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A multidimensional and analytical perspective on Open Educational Practices in the 21st century
Get PDFParticipatory approaches to teaching and learning are experiencing a new lease on life in the 21st century as a result of the rapid technology development. Knowledge, practices, and tools can be shared across spatial and temporal boundaries in higher education by means of Open Educational Resources, Massive Open Online Courses, and open-source technologies. In this context, the Open Education Movement calls for new didactic approaches that encourage greater learner participation in formal higher education. Based on a representative literature review and focus group research, in this study an analytical framework was developed that enables researchers and practitioners to assess the form of participation in formal, collaborative teaching and learning practices. The analytical framework is focused on the micro-level of higher education, in particular on the interaction between students and lecturers when organizing the curriculum. For this purpose, the research reflects anew on the concept of participation, taking into account existing stage models for participation in the educational context. These are then brought together with the dimensions of teaching and learning processes, such as methods, objectives and content, etc. This paper aims to make a valuable contribution to the opening up of learning and teaching, and expands the discourse around possibilities for interpreting Open Educational Practices
Telemedicus Sommerkonferenz – Recht der Informationsgesellschaft. Tagungsband zur Sommerkonferenz 2022
No full textThe Tech Company: On the neglected second nature of platforms
Get PDFThe unprecedented rise of startups such as Google or Amazon has spurred an ongoing debate on the conceptualization of the corporate model these firms represent. Thus far, attention has centered on the analysis of their product and market strategies highlighting their platform nature as common feature and its defining characteristic. By applying and scaling the platform business model these companies have been able to capture value created outside the firm. The focus on the platform nature and the evolution of their external ecosystems, however, has left the work that is done inside these companies to create and provide online platforms largely unnoticed. Against this background, the article seeks to contribute to the debate by analyzing the inner mode of production as an essential component of their corporate model. The second nature of online platform firms, it is argued, is that they are tech companies. Building on this, the article aims to reconstruct how as tech companies they have learned and perfected to continuously develop and operate the internet applications that power their online platforms at global scale.This work has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) (grant no.: 16DII111, 16DII112, 16DII113, 16DII114, 16DII115, 16DII116, 16DII117 – „Deutsches Internet-Institut“
Do open data impact citizens’ behavior? Assessing face mask panic buying behaviors during the Covid-19 pandemic
Get PDFData are essential for digital solutions and supporting citizens’ everyday behavior. Open data initiatives have expanded worldwide in the last decades, yet investigating the actual usage of open data and evaluating their impacts are insufficient. Thus, in this paper, we examine an exemplary use case of open data during the early stage of the Covid-19 pandemic and assess its impacts on citizens. Based on quasi-experimental methods, the study found that publishing local stores’ real-time face mask stock levels as open data may have influenced people’s purchase behaviors. Results indicate a reduced panic buying behavior as a consequence of the openly accessible information in the form of an online mask map. Furthermore, the results also suggested that such open-data-based countermeasures did not equally impact every citizen and rather varied among socioeconomic conditions, in particular the education level
Algorithmic regulation. A maturing concept for investigating regulation of and through algorithms
Get PDFThis paper offers a critical synthesis of the articles in this Special Issue with a view to assessing the concept of “algorithmic regulation” as a mode of social coordination and control articulated by Yeung in 2017. We highlight significant changes in public debate about the role of algorithms in society occurring in the last five years. We also highlight prominent themes that emerge from the contributions, illuminating what is distinctive about the concept of algorithmic regulation, reflecting upon some of its strengths, limitations, and its relationship with the broader research field. In closing, we argue that the core concept is valuable and maturing. It has evolved into an analytical bridge that fosters cross-disciplinary development and analysis in ways that enrich its early “skeletal” form, thereby enabling careful and context-sensitive analysis of algorithmic regulation in concrete settings while facilitating critical reflection concerning the legitimacy of existing and proposed regulatory regimes
How News Websites Refer to Twitter. A Content Analysis of Twitter Sources in Journalism
Get PDFThe study presents the results of a standardized content analysis comparing the use of Twitter as an information source on the websites of five news media types (quality newspapers, a tabloid newspaper, weekly magazines, broadcasters, and internet only). The theoretical assumption behind the study is that the adoption of Twitter as a source follows the established practices of a particular media type. All articles published online by ten German news media in a period of one month were collected (n = 21,823). A subset of articles containing Twitter-related keywords (n = 496) and 375 tweets cited in these articles was explored in detail. Our focal analysis of n = 287 articles using Twitter as an information source revealed systematic differences between both media types and article topics regarding the number and style of Twitter references as well as the types of accounts cited. We found that the tabloid paper incorporated the highest number of tweets per article, incorporated tweets primarily in articles on human interest and gossip and cited non-elite sources more often than other media types. Quality papers, weekly magazines, and broadcasters used tweets as sources primarily in articles on politics and economy and cited public actors, such as politicians or officials, more frequently
Constitucionalismo Digital: contradições de um conceito impreciso
