1 00:00:00,800 --> 00:00:12,230 Hi, and welcome to this virtual lecture. My name is Lars Johannessen and I'm a post-doc at Oslo Metropolitan University. 2 00:00:12,230 --> 00:00:13,640 Apologies for my accent. 3 00:00:13,640 --> 00:00:23,510 It's the best advice version of Scandinavian and American English, but I hope you'll grow used to it over the course of this lecture. 4 00:00:23,510 --> 00:00:32,240 I'm here to talk about qualitative methods and our value for understanding competing perspectives on technological innovations. 5 00:00:32,240 --> 00:00:41,000 Or, as I've phrased it, and the main title of this lecture, why anyone would hesitate to help kids with cancer. 6 00:00:41,000 --> 00:00:47,990 Now, the title is, of course, a bit tabloid, and some might even find it a bit offensive, 7 00:00:47,990 --> 00:00:54,740 but it's meant to point out how a technological innovation may look completely different, 8 00:00:54,740 --> 00:01:05,900 depending on one's perspective and how all this can have severe consequences for those seeking to implement the technology in a real life context. 9 00:01:05,900 --> 00:01:11,900 To illustrate this point, I'll be giving you an example from my case study of the classroom robot a the 10 00:01:11,900 --> 00:01:17,510 one which is made for children with cancer or other health related problems, 11 00:01:17,510 --> 00:01:27,520 keeping them home from school for a long period of time. So to give you a quick outline of the lecture, 12 00:01:27,520 --> 00:01:34,420 I thought I'd start by giving you a brief introduction to everyone itself and then move on to a 13 00:01:34,420 --> 00:01:41,080 theoretical discussion of perspectives and why they're important for understanding innovations. 14 00:01:41,080 --> 00:01:47,740 This is followed by a section on qualitative methods and their relevance for exploring different perspectives. 15 00:01:47,740 --> 00:01:55,120 Before I close by applying all this to my case study of a one. 16 00:01:55,120 --> 00:02:07,120 So beginning with the case, for the last three years, I've been working on a qualitative case study of the classroom robot, maybe one. 17 00:02:07,120 --> 00:02:18,970 This robot is designed to help so-called homebound students who are unable to attend school because of symptoms, treatments or recovery from illness. 18 00:02:18,970 --> 00:02:26,620 Being homebound means being removed from a social context that constitutes four to eight hours of a kid's daily life, 19 00:02:26,620 --> 00:02:34,750 and this can have severe educational and social costs, with students being likely to fall behind in extra instruction. 20 00:02:34,750 --> 00:02:41,840 Feel isolated from their peers and experience loneliness and even depression. 21 00:02:41,840 --> 00:02:49,250 Now, for a long time, these students were reliant on schools reaching out to them to provide home tuition. 22 00:02:49,250 --> 00:02:58,010 But recently, advances in communication technology have created new opportunities for students to attend school remotely 23 00:02:58,010 --> 00:03:08,420 through technologies like any one which is currently used in schools by about 1500 students across Europe, 24 00:03:08,420 --> 00:03:12,720 mostly in Norway, but also in countries such as the U. 25 00:03:12,720 --> 00:03:25,480 K. Now, to give you a sense of how the robot functions in finance, show you one of the films by its producer, no isolation. 26 00:03:25,480 --> 00:03:32,590 A child with long term, a child with long term illness faces many physical and psychological challenges. 27 00:03:32,590 --> 00:03:39,790 One of the toughest is being away from school, often for months at a time, unable to enjoy daily interaction with friends. 28 00:03:39,790 --> 00:03:42,760 A child can feel lonely and detached. 29 00:03:42,760 --> 00:03:52,120 That's why no isolation developed AV1, a first of its kind robot that creates a unique remote connexion between a sick child and her classmates. 30 00:03:52,120 --> 00:03:59,770 With the latest audio visual 4G and Wi-Fi technology integrated, AV1 serves as the youth's eyes and ears in the classroom, 31 00:03:59,770 --> 00:04:04,720 allowing her to learn alongside her friends while everyone is in the classroom. 32 00:04:04,720 --> 00:04:08,380 The child can be an app on her phone or tablet. 33 00:04:08,380 --> 00:04:15,580 When the app is connected, AV1 wakes up and the child can see and talk with her classmates through AV1. 34 00:04:15,580 --> 00:04:20,500 She can also raise her hand, turn around or signal that she doesn't want to be disturbed. 35 00:04:20,500 --> 00:04:26,800 AV1 also includes a whispering option, allowing the child to whisper through AV1 to a classmate. 