From Dogmatic to Democratic Design: Ethical Principles and Learning Analytics Dashboards

• In Event: Democracy, Dialogue, and Democratic Design in Education

Abstract

Designers of learning analytics dashboards (LADs) seek to ‘optimize’ educational decisions by providing information about learners to improve student performance. Descriptive studies reveal that current dashboard design practices fail to account for significant undemocratic moral risks. Little normative work has attended, however, to how LAD designers ought to conceive of the goal of “optimizing” educational decisions in light of core democratic values. We argue for three principles of ‘Democratic Dashboard Design’: Reciprocal Accountability; Intersectional Inclusion in Epistemic Justice; and a Prioritarian Principle of Educational Justice to address the undemocratic tendencies in current design practice. These principles can be used to ensure dashboard design, purchasing, and use serves, rather than undermines, the ends of a democratic society.

Authors

• Dana Alzoubi, Iowa State University

• Nicolas Jordan Tanchuk, University of Winnipeg