Principled Design of Online Learning Environments
Abstract: Professor Shapiro will discuss the value-laden choices that researchers must confront in order to construct and study online environments for learning. These choices are both pedagogical (concerning the design of how people interact in order to teach and learn) and ethical (concerning both who benefits and who loses by different system designs, as well as how researchers should study online learning while respecting participants’ to informed consent and privacy). Using examples of current environments (including online games, crowd-sourcing systems, and MOOCs) as well as hypothetical future environments to show how these value-laden choices arise, can be made poorly or well, as well as could be resolved in design and research practices that value privacy, autonomy, and education as a mechanism to achieve social equality.