36 00:04:26,800 --> 00:04:34,390 The continuous connexion provided by AV1 ensures a much easier transition when the child is ready to return to school. 37 00:04:34,390 --> 00:04:44,730 For children with a long term illness, AV1 is the next best thing to being there. 38 00:04:44,730 --> 00:04:51,700 Okay, so this video gives you some sense of how the robot is framed by the producers. 39 00:04:51,700 --> 00:04:57,580 Is meant for children who are homebound because of illnesses such as cancer or chronic fatigue syndrome. 40 00:04:57,580 --> 00:05:01,720 It's supposed to be placed on the sex child's desk. 41 00:05:01,720 --> 00:05:10,370 And it's meant to act as a sort of webcam transferring sound and video from the classroom and to an app on the kid's phone or tablet. 42 00:05:10,370 --> 00:05:13,340 Now, the video doesn't put too much emphasis on this, 43 00:05:13,340 --> 00:05:20,620 but we should also note that everyone offers some form of asymmetrical interaction between the child and the classroom. 44 00:05:20,620 --> 00:05:26,740 Because he's only had a sick child who receives both audio and video from the classroom. 45 00:05:26,740 --> 00:05:35,640 The class only receives audio from the child, which is a point I'll also return to later. 46 00:05:35,640 --> 00:05:45,820 Now, everyone is developed by the Norwegian Start-Up Company, no isolation, which has offices both in Oslo and London. 47 00:05:45,820 --> 00:05:52,630 Having followed no isolation for the last three years, I can attest that this is a rather idealistic company. 48 00:05:52,630 --> 00:05:58,960 Quite far removed from the world of Big Tech and its search for world dominance. 49 00:05:58,960 --> 00:06:05,740 Everyone is a very specialised tool and designed for a relatively small market share as far as technologies go, 50 00:06:05,740 --> 00:06:15,780 and everyone is also based on quite thorough user testing, at least in light of what a Start-Up can afford in its early stages. 51 00:06:15,780 --> 00:06:22,200 In fact, the CEO reached out to user experience researchers as soon as they had a concept ready, 52 00:06:22,200 --> 00:06:32,100 and they did several months of piloting on real world users with various health conditions from cancer to cerebral palsy and chronic fatigue syndrome. 53 00:06:32,100 --> 00:06:39,570 And then he also made substantial changes along the way to the hardware and software as they got new experiences. 54 00:06:39,570 --> 00:06:49,140 So while it might fall short by the standards of hardcore asked research, maybe one is a lot more evidence based than most Start-Up Tech, 55 00:06:49,140 --> 00:06:57,000 which has often been criticised for being based on rather rash assumptions about its users. 56 00:06:57,000 --> 00:07:00,930 According to the homebound students in my study, 57 00:07:00,930 --> 00:07:09,480 no isolation addresses a real demand and fills a large gap in the services for those who are homebound. 58 00:07:09,480 --> 00:07:16,740 While home tourism might keep their learning on track, many feel lonely and isolated from their friends in school, 59 00:07:16,740 --> 00:07:24,690 so most of the students I talked to were highly positive about the robot's prospects for reconnecting them with their peers. 60 00:07:24,690 --> 00:07:33,070 And in my studies, I do find that the robot can live up to the user's expectations under the right circumstances. 61 00:07:33,070 --> 00:07:38,740 Those who get everyone up and running emphasise that the robot reduces their feeling of loneliness, 62 00:07:38,740 --> 00:07:44,560 as well as their feeling of missing out and their fear that their friends might forget them. 63 00:07:44,560 --> 00:07:52,970 Many also see great economic benefit in using the robot as it keeps them up to speed with their classes. 64 00:07:52,970 --> 00:08:04,670 So the robot is well intentioned. It has undergone substantial user testing, and it generally seems to have great potential for homebound children. 65 00:08:04,670 --> 00:08:12,500 But although everyone has a lot going for it, not everyone is raving about the technology. 66 00:08:12,500 --> 00:08:23,620 In fact, to the disappointment of users, the robot has been met with a lot of hesitance and scepticism by teachers and other school workers. 67 00:08:23,620 --> 00:08:30,760 Several schools have refused to use the robots, and some have only accepted a restricted form of use. 68 00:08:30,760 --> 00:08:37,060 For instance, on a fixed position in a classroom exclusively facing the blackboard, 69 00:08:37,060 --> 00:08:43,960 some teachers have also made their concerns public in the form of offence in Norwegian newspapers and the like. 70 00:08:43,960 --> 00:08:53,910 And all this greatly upsets the users I've talked to who express feelings of frustration, distrust and even betrayal. 