Get PDFResumo O presente artigo mapeia os usos da expressão constitucionalismo digital, empregada nas discussões recentes de regulação de tecnologias digitais e, em especial, plataformas de Internet. Nosso objetivo principal é indicar as contradições e riscos colocados na dilatação do termo “constitucionalismo” para englobar os fenômenos normativos que hoje correm sob o rótulo. À luz da compreensão do constitucionalismo tradicional como fenômeno político e institucional, são identificadas as teorias que precedem o constitucionalismo digital como formulações contemporâneas que visam explicar as mudanças no funcionamento dos poderes e sistemas normativos que ultrapassam ou sobrepõem o estado-nação e seus limites territoriais (i.e., pluralismo constitucional, constitucionalismo societal e constitucionalismo global). A partir das críticas da literatura a essa matriz teórica, o constitucionalismo digital é problematizado como termo epistemicamente prejudicado pela diversidade de aplicações e pelo potencial de legitimação de concentração de poderes privados. , Abstract This paper maps the uses of the expression digital constitutionalism, as employed in recent debates about digital technologies regulation (in particular, digital platforms). Our goal is to highlight discrepancies and risks implied in the dilatation of the term "constitutionalism" to encompass the normative phenomena that run under this label. In light of the understanding of traditional constitutionalism as a political and institutional phenomenon, we identify the theories that precede digital constitutionalism as contemporary formulations aimed at explaining changes in the functioning of powers and normative systems that transcend or overlap the nation-state and its territorial boundaries (i.e., constitutional pluralism, societal constitutionalism, and global constitutionalism). Based on the literature's criticism of this theoretical matrix, digital constitutionalism is problematized as a term epistemically impaired by the diversity of applications and the potential to legitimize concentrations of private powers
Team Collaboration and Productivity: Experiences of agile, hybrid, and traditional teams with remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic
Get PDFThe shift to remote work poses particular challenges for teamwork. It makes spontaneous and informal communication more difficult and may weaken social relations in teams. This study based on an online survey of 1,516 individuals who worked from home during the COVID-19 pandemic examines the functioning of teamwork in remote-work contexts and attempts to answer the following questions: (1) What organizational and technical working conditions influence working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic? (2) How did collaboration in different forms of teamwork evolve under working-from-home conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic? (3) What effects of working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic can be observed in terms of teamwork productivity? Overall, the study reveals quite surprising differences between different forms of team organization. The quality of team collaboration and team productivity slightly increased in agile teams, even in a situation where at least some members of the team were working from home. In contrast, respondents working in traditional teams reported slightly negative effects of working from home on teamwork quality and team productivity.This work has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) (grant no.: 16DII111, 16DII112, 16DII113, 16DII114, 16DII115, 16DII116, 16DII117 – „Deutsches Internet-Institut“
Content Moderation and the Quest for Democratic Legitimacy
Get PDFThe paper analyzes the public controversy incited by the introduction of the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) in Germany. This law obliges social media platforms to delete unlawful content from their sites and has received international attention as a regulatory blueprint for governing corporate content moderation. The paper describes different ways in which NetzDG was framed in German media reporting, which offered distinct assessments of whether the new law endangered or supported democratic principles and values. Major differences in the public controversy over NetzDG revolved around, for instance, what freedom of expression and the rule of law meant for content moderation and how NetzDG’s regulatory intervention would interact with platforms. The paper finds that a major point of contention thus concerned how to ground content moderation practices and policies in democratic legitimacy. Its analysis demonstrates that the governance of content moderation on social media platforms can open up a site for renegotiating democratic values and principles. As the NetzDG case shows, this can happen without substantively challenging existing laws but by raising the question of how to legitimately apply them to platforms. At stake in this controversy were the underlying logics by which to govern speech online. Different perspectives on this built on distinct understandings of democracy, attributing particular roles and responsibilities to platforms, state institutions, and users. Thus, the paper illuminates that the public controversy over NetzDG, and over the right way to uphold speech laws on platforms, concerned more fundamental questions about the shape of democracy and the distribution of power, agency, and responsibility
The Data-Production Dispositif
Get PDFMachine learning (ML) depends on data to train and verify models. Very often, organizations outsource processes related to data work (i.e., generating and annotating data and evaluating outputs) through business process outsourcing (BPO) companies and crowdsourcing platforms. This paper investigates outsourced ML data work in Latin America by studying three platforms in Venezuela and a BPO in Argentina. We lean on the Foucauldian notion of dispositif to define the data-production dispositif as an ensemble of discourses, actions, and objects strategically disposed to (re)produce power/knowledge relations in data and labor. Our dispositif analysis comprises the examination of 210 data work instruction documents, 55 interviews with data workers, managers, and requesters, and participant observation. Our findings show that discourses encoded in instructions reproduce and normalize the worldviews of requesters. Precarious working conditions and economic dependency alienate workers, making them obedient to instructions. Furthermore, discourses and social contexts materialize in artifacts, such as interfaces and performance metrics, limiting workers' agency and normalizing specific ways of interpreting data. We conclude by stressing the importance of counteracting the data-production dispositif by fighting alienation and precarization, and empowering data workers to become assets in the quest for high-quality data