Panoptic U

[barclay_barrios]

I’ve been working on a paper for the NEXUS conference at the University of Tennessee–Knoxville. In a section my paper I consider the ethics of teaching technologies such as Blackboard and, in particular, their “panoptic” potential.  I try to avoid Blackboard whenever possible for a variety of reasons, but this same panopticism is sitting inside Microsoft Word when I grade electronically: I can see when a student last worked on a paper, how they formatted it (double-spaced or just a little extra to make the length?), and even how they revised (using Compare Documents with any earlier draft). The question I ask in the paper is one I pose to you, too: what are the ethical implications when we can see inside students’ composing processes? Any thoughts?