{"id":29,"date":"2022-11-15T22:35:43","date_gmt":"2022-11-15T22:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cde22.education.ed.ac.uk\/cortegon\/?p=29"},"modified":"2022-11-15T22:35:43","modified_gmt":"2022-11-15T22:35:43","slug":"third-visualisation-how-many-personalized-emails-did-i-receive-from-the-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cde22.education.ed.ac.uk\/cortegon\/2022\/11\/15\/third-visualisation-how-many-personalized-emails-did-i-receive-from-the-university\/","title":{"rendered":"Third visualisation: How many “personalized” emails did I receive from the University?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For this visualisation of \u201cteaching with data\u201d, I chose to track and graphically represent all the automatically generated, but personalized emails I received from the University for two weeks. I am referring to those messages that were directed specifically to me (\u201cDear Carlos\u201d, etc) but that, at the same time, were also sent to different students with similar characteristics to mine (e.g. international students, graduate students, etc).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My purpose was twofold. First, I wanted to compare the number of emails that I received from the two different Universities I am currently enrolled in: The University of Edinburgh and the University of Leuven. Second, I wanted to see what types of emails did I receive from the Universities. My interest sparked mostly from reading chapter 6 of The Platform Society, by Jos\u00e9 van Dijck and colleagues. In there, she states:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe conventional University business model reflects the ideology of higher education as a curriculum-based, comprehensive experience that focuses on Bildung<\/em>; rather than churning out skilled workers, public education promoted the education of knowledgeable and critical citizens -a condition for healthy democracies\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once again, Van Dijk advances the distinction between education for the common good, characterized by a strong public presence that balances wider social inequalities, and “learnified” education (also explored in our previous module) that focuses on training skilled workers and infusing specific skills in them that are relevant for the market. Within this dichotomy, datafied practices mostly represent the potential for the rise of the latter at the expense of the former.  In that sense, I wanted to explore what is the role that datified practices (in this case, sending personalized automated messages to students) play in the current University, and how it shapes the experience of students in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My claim:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the previous section, we saw how learners are governed by numbers (measurements of performance, but also personal and social characteristics, etc). Now, proposing the image of the University-as-a-teacher (an institution with certain educational values that aim to be transmitted through the activities that happen inside of it), my running thesis for this post is that \u201cnumbers\u201d, or my data profile that the University has, are also in charge of enhancing and even creating from scratch my sense of belonging to the University. My claim stems from my experience as an international student in two Universities with an ancient tradition of teaching and conducting research, that fit with Van Dijck\u2019s portrayal of European higher education institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From my experience, these emails played a big role in \u201cmaking me feel at home\u201d in the University, especially since Ph.D. students do not necessarily follow classes and have a rather independent, and even isolated, routine. Along with the relationship with my supervisor(s), probably these emails were my main source of information about the services, programs, events, and updates of the University. As you can see in the visualization, I received different messages about internships, student mobility, faculty-level events, and so on. I even received messages from the rector of KUL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a provisional conclusion, it might be possible to argue that datafied processes of personalization create \u201cnew geometries in the relationships\u201d (equally to the case of MOOCs), but this time between the learner, and the home institution where s\/he lives his\/her educational experience. Of course, it is worthwhile to ask further questions about the benefits and possible dangers of engaging with students and creating a sense of belonging with personalized, yet automated strategies of communication and outreach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For this visualisation of \u201cteaching with data\u201d, I chose to track and graphically represent all the automatically generated, but personalized emails I received from the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cde22.education.ed.ac.uk\/cortegon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cde22.education.ed.ac.uk\/cortegon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cde22.education.ed.ac.uk\/cortegon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cde22.education.ed.ac.uk\/cortegon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cde22.education.ed.ac.uk\/cortegon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/cde22.education.ed.ac.uk\/cortegon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31,"href":"http:\/\/cde22.education.ed.ac.uk\/cortegon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions\/31"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cde22.education.ed.ac.uk\/cortegon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cde22.education.ed.ac.uk\/cortegon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cde22.education.ed.ac.uk\/cortegon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}