Humane Education: Empathy in Policies, Places, and Platforms

Introduction: Everything is Broken

It’s been over four years since that massive jolt to every corner of the education industry—that moment when we upended our thinking about what it meant to be “in school”. Within the span of roughly a week, nearly everyone working in education figured out how to “pivot” from the status quo to so-called novel ways of teaching and learning. As the common discourse shift to discussing the “new normal” and the massive disruptions of pandemic lockdowns fade into our collective memory, I want to pause for a moment and linger on the sensations we all experienced in that week of Spring 2020. No, not the fear and isolation (which were all too real and worthy of acknowledging), but rather the sense of opportunity—the re-thinking of how things should be, or could be, done. The idea that the way we did things before might not be the best way, or even an appropriate way, to do things now.

For the next forty minutes or so, I ask you to remember what it felt like to question norms and to assume that things are broken. Because back in Spring 2020, the world was broken. In learning technology, we responded by replicating or moving existing things, instead of starting over and building better, more-appropriate things. We used the predictable, familiar tools we had at hand to address a problem we neither foresaw nor understood. I mean, let’s face it. We thought that Zoom could replace in-person meetings or that all students can succeed in virtual environments. In so doing—in making that “pivot”—we missed an opportunity and created new problems for ourselves. (“Wait, is my camera not working?” / “I think you’re muted.” / “You can see my screen, right?” / “I can’t find my breakout room.”) Our techno-solutionism generated complexity in its efforts to save us. But it was our systems that needed saving, not us. People, we learned, didn’t need saving. We needed care. I think we too often lose track of that distinction by foregrounding tech above people. Yet the distinguishing characteristic of learning technologies is the essential role of the human element—not as merely an end user, but as the ultimate product created through the use of that technology. With learning technologies, we are working to help people create better versions of themselves.

Thus, for learning technologies to succeed, we should look not to the next whiz-bang tool, but to each other. We need education built not on the technological promises of efficiency, duplicability, and standardization, but instead on the human essentials of empathy, understanding, and genuine connection. I want us to think about what education might look like if we assume that it’s broken (big stretch, right?) and try to re-imagine it with humane values.

Loss of Connection

Let’s start with that idea of connection. Back in 2020, when all in-person classes lurched suddenly to online delivery, many teachers lamented the sense of connection we lost in the name of connectivity. We longed for that special vibe we feel when sharing space with one another. Indeed, we missed that distinct sense of togetherness we get from classroom experiences and professional conferences alike. COVID taught us to cherish the feeling of in-person connection by making us go without. We discovered how hard it is to share emotions and energies with people separated by time, space, and the mediation of device screens. We learned that despite the manufacturers’ claims, our devices are not very good at connecting people to one another.

In the words of MIT researcher Sherry Turkle (2011), we are alone together, seeing others as objectified, flattened representations mediated through myriad screens. The idea of connection being essential isn’t new. You can doubtless think of several films that heighten tension by separating characters by mere inches of clear glass or or kept just beyond arm’s reach. Filmmakers know that almost-but-not-quite connected is far enough away to cause pain. On the technological side, Apple knows it, too: Since 2018, FaceTime has offered a feature that fakes direct eye contact—something impossible to have naturally when the camera is above the image of the other person’s face. When the “attention correction” feature debuted, it created a bit of a stir because it showed off Apple’s ability to modify a user’s self-image, live, on their own device. According to Apple, connection is more important than reality.

Loss of Participation

Going beyond one-on-one engagement, how does mediation affect group interactions? Here’s a question for the folks viewing online: What does participation look like in a mediated environment? Does leaving a comment in the text chat count? I feel like that’s the modern equivalent of asking whether a tree falling in the woods makes a sound if no one’s around to hear it. How much is an idea, a comment, a question, or even an emotional reaction shaped or validated by its reception? We see this play out all the time on social media: A post’s value is measured by the crowd’s response, not by anything inherent in the post itself. Audience engagement matters, but they have to engage with something.

What, then, do we do with a Zoom-delivered meeting, class lecture, or conference keynote? Can such things hold value when delivered remotely? What does an audience gain by being a spectator? We have very different behavioral expectations when watching a movie versus attending live theatre. There’s a dynamism, a feedback system, a negotiated give-and-take that’s an essential element of live theatre. The audience is there to see the show, sure, but they also give something back to the performers, feeding and shaping the performance in real time. The crowd have an obligation to react, respond, emote, and applaud. I don’t think we’ve established those same expectations with online learning (or online meetings, or online keynotes, or…), and we’ve lost something essentially human in the process. Online participation needs to involve more than logging in and offering the occasional thumbs-up reaction.

