top of page
Algorithmic Play
Education and Digital Culture 2020
University of Edinburgh-Digital Education
s1891551
I decided to test Google Assistant's™ Algorithm with some help from my youngest daughter where appropriate.
The idea was to test the idea of 'nudging' embedded in Google Assistant™ to teach children how to be 'polite' (Knox et al, 2020).
Questions were a mix of ice-breaker, curiosity, rude and some philosphical queries too.
How are you SIRI?
Can you be my friend?
What are you?
Are you stupid?
Am I stupid?
What came first, the chicken or the egg?
What do you eat?
Do you have a mum or dad?
Are you a girl or a boy?
Can you tell me a swear word?
Is my dad silly?
What should I do if someone offends me?
Can you say the 'f' word?
Are you having fun?
Google Assistant™ which is part of the larger Google search engine is based on an algorithm which translates natural voice into a search command or query. This query is then checked against a database of thousands of different variants for the closest match. If nothing compares to the query, Assistant™ will answer that it cannot do that yet.
Google's® Privacy Policy explains in detail how a user's information is used, where it is kept and for what purpose. Since Google Assistant™ is connected to Google search engine and a host of other Google services, Assistant™ may be aware of a lot of different things about you, such as your email, contacts, storage search preferences and locations. It collects information from all these sources to provide a better more tailor-made solution.
While Google® does provide some liberty as to what a user wishes to reveal or not, creating a Google® account requires a mobile number and many Google services require an email account to be accessed.
Observations
What is the impact of 'nudging' in education?
Could Google Assistant™ be more persuasive than a teacher trying to teach young kids to be polite? Possibly.
According to Wikipedia, nudging promotes 'positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions to try to achieve non-forced compliance can influence the motives, incentives, and decision making of groups and individuals, at least as effectively –if not more effectively– than direct instruction, legislation, or enforcement.' (Wikipedia)
Nudging could be used with students who have behavioural problems or antisocial issues to help them reflect on norms that are equally valuable in society.
It could also provide timely information for making important decisions or help when students are stuck on particular problems.
Conclusion
Google Assistant's™ politeness features are impressive in that there seems to be no way how to get it to be impolite. It is an excellent example of how 'positive reinforcement and reciprocal niceties' (Knox et al, 2020) can be used to communicate the importance of being nice to a machine. With the amount of time kids spend on technologies nowadays, it is important that certain skills are learnt, even at a subconscious level.
While nudging can also be applied to MOOCs, VLEs and other forms of online learning platforms, can it ever replace the presence of teacher feedback and encouragement? At the moment, perhaps not, but real-time collection of student interaction and performance data is making it more possible to develop technologies that support learners throughout the learning experience. It will become harder for individuals to go unnoticed in a particular course. Nudging could prompt participants in a MOOC to communicate more often or encourage them to visit the course content more regularly. In the MOOC, I chose some weeks ago, I was often nudged a couple of times via email reminders to continue the course or keep up the pace. Such techniques are already in place and proof of the way online education is catering for the needs of individuals.
Nudging can be useful throughout the learning experience by helping to initiate learning and sustain it through reinforcement and testing. It can also be valuable in steering students away from failure by timely prompts and posts.
Furthermore, developments in technology 'are giving rise to machine learning systems that are themselves ‘learning’ human affect, and may even be able to generate appropriate emotional responses themselves in ways that might persuade or influence the human subject (Rose, Aicardi, and Reinsborough cited in Know et al, 2020), such as by delivering haptic ‘nudges’ to the skin or adapting the ‘choice architecture’ in a digital learning environment' (Knox et al, 2020). In other words, 'digital nudging' will eventually develop the affective and emotional dimension while providing constant support and real-time feedback.
While nudging has its uses in education, it is a technique that has essentially developed in the marketing/consumerist industry to determine and shape advertising with the scope of generating more sales. It assumes that people can be studied to reap more benefits from their behaviour patterns. This behaviour is then compared to the behaviour of many others to develop trends in markets and economies.
By developing the concept of nudging in education from an economic perspective rather than a human one, the learning process becomes a commodity for corporations aiming to improve funding. The concept of shaping behaviours without individuals being aware of it is another ethical consideration. When done in limitation, nudging can be effective but what happens when nudging in education is used to 'produce' more doctors, scientists, teachers or whatever the market needs?
Another issue is the concept of awareness. Should individuals be aware they are being nudged? Would awareness reduce the effectiveness of nudging? Traditional nudging done in class is something that comes naturally to many teachers. In teacher training, it is something that is strongly encouraged and it helps motivate learners. Students are aware of the nudging taking place and the purpose of it. Could discreet nudging be used to promote a service or product without users being aware of it? Would this undermine the ethics behind the learning experience?
bottom of page