Throughout my graduate program, we read study after study examining the effects on learning outcomes. Even my own dissertation considered the relationship between students’ perceptions of community in an online environment and learning outcomes (spoiler: no relationship was suggested in my data). However, the students’ perceptions of community within the class were significantly positively correlated with satisfaction. I reported this in my dissertation and subsequent presentations/publications, but more of an “in other news” afterthought relative to the effects on learning that I was studying. This troubles me, as that finding could point to another important aim in education … persistence.
Fast forward to the current course I am teaching that is asking students to dramatically widen their lens to examine other effects/consequences associated with our design decisions that fall under the umbrella of ethical analysis (e.g., access, accessibility, equity, privacy, security, etc.) This week, I found myself typing the sentence, “While the impact of our design decisions on learning outcomes is certainly always an important consideration, our ethics lens in this course is broader than ‘only’ the effects of our decisions on learning.”
In this age of high-stakes tests and standards, this freedom to consider our actions and strategies as designers/educators beyond the effects on learning outcomes feels extraneous. I fully appreciate that if what we’re doing isn’t supporting learning, we need to switch course. However, we need to allow room in our study and practice of education to explore other relevant effects.