71 00:08:53,910 --> 00:08:58,890 And this leads me back to the initial question of this lecture. 72 00:08:58,890 --> 00:09:10,180 Why anyone would hesitate to help kids with cancer or, of course, any other illness keeping them away from school for an extended period of time. 73 00:09:10,180 --> 00:09:19,650 To answer this question, I suggest that we need to take a closer look at perspectives. 74 00:09:19,650 --> 00:09:26,640 In social or scientific terms perspective, as a point of view or an angle on reality, 75 00:09:26,640 --> 00:09:35,260 it consists of a set of assumptions and values and beliefs that organise how we interpret and act in the world. 76 00:09:35,260 --> 00:09:38,290 And these sets of assumptions, values and beliefs, 77 00:09:38,290 --> 00:09:46,510 they aren't necessarily selective because a perspective sensitised as individuals to emphasise some aspects of reality. 78 00:09:46,510 --> 00:09:58,500 While desensitises them to other aspects. Now, as you might expect, there is a close relationship between perspectives and a term bias. 79 00:09:58,500 --> 00:10:07,410 This is captured in the concept of the Rashomon effect derived from the film Rashomon by the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. 80 00:10:07,410 --> 00:10:13,830 This film depicts the rape of a woman and the murder of her samurai husband through the perspectives 81 00:10:13,830 --> 00:10:21,800 of four witnesses who all provide subjective and contradictory versions of the incidents. 82 00:10:21,800 --> 00:10:29,900 The term Rashomon effect then refers to the notorious unreliability of eyewitnesses who, 83 00:10:29,900 --> 00:10:39,020 because of their subjective interests and biases, might produce highly conflicting accounts of the same event. 84 00:10:39,020 --> 00:10:44,960 Accordingly, the term implies that we should be wary of subjective witnesses and instead opt for 85 00:10:44,960 --> 00:10:54,030 more objective methods that can help us certain the truth of what really happened. 86 00:10:54,030 --> 00:11:02,190 This emphasis on bias and unreliable subjectivity is a common way of thinking about perspectives. 87 00:11:02,190 --> 00:11:08,300 But it's not very productive. If you want to understand how people work. 88 00:11:08,300 --> 00:11:15,230 Following hermeneutics and other past positivist schools associated with interpretive turn and the social sciences, 89 00:11:15,230 --> 00:11:20,840 we all rely on perspectives in our understandings of the world. 90 00:11:20,840 --> 00:11:27,520 There's no magical view from nowhere from which we can view the full, objective, truthful things. 91 00:11:27,520 --> 00:11:36,130 And while striving to reduce subjectivity may be perfectly fine for many situations, such as when trying someone for murder, for instance. 92 00:11:36,130 --> 00:11:42,900 It's crucial to understand the difference between qualitative research and a murder investigation. 93 00:11:42,900 --> 00:11:46,020 Instead of finding one absolute truth, 94 00:11:46,020 --> 00:11:54,360 we more typically want to learn about what people subjectively believed to be the true or moral to be true or moral or the way things work, 95 00:11:54,360 --> 00:12:00,220 because these subjective believes guide their behaviour. 96 00:12:00,220 --> 00:12:10,150 Asked the sociologist W.I Thomas famously claimed if men define situations as real, they are real and there are consequences. 97 00:12:10,150 --> 00:12:16,480 So in other words, are subjective interpretations have consequences for how we act. 98 00:12:16,480 --> 00:12:22,420 Our interpretations might be wrong by conventional standards, but the point still stands. 99 00:12:22,420 --> 00:12:31,080 If someone believes something is real and they act based on this belief, then the belief becomes real and its consequences. 100 00:12:31,080 --> 00:12:35,880 And this is why we need to take perspectives and subjectivity seriously. 101 00:12:35,880 --> 00:12:44,410 If you want to understand how people do the things they do and why people do the things they do. 102 00:12:44,410 --> 00:12:52,660 Now, to foreshadow a crucial point, I'll elaborate later, perspectives do not vary randomly. 103 00:12:52,660 --> 00:13:00,660 There's a close correlation between the social roles we inhabit and how we come to see the world. 104 00:13:00,660 --> 00:13:11,630 This means that the more social boundaries and the innovation process, the greater the potential for conflicting perspectives and interpretation. 