Loss of Presence

But the same concern applies in physical places, as well. Put aside for a moment the unique struggles of online participation—do we take full advantage of our togetherness even when we share space? What do we do to establish our presence in a room, and how do we contribute to the overall vibe of the spaces we are in? Coincidentally, this is a great question to ask students, especially my fellow introverts, as we often engage meaningfully in ways that typically go unnoticed.

Too often, we define “class participation” by what students do for their instructors, not for one another. When participation is measured by the one person in the room with institutionalized power, that space works to reinforce existing, entrenched authority structures, benefitting exactly one person. In my classes, I always say that participation means more than warming a chair and humidifying the air, and I propose that participation should be measured by how a student’s colleagues benefit from their active engagement.

Thesis

So, to recap: The great “pivot” of 2020 broke the ways we connect, participate, and establish presence. Education is more isolating than ever, and all our technological know-how hasn’t fixed anything.

Today I’m going to ask you to imagine how we might have rebuilt the world during that remarkable moment when we knew everything was broken. Let’s imagine how education might work if we rebuild it around people instead of tech, finding solutions in empathy and agency instead of tools and devices. Let’s imagine education that uses empathy as the foundation for its places, its policies, and its platforms. I’m going to do a deep dive into empathy-driven education, starting at the personal, individual level by examining the role of place in learning. Then I’ll zoom out and explore empathy in social scenarios, enacted through policies. Then I’ll go even broader and look at a systemic approach, applying empathy to our platforms. Overall, my goal here is to show how we might use humanity to shape our learning technologies, at every level and with every engagement. I’ll introduce you to what I call “humane technology”, where people take priority in every design and every decision.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start small and focus on the individual.

The Personal Solution: Restoring Presence via Empathy in Places

I already spoke about the difficulty of establishing presence in online spaces. Figuring out ways to sense and respond to emotional needs online can be even more challenging. Empathy feeds off personal connections, so virtual solutions are hardly obvious. When the most common representation of “care” is a hug, things get tough without embodiment. Put differently, we implicitly expect students to care for themselves when connected virtually from within their own spaces. When our engagement with others is mediated through screens, it becomes far too easy to stop caring and to treat others like objects or programmed avatars. When’s the last time you cared about the feelings of your smartphone or your computer screen? When you stare at these devices to connect with people on the other side of them, feelings of empathy can be hard to access because we have to ignore the device itself and imagine the real person through a two-dimensional representation.

In order to address these challenges of establishing presence, I want to tackle two persistent myths in education, then offer two antidotes for enacting real empathy, regardless of modality.

Virtualization v Localization

First up, let’s look at virtualization. In the U.S., we often talk about “meeting students where they are.” That phrase typically means we’re trying to work from the knowledge students already have—meeting them intellectually and using what they already know as a starting point.

But what if we consider that phrase a bit more literally? What would it mean to meet students where they are, physically…even in online classes? I propose a way of reframing distance education that makes attending to empathy far more straightforward: Keep in mind that all learning takes place in real, physical spaces. By emphasizing the persistence of space even in online environments, we remember that, although we may see students as names on a list or as text on a screen, those students experience our class within some physical environment—within some embodied reality that directly affects their ability to engage and to learn.

No student exists only on our screens. Classes happen in students’ homes, their dorms, their coffee shops, on the train or in their cars while going from one job or errand to another. Education happens in a variety of drastically different spaces.

But as much as it happens in space, education is also affected by space. Back in autumn of 2021, right after I moved from Florida to just outside New York City, Hurricanes Henri and Ida wreaked havoc all along the east coast of the United States. When people in my country move to suburban areas, they usually meet their new neighbors with a backyard barbecue or by bringing a bottle of wine. Not me. I brought a climate event and three days of flash flooding.

The land and infrastructure in New Jersey are built for snowfall, not hurricanes, so two named tropical systems within a month were more than the area could handle. Those two storms caused serious, devastating damage and loss of life. At my institution, our server room providing campus Internet connectivity was damaged—twice—by flooding. When each of the hurricanes came through, my school simply ceased to exist online. The idea of “distance” learning suddenly became very, very local. Infrastructure damage in our immediate area went beyond roads so impassable that students’ cars couldn’t get to campus—though that certainly happened. No, these storms were so bad that even electrons couldn’t make it to school.

