNY Empire State College and Trudi Jacobson, Distinguished Librarian, University at Albany, State University of New York

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Retention & Social Promotion Series, Trending Topics

Pass or Fail: The Indirect Cost of Social Promotion and Retention May Surprise You 

In this multi-part series, I provide a dissection of the phenomenon of retention and social promotion. Also, I describe the many different methods that would improve student instruction in classrooms and eliminate the need for retention and social promotion if combined effectively.

While reading this series, periodically ask yourself this question: Why are educators, parents and the American public complicit in a practice that does demonstrable harm to children and the competitive future of the country?

Students who experience social promotion or retention aren’t the only individuals impacted. Put yourself in the shoes of the students who actually passed and the teachers. If you were one of these people, how would you view the student being socially promoted or retained? How is the education system as a whole altered by social promotion and retention?

Passing Students

Students directly affected by retention and social promotion are not the only ones impacted in America’s public schools. Passing students also pay a price for the implementation of social promotion and retention policies. The potential for retention or social promotion is certainly a cause of anxiety. Beyond this cost, however, there are several clearly identified and well-documented costs for “passing” students that relate to the quality of teaching provided when there is a need to support retained or socially promoted students.

Strained relationships between retained students and their non-retained peers are common. Passing and retained students experience significant struggles when trying to socialize together. Although this is not entirely conclusive or indicative of the underlying causes for social withdrawal from retained students, we can infer that there is a risk associated with having a retained student in a classroom. The situation can confuse social experiences for non-retained students and go largely unaddressed by school support systems including counselors, teachers, and administrators.

Teachers

Another obvious cost of retention is to educators. Some teachers feel the concentration on standardized testing of students can serve as a means of “testing” teachers. This places pressure on teachers to instruct in a particular way, to teach to tests, and the like.

The effect standardized testing and graded approaches have on teachers is significant. This method doesn’t target state education agency or middle-level managers in the state bureaucracy, rather standardized testing affects only the educators. Education reform that brought about the pass-or-fail focus included systems of “testing teachers” and evaluating classroom performance. However, assessment was only possible by also prescribing the curriculum and emphasizing the testing of students.

The cost of all this is the quality of education overall and the scope that teachers have to manifest the elements of that quality. When they are impacted by retention and social promotion, teachers are essentially forced to undermine their skills, trivializing and reducing the value of the curriculum content and encouraging the distancing of children from the very purpose of schooling

The Education System

Regardless of the point at which retention occurs, there are direct financial costs associated with retaining a student in the same grade. The average cost of a typical developing and progressing student was approximately $10,700 in 2009–2010. The direct cost to retain approximately 2.3 percent is more than $12 billion per year for the number of students retained. Note that this estimate excludes the costs of any remedial services provided to the students repeating a grade, such as any learning support or specialized services, as well as earnings foregone by retained students due to their delayed entry into the labor market.

Social promotion costs are, of course, much more difficult to track. Having students of varying abilities within a single classroom undermines the ability of teachers to address the needs of all students equally unless they have other specific supports in the classroom. Both retention and social promotion policies cost our education system in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. The quality of education received by children in the United States will remain low so long as the policies of retention and social promotion remain consistent for states and school districts.

A retained child is expected to only make small advances in their educational progress. They are not likely to be that much better off academically, and may fall behind in their general education and overall academic development. Many of these issues can be traced to a loss of confidence in the entire education system as a whole.

Socially promoted students face similar problems, although from a different perspective: they already struggle academically, their schools promote them nevertheless. They not only have to apply skills and knowledge they may not have mastered from the previous year; they’re also expected to follow through and pick up a series of new skills and new knowledge sets at a more advanced level.

Social promotion and retention practices undermine the experiences of all students, teachers and negatively impact the education system overall. With this in mind, how can anyone continue to support these policies?

 

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Elementary Education, Trending Topics

What is Digital Literacy?

Every educator is familiar with the concept of literacy—the ability to read and write. A person who is illiterate, who cannot read or write, will inevitably struggle to get along in society. It’s impossible to go on to higher education or get a high-paying job without the ability to read and write. Even daily tasks, like reading a newspaper or filling out job applications, are difficult for an illiterate person.

In today’s world, literacy goes beyond just the basic ability to comprehend text. Today’s students will also need to master a new skill—digital literacy. Cornell University defines digital literacy as “the ability to find, evaluate, utilize, share, and create content using information technologies and the Internet.”

Digital literacy, by this definition, encompasses a wide range of skills, all of which are necessary to succeed in an increasingly digital world. As print mediums begin to die out, the ability to comprehend information found online becomes more and more important. Students who lack digital literacy skills may soon find themselves at just as much of a disadvantage as those who cannot read or write.

Because digital literacy is so important, educators are increasingly required to teach students digital literacy in the classroom. In many ways, this is similar to what educators have always done in teaching students to read and write. In other ways, however, digital literacy is a brand new skill.

Most students already use digital technology, such as tablets, smartphones, and computers, at home. Many students already know how to navigate the web, share images on social media, and do a Google search to find information. However, true digital literacy goes beyond these basic skills.

One of the most important components of digital literacy is the ability to not just find, but also to evaluate, information. This means finding the answer to a question or a bit of needed information and then judging whether the source is reliable. Educators can, and should, teach students how to tell whether information on the internet is true. The ability to weed out false information and find reliable sources is a key part of digital literacy and a crucial life skill in the 21st century.

Educators can start by teaching students how to find author information, dates of publication, and other information that can reveal whether an online source is reliable. Students should also learn to tell the difference between different types of websites. For example, a .com site may be less reliable than a .edu site. Understanding these differences is one example of digital literacy.

Learning how to locate information is just one part of digital literacy. Knowing how to share information is another. Students today are constantly warned about the dangers of posting inappropriate images or text online, but it’s still important for teachers to discuss. The ability to create and share online is considered a part of digital literacy and should be taught in schools.

Students should know how digital writing differs from traditional writing—for example, how to include images and links in writing. They should also have an understanding of what kind of audience they’re sharing with online. Just like a personal narrative essay differs from a research paper, a post on Facebook is different from an article for a website or blog.

As technology becomes a part of daily life, it’s more important than ever for educators to teach digital literacy. Whether they plan on going to college or not, students will need digital literacy to be successful in their personal and professional lives.

How can educators help their students navigate the digital world? Let us know what you think about digital literacy and education!

 

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