Thread by @Jessifer

“Proctorio requested retraction of an article by Shea Swauger critical of algorithmic proctoring in the peer-reviewed journal @HybridPed. When the journal refused, Proctorio CEO Mike Olsen and the journal’s editor, Jesse Stommel, got into a Twitter spat.” vice.com/en/article/7k9…

Thoughts drawn from threads referenced here. For many reasons, it’s nearly impossible to publicly critique edtech companies without repercussions. As I’ve said before, these companies deliberately market themselves to the least knowledgeable, most powerful people at institutions.

The monetization strategies for most edtech companies aim for university-wide adoption. When an institution requires all its teachers/students to use a particular tool, they create an environment that inhibits or silences critics.

When everyone is required to use a tool, they become complicit, and less likely to critique from within. And quickly manufactured “norms” make resistance difficult, especially for the least powerful people in the system: adjuncts, students, staff with precarious contracts, etc.

Even critique from outside is often frustrated by accusations of “shaming teachers” who have no choice but to use the tool. To be clear, when I critique, I’m shaming tools like Turnitin or Proctorio and the systems that enable them, not the teachers forced to use these tools.

Meanwhile, rich for-profits can attack faculty and staff from underfunded public colleges and writers for non-profit academic publications with a mere insinuation of a legal threat. A journal with a tiny annual budget can’t afford to even respond to an accusation of libel.

When Proctorio demanded @hybridped retract the article by @SheaSwauger, there was no direct threat of legal action. But the tone was threatening. "As a matter of fact" is repeated 13 times. It’s signed by “Proctorio.” An accessible PDF of their letter: drive.google.com/file/d/1IYD1YI…

I wrote a careful response and sent it to Proctorio after consulting with a lawyer, the author, and a panel of experts in the field. The bulk of these 15 requests for retraction are related to sentences that contain no reference to Proctorio.

I sent these questions in direct response to the retraction request, which ended with this line: “If you have any questions regarding our proposed changes or the Proctorio platform or the remote proctoring industry, please feel free to contact us.” They ignored my questions.

Months later, after I published their retraction request, the Proctorio CEO apologized. He also publicly answered several of my questions. His tweets have been deleted, so those answers are gone, and the record of our exchange is one-sided.

Many have responded to my various threads about Proctorio and other remote proctoring solutions with some version of the argument that it is users not tools who bear the ethical responsibilities here. So, “it’s not Proctorio, it’s how you use it.” But tools aren’t neutral.

It’s important for us to think about how the architecture of a physical space or software platform can and does structure what happens inside of it. I have issues with physical proctoring also, but I think those issues are often (usually) amplified by remote proctoring software.

When a tool is implemented across an institution, individual teachers and students are subject to administrative decisions about how the tool will be used. While sometimes well-intentioned, in my experience, these decisions are rarely made by actual experts in edtech.

Individual users (students or teachers) have little ability to intervene in their own best interests or in the best pedagogical interests. Even the way edtech companies use the word “users” (and not students or teachers) is a way of washing their hands of ethical responsibility.

This is not a problem unique to any specific company. Turnitin ignores its critics altogether. Proctorio viciously attacks them. Others distract with expensive marketing campaigns. These are all ways of silencing critics, especially the ones with the least structural power.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1317516619212488704

“Students would never be exposed to these tools if institutions and their decision makers trusted students and understood how edtech can erode students’ well-being in the name of some marketplace abstraction like degree integrity.” @charleswlogan hybridpedagogy.org/refusal-partne…

All of this is amplified in the midst of the pandemic “pivot to online,” which has institutions investing massively in parasitic edtech and mostly failing to increase investment in faculty development and student support.

Simply, if we invest in teachers and students, we will make a lot of edtech obsolete.

You can support @Linkletter’s defense fund here: gf.me/u/y46ux5