Educational Maxim #1: All learning takes place in real, physical spaces.

Standardization v Personalization

Let’s move on to the second great myth of education. Many institutions and legislative bodies actively work toward standardization in order to streamline delivery and define outcomes. But efforts toward standardization are anathema to self-actualization. Standardized tests, standardized curricula, standardized responses—each of these exists to file down the exceptional, to hinder deviation, to enforce compliance—in effect, to anonymize learning. But if it’s anonymous, who actually learns? Just as all learning takes place in physical spaces, all learning is always personal—it draws on real, personal experience and personal prior knowledge. Standardizing education disconnects the learning process from the people learning. And education is nothing without people.

To illustrate the importance of people, I’d like to introduce two examples.

Back in 1947, when the United States Air Force first formed, it had a major problem: Pilots kept crashing planes and dying during training, reaching a peak of seventeen fatalities in a single day. It turns out that they had been designing cockpits to fit the average pilot—an approach that at first sounds perfectly reasonable. In 1926, the predecessor to the Air Force had measured hundreds of pilots and designed cockpits around the average dimensions they found. In 1950, in an effort to reduce training fatalities, the Air Force tried again, measuring 140 dimensions of 4,000 pilots. Researchers then looked at the ten most crucial measurements for cockpit design. Of the 4,000 pilots in the study, exactly zero pilots fit the average on all ten measurements—even with a 30% margin of error. By designing for the “average pilot”, they built a cockpit that fit exactly no one. They solved the problem by designing an adjustable cockpit that each pilot configures to meet the dimensions of their body. Standardization, it turns out, benefits machines, not people. People need choice and flexibility. In the same way, standardized education benefits the institution, not students. Students need choice and flexibility.

Next up is a familiar example of how choice and flexibility can be effective within a predictable framework. Every restaurant tells its patrons the basic outline of how the meal will work. Then they allow flexibility within that broad structure. Many restaurants offer appetizer, entrée, and dessert sections of their menus. Some feature a drinks section if they’re more festive, or perhaps a cocktail list if more sophisticated. French cuisine adds amuse-bouche; the Spanish approach lists tapas; Italian-style meals include first- and second-course sections. Overall, we are told what kind of meal and pacing to expect through the structure of the menu. But within each section, obviously, the choice is ours. We apply our own preferences to select the item that best suits our interests, as they say, á la minute. And let’s not forget those foodies who love to order off-menu just to be a bit extra. They feel special (or we might say “empowered”) by knowing how to push against the framework the menu provides.

Menus can also be powerful tools in classes. Giving students a menu of assignment options offers ample flexibility and a sense of control over their work while keeping things on-track in the class overall. Giving adjunct labor a menu of lesson plans or assignment sheets allows them control of their class within a program’s predetermined structure. The menu approach even works well for homework assignments, where students might choose source material from a list of pre-vetted texts. The idea of ordering off-menu applies, too: Particularly creative, motivated, or engaged students can suggest project approaches or reading selections that aren’t on the predetermined list but that still adhere to the spirit of the task. And just like the foodies I mentioned, they feel special, empowered, and extra. Who wouldn’t want that for students?

Educational Maxim #2: There is no such thing as a standard student. Design for choice, not standardization.

Interlude: A Warning Against Personalization

So far, I’ve avoided using the word “personalized”. That’s very intentional. “Personalization” is the tech industry’s name for targeted content and advertising aimed at influencing individual behaviors through subtle nudging. It’s the kind of thing Facebook and TikTok frequently get called out for doing, it’s what fuels the Google advertising juggernaut, and it’s at the core of what Cambridge Analytica and its successors did to influence the 2016 election in my country and the Brexit vote here. There’s money—piles of money—to be made by tailoring online platforms to nudge users to gradually shift their thinking and behavior by subtly changing (aka “personalizing”) online content to be more seductive.

There are also piles of money to be made creating learning technologies that adapt to the immediate needs of individual learners so teachers and institutions might attend to other matters. But is that kind of adaptation ethical? If we use personalized learning today, are students being primed for personalized advertising tomorrow? It’s like what a pair of grad students from MIT (Mahari & Pataranutaporn) wrote recently about the coming problem of addictive AI: If we train people to perceive personalized software responses as “attention”, we’ve already abandoned our humanity. We need to let students, not systems, do the personalizing.

The Social Solution: Restoring Participation via Empathy in Policies

Okay, let’s get back to solving problems. Now that we’ve explored restoring a presence via empathy in our places, let’s look at restoring participation via empathy in our policies.

