The intersection of datafication and data justice in higher education

Fabian, Khristin

Abstract

There has been an increasing uptake of technology in the classroom, either for teaching or for classroom management purposes. Along with this uptake is the increasing datafication of education. Datafication is the process of rendering social and natural worlds into data that can be quantified, analysed and utilised. As we use the learning management systems, we contribute to the data that profiles our learners. As we gather administrative data about our students such as attendance, gender and ethnicity, we also gather data that can potentially inform institutional policy. These data are generated for the purpose of “the greater good” -- to improve student engagement, to benefit from data-driven decision making or to streamline student support. However, these data also have the potential to introduce bias, stigmatise and discriminate along with issues of privacy concerns. While there is the issue that dependency on reports provided by the systems that we use to monitor can lead to an impersonal approach to learning and teaching, there is also the question of how well the systems capture the “learning” to be able to provide a fine-grained analysis of learning performance. This presentation will discuss the datafication of higher education and problematise its implications for data justice.

Citation

Fabian, K. (2025, October). The intersection of datafication and data justice in higher education. Presented at Connecting Space, Data and Society: Interdisciplinary Pathways, London

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Abstract
• Conference Name: Connecting Space, Data and Society: Interdisciplinary Pathways
• Start Date: Oct 8, 2025
• End Date: Oct 8, 2025
• Deposit Date: Jan 15, 2025
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• External URL: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/earlycareerresearchernetwork/1252132