At the outset, ethics, can seem fairly simple. It’s what should be done. That’s normative. Then of course, one immediately runs into both ontological and epistemological questions. First, does there even exist a set of criteria or standards that universally normalize what should be done? And then, if we accept that there might be such a set, where would we find it, and how would we know that this is the set of standards that we could call ethics by which we decide what should be done in any given case.
I’m going to start with the assumption that there are certain things that should be done, that there is a standard by which we can measure what should be done. And I’ll admit a certain agnosticism about our ability to know exactly what that is for each and every situation. In broad strokes, I think most of us know what’s required to be decent people – to show love to our neighbour if we acknowledge a biblical or theological standard. Most of us have some idea of justice, or equity, to use perhaps a more nuanced term. And recent work by Maha Bali has brought that very much to the forefront, both in my mind and in consciousness in educational circles.
But of course, it’s all too easy to propose ethical dilemmas. And these may be less frequent, but they’re often trotted out to demonstrate that there are ethical conflicts. And I know we’re going to run into those in analytics, because on the one hand, there can be some real benefits to students, while on the other hand, there are ways that these can also be harmful, especially, harmful to marginalized students.
Dictated to Otter.ai – a diagnostic application of AI as I learned in week two – this text sat on my phone for a week before I got it posted. I was used to dictating punctuation in other apps, but I found otter just transcribes the punctuation commands. Other than that, I had only three or four transcription errors to edit. I’m not editing content because I’m determined to post my raw thoughts for this course. I can always write a paper later and clean up my thoughts.