105 00:13:11,630 --> 00:13:18,230 This is a key point across a lot of social theories of technology such as stakeholder theory and so on, 106 00:13:18,230 --> 00:13:26,090 the social construction of technology approach. I won't go into them, but I thought I mentioned them and this issue would. 107 00:13:26,090 --> 00:13:31,280 Conflicting interpretations was exactly the case with everyone. 108 00:13:31,280 --> 00:13:41,390 The robot looked like a great idea from the perspective of the producers and the homebound children, but not so much from the perspective of teachers. 109 00:13:41,390 --> 00:13:45,390 And I'm going to elaborate this in the fourth and final section of this lecture. 110 00:13:45,390 --> 00:13:59,870 First, I want to tell you a bit more about data and methods and the relevance for unearthing competing perspectives on innovation. 111 00:13:59,870 --> 00:14:04,910 OK. So when researching competing perspectives, 112 00:14:04,910 --> 00:14:14,720 we need to recognise that we too have perspectives on reality and that these might blind us to the way other people see the world. 113 00:14:14,720 --> 00:14:20,180 And this is where the German concept of firsthand comes in. 114 00:14:20,180 --> 00:14:29,060 Frustration can be traced back to the sociologist Max Raber, who proposed for Spain as an important principle when studying human subjects. 115 00:14:29,060 --> 00:14:36,760 For staying roughly means putting yourself in the shoes of others to see things from their perspective. 116 00:14:36,760 --> 00:14:39,790 And when guided by firsthand research, 117 00:14:39,790 --> 00:14:50,730 seeks to understand the meaning of an action from the actors point of view so you can share in their local understanding of their situation. 118 00:14:50,730 --> 00:14:58,080 This can help us unpack the situated logic of the people under study to understand 119 00:14:58,080 --> 00:15:04,000 why people do what they do given their local situation and to do this, 120 00:15:04,000 --> 00:15:09,090 we have to work to free ourselves from our own assumptions, values, 121 00:15:09,090 --> 00:15:18,260 beliefs and so on so that we can truly appreciate the viewpoints of those under study. 122 00:15:18,260 --> 00:15:24,590 Hassan based research is almost exclusively linked to qualitative methods. 123 00:15:24,590 --> 00:15:35,090 There are several reasons for this, but two primary ones is their qualitative methods allow for open-ended and in depth investigations. 124 00:15:35,090 --> 00:15:45,270 Starting with open ended, and that's a crucial aspect of first day, and then research is to understand a situation from the actors point of view. 125 00:15:45,270 --> 00:15:53,010 This means that we have to be open to the understandings that they bring to the situation rather than imposing our own understandings, 126 00:15:53,010 --> 00:15:58,740 as is typical of a lot of quantitative research where beliefs and actions have to be 127 00:15:58,740 --> 00:16:05,390 fitted into the standardised categories of surveys or similar data collection tools. 128 00:16:05,390 --> 00:16:07,850 Closely related qualitative research, 129 00:16:07,850 --> 00:16:17,890 also a characteristically allows for more in-depth investigations of how people understand their actions and environments. 130 00:16:17,890 --> 00:16:23,770 It may not be as generalisable as standardised large scale surveys, for instance, 131 00:16:23,770 --> 00:16:31,520 but it allows for much deeper probing into the subjective world of those under study. 132 00:16:31,520 --> 00:16:39,880 The deal here is engaged in what Clifford Gertz called fake description and think description refers to. 133 00:16:39,880 --> 00:16:45,340 Understanding actions in light of the multiple contexts that they are embedded in. 134 00:16:45,340 --> 00:16:52,420 In other words, in light of the vast amount of historical baggage, economic structures, political structures, 135 00:16:52,420 --> 00:17:02,080 family structures, religious structures and of many other structural pressures that exert themselves on the actors we study. 136 00:17:02,080 --> 00:17:11,440 So think description and for staying are two concepts for more or less, the same thing for putting yourself in the actor's place, 137 00:17:11,440 --> 00:17:24,440 walking a mile in their shoes and understanding all the expectations, concerns and pressures that influences them in their everyday life. 138 00:17:24,440 --> 00:17:33,530 Now, conventionally, the gold standard approach for achieving for stay in or description is ethnography. 