Many courses about learning technology focus on how it can be harnessed for good. LDT 843 – Learning Technologies for Good and Evil starts from the assumption that good outcomes of new technology for education and society are never guaranteed but rather that the use of technology for learning, or any other purpose, always entails ethical tensions—a struggle between “good” and “evil.” The course provides a practical angle on these issues for learning technology designers, educators, and researchers.
To fight evil and grow good, learning technologists must understand how to determine what is good, how to recognize both good and evil in action (with a critical knowledge of just how bad the evil can get), and how to fight back when we recognize that evil is lurking at the classroom door.
The course is organized into three parts:
- Part 1 provides initial conceptual frames for thinking about ethical issues in technologies for education and learning, including basic moral theory, utopian/dystopian thinking, and guiding values.
- Part 2 surveys a range of contemporary issues in technology and ethics that are relevant to education and learning. For example, the course considers issues of surveillance, engagement and addiction, and debates over profit-seeking.
- Part 3 focuses on drawing conclusions for practice, with application to individual students’ professional contexts.
Assignments include discussions, Tech Crits examining existing technologies, and a culminating Code of Conduct Essay focused the student’s specific professional role.
The course will be offered for the first time to World Campus students in Fall 2021. Effective immediately, LDT 843, as with all courses offered by the LDT faculty, can be applied to the M.Ed. in LDT degree program.
