The Algorithmic University: On-Line Education, Learning Management Systems, and the Struggle over Academic Labor

Abstract

The use of on-line education (OLE) to deliver higher education using learning management systems (LMS) has received growing critical attention for its reliance on precarious faculty, high dropout and failure rates, and as a form of privatization. While these critiques are well grounded, they overlook the role of OLE as a strategy for rationalizing teaching and deskilling academic labor in order to produce more self-disciplined precarious “platform” workers who can labor remotely under the control of algorithmic management. To recompose the power of academic workers, new tactics, strategies, and objectives based on an analysis of the new technical composition of capital in higher education are needed.

AI management beyond the hype: exploring the co-constitution of AI and organizational context

“…However, AI systems' technological 'intelligence' does not account for their social implications, which we have only started to address. As peoples' lives are increasingly Faraj et al (2018), Lee (2018), Rosenblat and Stark (2016), Ovetz (2020), Thorson et al (2021) clearly being shaped by algorithms and AI, social scientists, legal scholars and philosophers are beginning to critically appraise these aspects of AI (Mittelstadt et al 2016).…”

“…However, algorithmic management is also seeping into other industries. Ovetz (2020) argues that algorithmic management of university learning is redefining and deskilling academic workers, who are becoming less specialized and more self-disciplined precarious "platform" workers who can labor remotely under the control of algorithmic management. Using the example of the singer, rapper and 'media personality' Lil NasX going viral through the social media platform Tiktok, Collie and Wilson-Barnao (2020) argue that creative work and labour is about to be redefined.…”

“…This makes the hosts feel controlled (see also Woodcock 2020). Others suggest that this 'pure' form of algorithmic management is reshaping universities (Ovetz 2020), transforming the music industry (Collie and Wilson-Barnao 2020), and even threatening democracy (Thorson 2021).…”

Dealing with the Machine: Strategies of Pilots and Doctors Towards Technological Integration

“…Nevertheless, the question of deskilling seems to be a multifaceted prism, which generates a variety of dialectical relations. While some researchers argue that technology-driven practice of medicine can inflict, as in academic work (Ovetz, 2020), a change in once-acquired professional human skills, especially in surgery, transforming the surgeon into a technician (Del Fabbro & Muller, 2021), and the operating room into a technology-dominated field (Saunders et al, 2016), promoting enhancement of situational awareness (Green et al, 2017), some others underline the importance of algorithmic reorganization of the practice around technology (Hartland, 1993). Research have been carried out on the adaptation of healthcare workers, as well as their resistance to robotics (Barrett et al, 2012;Uslu et al, 2019).…”

Putting the university to work: The subsumption of academic labour in UK's shift to digital higher education

“…Their formal subsumption, however, finds them accustomed to questions of the practical application of their knowledge to ‘external users,’ or to research grant applications, within the discernible market framework (Traianou, 2016, p. 42). Academics often need to prove they work with various, and commercially‐minded, ‘stakeholders’ and to predict the ‘impact’ of research activity, recorded through new platforms of algorithmic management (Knowles & Burrows, 2014; Ovetz, 2020).…”