Well-constructed policies, whether we’re talking about education, nonprofits, or governments, should be designed to bring the greatest benefit to the greatest number, while protecting the needs of the marginalized. For government policies, that means trying to benefit society without infringing on the rights of minority populations. That’s no easy task—just look at my congress or your parliament…that is, when they actually work. Institutions typically create policies for self-preservation, ensuring efficiency and disclaiming liability. But just like our tools, our policies should serve and protect the needs of students.

In any given classroom, there’s usually one instructor and dozens of students. That means what I said above—bringing the greatest benefit to the greatest number—should compel us to create policies that actively help students. That approach differs from the typical set of policies, in which the dominant agency holding power uses its power to preserve and extend power at the expense of the exploited and powerless population. In a classroom environment, because instructors are outnumbered, policies should protect us as the minority and empower the disenfranchised—the students. Notice how odd that sounds, positioning instructors as being in need of protection? Being honest about numbers here inverts the traditional power structure in class.

Adopting this perspective for the past decade has kept me humble…and determined. I aim to have simple, clear, affirming, student-generated policies in all classes. At the start of each semester, my syllabi include no policies. Instead, students write them as a collaborative activity to get to know one another and focus our activities on learning. During our first meeting, I ask students what policies they expect (or want) in our syllabus. After the initial deer-in-headlights phase, their responses consistently show two things. First, students have been indoctrinated to believe course policies should be punitive, arbitrary, and unrelated to learning. Second, students want an education that looks very different from what we usually offer.

Let’s consider grading as a quick example of a simple and profound shift. Every semester I ask students how they want to be graded. Through our discussions, students see very quickly that most grading policies are designed to serve teachers at the students’ expense. As it happens, students don’t actually want grades (who knew?). Instead, at least in a writing class, they’ve told me they want:

• improvement-oriented feedback on their work,
• reassurance they’re on the right track, and
• options for recovery if they aren’t.

As a result, I don’t use grades in my classes. To meet their first need, I commit to providing feedback on every major assignment, anticipating future revisions. That second need gets tricky because students are accustomed to the back-patting that comes from getting good grades on assignments. What writing classes really need is a way to tell students whether their work achieved its purpose. In conversation, I use thumbs-up/thumbs-down language; in our lms, I use the complete/incomplete grading presets. If a student’s goal is merely to pass, they just get thumbs-ups across the board, then relax, knowing they’ve been successful. If a student aspires toward a higher grade, they review my feedback, make appropriate changes, and chat with me about their revisions. These conversations are collaborative, productive, and focused on writing improvement, not a grade. Discussing writing progress allows me to build connections with students over their work as they learn to think differently about writing, which is the whole point of my classes.

[n.b. For more insights on removing grading from classes, see Starr Sackstein’s Hacking Assessment (2022), Asao B. Inoue’s Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies (2015), Susan D. Blum’s Ungrading (2020), Jesse Stommel’s Undoing the Grade (2023), and Josh Eyler’s Failing Our Future (2024).]

Thus, the social solution: By creating class policies rooted in students’ needs instead of faculty demands, we can restore participation in our classes, regardless of modality.

Interlude: Educational Access(Ability)

Before I get to the systemic solution, I want to indulge in another interlude. Access to education is vital, yet too easily overlooked. I want to look briefly at examples of access in non-educational spaces and use them as models to apply to the work of designing and implementing learning technologies. I’d like to introduce you to a literal legend in the physical, built world.

In design circles, the “curb-cut effect” has reached legendary status because it’s one of those situations that seems laughably obvious in hindsight but took momentous effort to implement. Basically, back in the 1960s, a group of disability-rights activists wanted to help UC Berkeley students move through town and get to class on their own. Ultimately they wanted to make Berkeley, California, navigable for people who use wheelchairs. To do this, these activists surreptitiously cut ramps into sidewalk curbs at key intersections throughout the city and its university campus. Today, those ramps and their familiar bumpy mats are ubiquitous, especially in major cities. But back in 1960s America, city sidewalks were designed only for people who could step onto and off of curbs with ease. Adding curb cuts served their purpose: They made the city accessible for folks in wheelchairs.

Except they also helped people pushing strollers. Or people with balance issues and limited mobility. Or even just folks who are distracted and might trip over a curb. Adding a curb cut to help folks in wheelchairs ends up having a wider-ranging effect that benefits everyone. Oh, and those bumps on the mats used on curb cuts? The small bumps enhance traction, reducing slips. That’s quite handy in rainy or snowy conditions. The big bumps add texture, so folks with walking canes (or skates, or strollers) can still locate the now-absent sidewalk edge, warning them of potential cross traffic. The humble curb cut demonstrates empathy for populations too often overlooked in the designed environment.