139 00:17:33,530 --> 00:17:39,920 Ethnography involves the first hand study of people as they go about their everyday lives. 140 00:17:39,920 --> 00:17:44,990 It means you're able to observe firsthand what people say and what people do, 141 00:17:44,990 --> 00:17:51,950 rather than relying purely on people's own verbal accounts of their sayings and doings. 142 00:17:51,950 --> 00:17:58,460 And this is a crucial advantage if you want to see things from the actors perspective, 143 00:17:58,460 --> 00:18:03,590 because then you're able to situate their accounts and actions in the context of what they 144 00:18:03,590 --> 00:18:11,810 do from day to day when all the constraints of the ordinary social situation are operative. 145 00:18:11,810 --> 00:18:22,550 Now, moving on to my own methods and data, I did not opt for ethnography in my study of one. 146 00:18:22,550 --> 00:18:34,520 This is mainly because ethnographic studies are incredibly time consuming and typically allow for the study of only one or maybe two field sites. 147 00:18:34,520 --> 00:18:43,160 In my case, as most schools have no more than one robot in use, if any at all, I would have had to recruit a bunch of schools, 148 00:18:43,160 --> 00:18:52,460 which would have been extremely time consuming in terms of negotiating access, gaining informed consent from all the involved parties and so on. 149 00:18:52,460 --> 00:18:59,530 So instead, I relied mainly on interviews to collect data about everyone. 150 00:18:59,530 --> 00:19:09,670 While interviews rarely offer the same insight into local context as ethnography does, the method allows for recruiting a larger number of cases, 151 00:19:09,670 --> 00:19:18,880 which might sensitise the researcher to multiple contexts and their relevance for the technology under study. 152 00:19:18,880 --> 00:19:31,160 In my case, this involved recruiting 37 users of the robots, as well as multiple other stakeholders, which had a say in its use. 153 00:19:31,160 --> 00:19:42,920 Now, I should add that I went even further away from the gold standard by conducting most my interviews by phone in methodological textbooks, 154 00:19:42,920 --> 00:19:48,980 telephone interviews are often described as unsuited for in-depth interviewing. 155 00:19:48,980 --> 00:19:55,130 And for that reason, I had initially planned to do only short introductory introduced by phone just to 156 00:19:55,130 --> 00:20:00,020 get in touch with the interviewees and gather some basic background information. 157 00:20:00,020 --> 00:20:10,400 But as the interviewees responded surprisingly well to this method, I decided and decided to expand on its use. 158 00:20:10,400 --> 00:20:20,150 Now, of course, telephone interviews inevitably entail the loss of certain data, such as the interview, his body language. 159 00:20:20,150 --> 00:20:26,840 But I found that these limitations were more than made up for by the methods and manages. 160 00:20:26,840 --> 00:20:35,600 Most importantly, telephone Andrews gave the interview with great flexibility in when and where to conduct the interview, 161 00:20:35,600 --> 00:20:42,230 and this made it easier to get in touch with and recruit people from all across Norway, 162 00:20:42,230 --> 00:20:47,390 rather than just those in the vicinity of Oslo or other airport cities, 163 00:20:47,390 --> 00:20:54,300 which I would have been tempted to prioritise if I were to conduct all the interviews face to face. 164 00:20:54,300 --> 00:21:01,200 And while the telephone is not conducive to certain techniques of face to face interviewing, 165 00:21:01,200 --> 00:21:06,390 such as being silent, to encourage interviews, to elaborate and so on. 166 00:21:06,390 --> 00:21:17,080 I found that well-timed, probing and well-prepared follow up questions could facilitate surprisingly extensive answers to my questions. 167 00:21:17,080 --> 00:21:26,740 So while I'm not saying that the telephone is the best interviewing tool for for all contexts, it definitely is not. 168 00:21:26,740 --> 00:21:38,390 I am saying that it has and this certainly bad reputation and that it can be a surprisingly good research tool given the right circumstances. 169 00:21:38,390 --> 00:21:43,310 So just to give you a quick impression of my data before we move on. 170 00:21:43,310 --> 00:21:54,900 I conducted a total of 162 semi-structured interviews between the fall of 2018 and the spring of 2021. 171 00:21:54,900 --> 00:22:04,360 With users, the producers of the robot, school workers, health care workers and other stakeholders of the robot in Norway. 