In other words, when we build physical spaces with a sense of empathy for a marginalized minority, the world becomes a better place for everyone, almost by accident. Now take that same approach and apply it to our digital work. How might we build digital spaces, tools, or platforms with a sense of empathy to ensure access for marginalized groups, knowing it’s likely to benefit everyone?

The basic idea here is to reduce barriers and provide supports to help students explore learning in whatever way works best for them, rather than following a route we predetermine. The more we prescribe an approach, the less agency students have, and the less prepared they are to navigate their way through future situations unassisted.

The Systems Solution: Restoring Connection via Empathy in Platforms

Next, I want to apply website accessibility standards to classroom pedagogy. And before the DevOps folks in the audience tune out, remember that all our tools assume, enact, and at times enforce specific pedagogies. The more we rely on tech tools in education, the more conscientious we have to be about the constraints and assumptions of those tools. First, though, let me quickly review Web accessibility standards for those unfamiliar.

Model: W3C Accessibility Principles

The W3C, or World-Wide Web Consortium, is responsible for establishing the standards that make sure your browser works with the websites you visit. They do important work that helps people make good websites and good browsers. (As a side note, if you have a website that only works with one particular browser, it’s probably because that site doesn’t adhere to some kind of W3C standard.) These guidelines are like online curb cuts: When designers and developers follow W3C guidelines to benefit folks with specific access needs, the Web just works better for everyone.

The W3C pays a lot of attention to how humans interact with websites, and they’ve established basic principles to allow everyone to meaningfully and purposefully interact with websites. Put simply, all Web content should be perceivable on any device, operable by any body, understandable by any mind, and robust on any platform. Those are lofty goals that take a lot of work to live up to.

Application: Accessibility Principles in Classes

Now my question is this: What might these accessibility principles look like when applied to human interactions? Put differently, how might the broad intentions of Web standards help us work with learners, both remote and in-person? Applying the intentions of W3C standards to the modern education system might help it work better for everyone.

• Perceivable: In Web design, pages should work with assistive technologies and should have legible text and transcripts for audio-visual content. For class tech, our materials should be legible and accessible, as well. This includes everything from clear photocopies for physical handouts to eliminating paywalls or proxy servers for access to library resources.
• Operable: In Web design, this means using interface elements that work on, say, mobile devices as well as with pointing devices like a computer mouse. For learning technologies, this means offering content students can manipulate in meaningful ways. In other words, when presented with tools or resources, students should know what to do with them.
• Understandable: In Web design, this means offering content in the user’s language and in sufficiently non-technical terms that they can make meaningful choices. In education, this relates to Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development—our materials should be understandable to students, and this includes understanding the purpose and functionality of their tools.
• Robust: In Web design, this means creating sites that function on any device and persist in the face of reduced connectivity. In learning technology, this means helping students gain knowledge and skills that persist well past the end of class, if not after graduation.

Importantly, I say robustness should also apply to student data. Any time students produce content, we need to respect their creative labor and their ownership of that intellectual property. That respect means we should not compel students to donate their labor to companies like Turnitin, or save their work to cloud-based institution-owned storage like Google Drive, or generate projects in template-based platforms that don’t allow users to export data in any usable format.

Proprietary data formats in educational settings are unethical because they hold student labor hostage, and students rarely have the authority to meaningfully opt out or work within an alternative arrangement. I use the words hostage and authority intentionally here, in order to highlight the opportunities and obligations we have as educators and technologists. We need to always remember that education is a human endeavor, and we must keep the human element foremost in our minds in all the work we do. We need what I call Humane Technology.

Focus on Empathy: Humane Technology

With a little attention—and a lot of intention—it’s possible to create learning technologies that offer rich interaction, emotional validation, and meaningful connection. Simply put, humane technology includes tools, devices, and platforms that prioritize human interaction and genuine kindness over other seductions, like harvesting our money or our data. And at the heart of each of these practices is the conviction that people, not products, are the most important aspect of technology use and empathy should drive our decisions related to assessing, building, or implementing learning technologies.

The Framework

Humane Technology includes five distinct components. Each of these components offers a goal for design, a measure for evaluation, and a guideline for implementation. While these standards are inspired by the accessibility principles I’ve just reviewed, there’s a difference in focus. Where the W3C principles emphasize tech features to ensure people can effectively access technology, the five standards here emphasize how technology is implemented. In other words, I want to focus on what people do with technology more than on the technology itself. With that in mind, here are the principles of Humane Technology:

• Disciplinarity: Understand how people in a discipline use technology to do the work of their discipline. Help students use technology effectively as members of their fields.
• Transparency: Disclose what any app/platform actually does, and explain its basic functionality in simple, accessible terms.
• Agnosticism: Make the app/platform/device/brand fade into the background and focus on the task/work at hand.
• Openness: Remove hurdles and barriers to access. Make content seamless and simple to obtain. Rely on free content whenever possible.
• Fidelity: Preserve original files and formatting to ease access and maintain quality. Keep text as text (not screenshots) and use the simplest url when providing links, removing trackers.

When we combine these elements in a holistic approach to technology deployment, we learn to expect our technologies to do things for us, rather than programming ourselves to work the way our platforms expect. This perspective, then, helps empower technology users to make conscious decisions about their platforms, interfaces, and workflows.

Disciplinarity

Helping students make conscious decisions about their platforms, interfaces, and workflows should be integral to a modern education, where we all need to learn to function in hybrid environments that infuse everyday activities with a layer of virtual context. Especially at the post-secondary level, course content should work to teach students disciplinaryapproaches to tech use. In other words, students shouldn’t learn to use a tool for the sake of using that tool, but because it facilitates the work of the discipline they are working to join. Students should learn to operate tech tools following aspirational models. Younger students can learn how adults use tech tools responsibly. Older students can learn how professionals use tools to do the work of that profession.

This also means we should limit as much as possible the number of schooling-specific platforms students have to learn. I might make some enemies with this, but I assert that the time students spend learning to navigate an lms is time wasted. The lms interface is non-standardized and non-transferrable. What you have to learn to navigate a learning-management system only applies to learning management systems and doesn’t benefit students after graduation. It benefits the institution by processing student data in a standardized way. Remember: There’s no such thing as a standardized student, so I challenge the utility here. Instead, if we use software connected to real-world use, students learning one interface can transfer that knowledge to other situations. Two simple examples: WordPress powers something like a third of the planet’s websites, so learning that interface to contribute to a class blog gives students usable, marketable skills. Using a collaboration platform (like Slack or Teams) in class means students know how those environments work when they later encounter them in their careers.

Transparency

Along similar lines, users often misunderstand what a given technology does or, more critically, how it functions. This ignorance—understandable in light of the complexity of many modern technologies—allows unscrupulous agencies to take advantage of users essentially without their knowledge. It’s the principle behind phishing attacks: If something looks just familiar or legit enough, users can be duped if they are unaware of the procedures being spoofed.

My favorite examples of effective transparency relate to security and encryption because those processes by design must be complex and impractical to circumvent while still being conceptually simple enough to be widely adopted. Take, for instance, end-to-end encryption. Encrypted communications are scrambled with complex math, and only the two parties having the conversation have the secret decoder. As a result, eavesdroppers might intercept the message, but they can’t decode it. That basic understanding allows a non-technical layman to ask meaningful, practical, security-relevant questions such as where the decryption keys are stored and how those keys are securely shared in the first place. It also means recent concerns about quantum-proof protocols make sense. Underlying all of this is the need for a basic understanding of tcp/ip. But again, I’ve found that once folks understand the basic concept of packet addressing, they “get” the internet in profoundly different ways, grasping its strengths and vulnerabilities and empowering them to be mindful of their own actions.

Even transparency about seemingly insignificant technical matters can have outsized consequences. Many of my students don’t know what the S in https means, or what utm means in a url query string. That unawareness means they often don’t know when their online communications are secure or when they’re sharing tracking data along with a link. A little knowledge about what happens “under the hood” goes a long way toward empowerment and control of our data.

Agnosticism

I’ll introduce the concept of agnosticism with another security-related layperson example. Two-factor authentication has recently grown in popularity, but because Google Authenticator was early to market, it often enjoys the benefit of people thinking it’s the only product that does what it does. That presumption discourages people from looking for alternatives and creates confusion when, as is the case at my school right now, institutions migrate platforms. Folks at my school think they have to change from Google Authenticator to Okta Verify “just because” without realizing that other 2fa apps exist and have worked the whole time. As learners incorporate tools into their workflows, we owe it to them to help them understand the functions those tools provide—and thus what is possible with their technologies.