172 00:22:04,360 --> 00:22:14,650 I also supplemented my interviews with two short ethnographic sessions and two schools where I observed everyone in use in the classroom. 173 00:22:14,650 --> 00:22:21,070 So that's the empirical basis for what I'm now about to tell you about. 174 00:22:21,070 --> 00:22:27,770 So with all this in mind, let's return to our initial puzzle and see how everyone looks. 175 00:22:27,770 --> 00:22:36,720 I looked from the teachers perspective. First, short sip of water. 176 00:22:36,720 --> 00:22:40,260 Okay, so in the following, 177 00:22:40,260 --> 00:22:47,880 I'm going to focus on the findings from the interviews I did with forty five teachers and other school workers across 27 primary, 178 00:22:47,880 --> 00:22:53,280 secondary and upper secondary schools in Norway. 179 00:22:53,280 --> 00:23:01,320 And as I mentioned earlier, a key finding in these interviews was that many teachers met the robot with hesitancy and scepticism, 180 00:23:01,320 --> 00:23:09,350 at times even refusing its use in their classroom. To understand this reluctance towards the technology, 181 00:23:09,350 --> 00:23:17,100 I tried to put myself in the shoes of teachers and figure out how the robot looks from their perspective. 182 00:23:17,100 --> 00:23:21,810 And while the interviews revealed several courses of concern, 183 00:23:21,810 --> 00:23:29,910 I want to focus on the one they emphasise the most and the one they emphasise most strongly, 184 00:23:29,910 --> 00:23:38,070 namely that the robot could serve as a potential tool for surveillance in the classroom. 185 00:23:38,070 --> 00:23:46,200 This issue was expressed quite clearly by one teacher I interviewed who said when the robot enters the picture, 186 00:23:46,200 --> 00:23:57,400 the classroom is extended to include the students home and then we lose control, who is watching or who is part of what goes on in class. 187 00:23:57,400 --> 00:24:08,080 So in this understanding, the robot is understood to reduce teachers control over the classroom by opening it up to outside viewers. 188 00:24:08,080 --> 00:24:17,650 And this gives us some initial sense of the teacher's perspective and a key reason for the scepticism. 189 00:24:17,650 --> 00:24:21,790 But if you want to learn more, we need to dive deeper. 190 00:24:21,790 --> 00:24:29,660 And to do that, I suggest we ask what the teacher's fair by him being observed and who they fear is serving them. 191 00:24:29,660 --> 00:24:35,660 Having done this, I found that the teachers pictured too detrimental scenarios where a robot could 192 00:24:35,660 --> 00:24:44,220 be used to spy on the user's classmates or to monitor the teachers themselves. 193 00:24:44,220 --> 00:24:54,090 I'll go on to elaborate this in a minute. But first, it should be mentioned that the producers have to some extent anticipated the teacher's concerns, 194 00:24:54,090 --> 00:25:00,030 and they had also taken several measures to prevent misuse of the robot. 195 00:25:00,030 --> 00:25:07,570 For instance, they made sure that the robots can only live stream and not record content from the classroom. 196 00:25:07,570 --> 00:25:18,160 Can only be linked to a single external device, requires the user to enter a personal password every time they gone and so on and so forth. 197 00:25:18,160 --> 00:25:27,010 And for all these reasons, the producers believed that it was highly unlikely that anyone would misuse the robot. 198 00:25:27,010 --> 00:25:36,260 And they also claim that there should be no practical difference between having a student or having a robot in class. 199 00:25:36,260 --> 00:25:41,420 The teachers, on the other hand, well, they beg to differ. 200 00:25:41,420 --> 00:25:47,530 So let's move on then to see why they did so. 201 00:25:47,530 --> 00:25:59,770 Starting with the first scenario, the teachers pictured that the users could use a v one to spy on other students in class. 202 00:25:59,770 --> 00:26:11,180 And this scenario had two key variations. Firstly, some described how everyone could serve as a peephole into the classroom. 203 00:26:11,180 --> 00:26:16,940 This could involve the students simply taking voyeuristic pleasure in being in unobserved observer. 204 00:26:16,940 --> 00:26:25,850 But some also emphasised how the user could be pressured to show the video stream to friends or to siblings. 205 00:26:25,850 --> 00:26:33,740 Secondly, some also spoke of everyone using metaphors of surveillance cameras and recording devices. 