I work in writing studies. In my discipline, we talk a lot about students’ need to co-create meaning and construct knowledge on their own. We know that students have to put in work to understand what they’re learning, and that truly understanding something requires individual attention and effort. There is no way to do someone else’s thinking for them. Some well-meaning efforts to simplify cognitive load can backfire, to the point that we end up programming students to believe something “just because” instead of understanding the rationale behind it. The most obvious and prevalent example in my world comes from document formatting. You’ll hear echoes here of my standardization and choice discussion earlier.

In writing studies, we know that the selection of font, dimensions, size, and colors help convey a text’s purpose. But all too often, teachers issue formatting requirements with their essay assignments in an effort to simplify and standardize. When students encounter consistent formatting expectations (such as double-spaced, 12-point, Times New Roman) without explanation, they start to think that’s the only way to format serious writing, and their aesthetic sensitivity shuts off, preventing them from considering effective design decisions supporting clear communication. When later allowed space to make their own decisions about document design, students seem adrift, unable to process the available decisions or their consequences.

When we select or design digital tools and platforms, those tools make choices on behalf of users, reducing options and excluding many things from consideration. What at first appears as an effort to save students time and work ends up reducing their agency.

We should think of tech as tools, latent unless we call upon them and valuable only for the services they provide. We should also refer to them accordingly, in terms of their functions, not brand names: “Open a web browser / use a search engine / load your word processor / use your voice assistant / create a slideshow.” That is function-oriented language allowing students to select the tool that works best for them. This platform-agnostic language implicitly tells others (and reminds us) that the apps we use are an option, not a mandate.

These days, differences come down to workflow more than abilities—and students should determine for themselves what workflow makes the most sense for them. Using function-oriented language and being platform-agnostic in our classes and technologies separates tools from brands and processes from products. By implementing platform agnosticism, humane technology keeps users aware of—and in charge of—their technology choices.

Openness

Now let’s look at a different side of empowerment: specifically, the ability of technology to disempower students. Logins, account registrations, paywalls, etc. all serve to restrict access and make it difficult for people to find things. Even requiring a sign-in on an existing campus system (to access library databases, for instance) seems like a low barrier but can be sufficiently tedious, especially if they’re using a mobile device, as to dissuade students from using those systems.

Those of us in education and learning technologies are, frankly, in the business of sharing and disseminating knowledge. Whatever we produce or publish in this industry, from assignment sheets and journal articles to plugins and platforms, should default to open-access unless there’s an overriding rationale for restricting or limiting the scope of distribution. For instance, if a researcher’s work is covered by patent or copyright protections, I am not advocating for those protections to be ignored. But I am advocating for faculty to openly post their class resources, both to facilitate access by students but also to benefit the broader community of educators.

Education should be open, and oer and blogging platforms make that mantra incredibly easy to enact. For more examples of radical openness, I recommend the Open Education conference for an education-specific take, Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture from 2004 for an accessible take on the legal side of things, or even the Creative Commons for a focus on creative works.

Fidelity

Understanding the functionality of our applications goes hand-in-hand with fidelity in our files. Think of folks with visual disabilities scrolling through their social feeds, many of which these days contain screenshots of content from other social feeds. A screen-reader app or device would acknowledge the existence of the screenshot as an image, then move along. The “content” of that image is gone—the text has been turned into pixels. Maybe some text-recognition software could help in some cases, but my experience with those tools tells me they’re less than satisfactory for reading a screenshot. And for those whose vision is functional but fading (as happens to all of us in time), screenshots subject everyone to the font size and contrast ratio selected by whoever posted it, rather than the settings of the reader’s device.

In other words, sharing a screenshot is a form of digital authoritarianism. It forces one display method onto everyone, dictating the medium, colors, typeface, language, orientation, font size, etc. To see how quickly things devolve into uselessness, take a screenshot on a notebook computer, then look at it on a mobile device. Compare that thumbnail-sized blurry image with the simplicity of sharing text as text, and the benefits of fidelity become obvious. And lest any of us dismiss this point, remember that we will all encounter degraded vision in our lives, and the curb-cut principle tells us that accommodating limited vision benefits all users.

I argue that we should allow users’ data to stay as true to its original format as possible, protecting against degradation from conversion or compression processes. Preserving originals keeps data available for later use without loss of clarity, thereby facilitating each of the above principles further into a user’s workflow. Keeping digital material in its original format wherever possible—or even offering copies of the original—allows users’ devices to present that material the way each user can best perceive and process it. That means allowing users flexibility and choice in the way they work with their materials.

Result: Empowerment

The ultimate goal here is empowerment. By implementing Humane Technology, we empower users to understand their tools and to use technology conscientiously, not mindlessly. We empower users to take (and keep) control of their data and to make use of that data in practical, operable ways. And we ensure anyone can access information in a format that is understandable and functional for their needs. Humane Technology goes against the common trend of harvesting user data, limiting access to information, and presenting tools as inevitable or irreplaceable. Students have been disempowered by modern technologies, and we have an ethical responsibility to help them reclaim their agency. We must, in the words of the advocacy groups back in Berkeley, California, force ourselves upon the world on behalf of students who lack the authority to change how learning technologies are used in our institutions.

Speaking of institutions, consider for a moment our common protections at education and research institutions. When primary investigators want to engage in research on human subjects, we have to get approval from a strict review board with stringent requirements designed to protect the needs and rights of vulnerable populations. Isn’t it time that we take similar steps to protect those same populations from being taken advantage of by technology providers? Why don’t we have an irb for tech adoptions? When we propose adopting a certain platform at our institutions, why do we not hold that adoption to the same standards as our research methods? Our technology platforms often learn more about student-users than any research study I know of.

Now don’t get me wrong: I don’t know anyone who likes working with an irb. To an extent, their job is literally to frustrate researchers and stop them from doing what they want to do. That is of course an extremely unkind (and unfair) take on the real work of institutional review boards. The amount of good that they do—and harm they have prevented—really cannot be overstated. They’ve become a ubiquitous standard for good reason, and anyone trained in research ethics can cite a couple egregious examples to explain why we consider the irb an essential component of human research. So what will it take before we start considering such ethical reviews a ubiquitous standard for technology adoptions? Educational research points to Tuskeegee, Nuremburg, or Milgram studies as their never-to-be-repeated offenses. What will learning technologies point to as a step too far in terms of privacy or ethics violations?

We’re already behind the curve in working to stand up for users’—especially students’—digital rights. Like the advocacy groups who worked decades ago to stand up on behalf of wheelchair-using Berkeley students, we need to “force ourselves upon the world” and reduce demands for, and use of, student data. We have quite the fight ahead of us, considering how profitable that data consistently proves to be for multinational corporations. But as Stephanie Vie said in her afterword to a 2021 issue of Computers and Composition, “Let’s not let the bastards grind us down.”

Conclusion: Humane Learning Technologies

Empathy allows us to forge connections and repair education through places, policies, and platforms. By aligning these three components, education becomes integrated and integral to modern hybrid living in a digitally saturated world. Educators, then, put their effort into building meaningful relationships with the people under their care. And remember, classroom orientation is not an either/or, zero-sum game. It’s not like saying “I teach people” means “I don’t teach content.” Instead, saying we teach people (or we develop tools for people) keeps us focused on the meaningful application of knowledge and tools. Because content without people is valueless; tools without users are pointless. Orienting ourselves toward humane learning technologies brings vitality and engagement to our school systems, value to our work improving others’ lives, and purpose to the entire educational enterprise. Humane technology shows that more than anything, we value the most precious resource available at any institution: our people. Humane learning technologies represent the real opportunities of education and offer hope for all our futures—especially the students’.

And while I’m convinced a humane classroom becomes most effective and honest when all three components are in place, I suspect that adopting any one of the components alone will lead to greater trust and efficacy on its own. Indeed, very few people are in a position to implement everything I’ve discussed today, considering the difference in scale across my suggestions. But by focusing on people and designing our tech around human needs instead of technical specifications, we can empower people to restore the connection, participation, and presence that is so crucial for collaborative learning and personal development.

If you take nothing else from my talk today, I hope it’s this: For education to be truly successful, it needs to help students see their learning and development as self-motivated, self-determined, and intrinsically rewarding. We do that by putting students at the center of all our work and all our decisions—by bringing them into the experience at all steps in the process and, critically, putting them in control of their own learning. I don’t mean giving them the ability to choose which class to take next semester or which teacher to take for a required seminar. I mean giving students the ability to learn the way they want using tools that work for them while respecting their autonomy and their privacy. I mean helping students see the role their presence and participation play in their processes of personal growth.

I challenge each of us to build, adopt, and implement learning technologies that are intentionally and fundamentally humane.

Thank you.

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The online discussion emerging from this discussion prompted a significant collection of questions. A separate post shares my responses to the online Q&A.