206 00:26:33,740 --> 00:26:42,980 These stories emphasised the added possibility that students might use the robots to record what goes on in class and importantly, 207 00:26:42,980 --> 00:26:55,700 to share this material online. It's important to emphasise that none of the teachers I talked to had experienced this type of misuse with one. 208 00:26:55,700 --> 00:27:05,090 Instead, they are right at this interpretation by relating everyone to a broader context of social relations in school with a particular 209 00:27:05,090 --> 00:27:17,080 emphasis on how our contemporary camera society entails that students every action might be recorded and shared on social media. 210 00:27:17,080 --> 00:27:24,940 As one teacher claimed, we're living in a society where people have a realistic fear of being recorded without knowing. 211 00:27:24,940 --> 00:27:35,500 And as evidence for this larger narrative about our camera society, teachers often cited several smaller stories of inappropriate camera use. 212 00:27:35,500 --> 00:27:41,140 For instance, the following account was offered by a teacher in Upper Secondary School. 213 00:27:41,140 --> 00:27:46,150 He said. About a month ago, there was a student who had a panic attack in class. 214 00:27:46,150 --> 00:27:51,970 She laid down scratch. That approach took over the floor, hyperventilated and stuff like that. 215 00:27:51,970 --> 00:28:02,020 And then instead of helping the student, there's of course, some students who had opportunity to make snap and share this across social media. 216 00:28:02,020 --> 00:28:07,420 In the end, this and other schools in the city know that there's been a panic attack by this particular student. 217 00:28:07,420 --> 00:28:12,550 So it's clear that these kind of things are uncomfortable and unnecessary. 218 00:28:12,550 --> 00:28:18,940 And it's maybe situations like these that, well, that might happen with this maybe one robot as well. 219 00:28:18,940 --> 00:28:23,950 If you have a camera rolling all the time. 220 00:28:23,950 --> 00:28:35,650 So this teacher offered this story as an example of how things might spiral out of control if everyone is introduced in class again, 221 00:28:35,650 --> 00:28:44,290 it's worth emphasising how the teacher is engaging in analogical reasoning where the misuse of a b one is deduced from 222 00:28:44,290 --> 00:28:53,260 how perceivable a similar technologies such as smartphones and Snapchat have been used in the classroom previously. 223 00:28:53,260 --> 00:29:01,930 So the teachers using ideas about familiar objects and practises to make sense of a new and unknown technology. 224 00:29:01,930 --> 00:29:02,950 And we could, of course, 225 00:29:02,950 --> 00:29:11,110 challenge this interpretation and ask whether I think an isolated student would be likely to act in this moment in this manner. 226 00:29:11,110 --> 00:29:13,960 But that's not the point. 227 00:29:13,960 --> 00:29:28,030 The point is that this is how everyone looks from this teacher's perspective, and this is why he is hesitant to allow everyone into his classroom. 228 00:29:28,030 --> 00:29:35,830 OK. So moving on to the second scenario. 229 00:29:35,830 --> 00:29:46,620 This involved the teachers picturing that someone else than the home, but home bound child might be observing them through the robot. 230 00:29:46,620 --> 00:29:56,130 Specifically, the teachers believed that parents could use the robot to monitor and criticise their teaching activities. 231 00:29:56,130 --> 00:29:58,920 Their idea was that when a robot enters the classroom, 232 00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:06,880 parents may through ill will or happenstance come to observe something they do not like through maybe one. 233 00:30:06,880 --> 00:30:10,960 This then, might lead them to stir up trouble for a teacher, 234 00:30:10,960 --> 00:30:18,580 either through informal slander or through formal complaints or some combination of the two. 235 00:30:18,580 --> 00:30:21,670 While potentially a risk weighed all parents, 236 00:30:21,670 --> 00:30:30,040 this problem was said to be especially grave with a particular type of student describe a particular type of parent 237 00:30:30,040 --> 00:30:40,070 described as disapproving or someone who is against the school and who might seek to make the teacher's life more difficult. 238 00:30:40,070 --> 00:30:44,720 When people when teachers picture themselves through the eyes of this disapproving parent, 239 00:30:44,720 --> 00:30:52,000 they often started questioning what the classroom would look like to such a critical observer. 240 00:30:52,000 --> 00:30:57,190 Many feared being judged according to unrealistic pedagogical ideals, 241 00:30:57,190 --> 00:31:04,390 far removed from the everyday realities of school and the teachers particularly feared being judged based on 242 00:31:04,390 --> 00:31:12,680 their unfortunate moments by parents who take exceptions to be the rule and blow them out of proportion. 243 00:31:12,680 --> 00:31:19,980 Some teachers also added that the robots technical features might contribute to exacerbate the problem. 244 00:31:19,980 --> 00:31:25,920 Maybe one is a camera with a particular viewpoint and might capture only the teacher's 245 00:31:25,920 --> 00:31:32,690 reactions and miss the initial actions that provoke teachers in the first place. 246 00:31:32,690 --> 00:31:38,330 Adding to this, Amy, one also lacks a screen, according to teachers. 247 00:31:38,330 --> 00:31:48,740 And this was claimed to increase their uncertainty as they had no way of telling who are actually observing them through the robot. 248 00:31:48,740 --> 00:31:58,790 And all this put teachers on their toes, as one teacher explained, When we're in the classroom with students, we never think about being observed. 249 00:31:58,790 --> 00:32:08,620 But as soon as others get the opportunity to observe you, you start thinking, Well, now I have to do things correctly all of the time. 250 00:32:08,620 --> 00:32:20,500 So accounts like these show how teachers actually believe that everyone could turn the classroom into a so-called panopticon, 251 00:32:20,500 --> 00:32:29,950 as made famous by myself or call the panopticon is a prison design that allows a single security guard to observe all prisoners 252 00:32:29,950 --> 00:32:38,200 and institutions and institutions are without the prisoners being able to tell whether they're being watched or not. 253 00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:47,170 And this, in turn, motivates the prisoners to act as if they're being watched at all times. 254 00:32:47,170 --> 00:32:57,610 In school, it has traditionally been the teacher who holds the most Panopto position of being able to observe all students at all times or nearly so. 255 00:32:57,610 --> 00:33:03,550 But with everyone, the situation is sort of reversed as everyone allows an outsider to observe the 256 00:33:03,550 --> 00:33:09,160 teacher without the teacher being able to tell whether they're being watched or not. 257 00:33:09,160 --> 00:33:18,920 And this fundamentally shifts the power dynamic of the classroom, with the teacher now occupying a more precarious position. 258 00:33:18,920 --> 00:33:28,160 As we just saw, some teachers told that this could have a disciplining effect, and some also spoke of this as being emotionally challenging. 259 00:33:28,160 --> 00:33:34,800 Describing the situation as uncomfortable or scary or even creepy. 260 00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:39,990 Part of the features on ice might seem to stem from the fact that everyone provides 261 00:33:39,990 --> 00:33:47,760 access to a space that has historically been almost completely closed off to outsiders. 262 00:33:47,760 --> 00:33:57,240 This was evident in how teachers talked about the classroom as a backstage area reserved for insiders such as the teacher and their students, 263 00:33:57,240 --> 00:34:04,110 who all share a certain understanding of what typically goes on in school. 264 00:34:04,110 --> 00:34:14,250 So by allowing for outside observation, everyone is seen as challenging the social order of the classroom, 265 00:34:14,250 --> 00:34:24,930 which in turn is seen as threatening both the authority of the teacher and the integrity of the other students in class athletes, 266 00:34:24,930 --> 00:34:31,360 at least as these teachers saw it. OK. 267 00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:41,230 So this lecture started with a tabloid question why anyone would hesitate to help kids with cancer or any other illness, 268 00:34:41,230 --> 00:34:46,790 keeping them home from school for a prolonged period of time. 269 00:34:46,790 --> 00:34:55,820 As should now be clear, this way of asking reflects the perspective of users and producers of the robot 270 00:34:55,820 --> 00:35:02,590 who see everyone as a benign tool for virtually including homebound students. 271 00:35:02,590 --> 00:35:08,020 But as we've seen the teachers interpret the robot from a radically different perspective, 272 00:35:08,020 --> 00:35:14,900 putting greater stress on how everyone might threaten the integrity of those within the classroom. 273 00:35:14,900 --> 00:35:22,700 In a teacher's view, they have to protect the interests of all students in class, not just the homebound student. 274 00:35:22,700 --> 00:35:29,630 And they also fear that the robot might threaten their own position and authority. 275 00:35:29,630 --> 00:35:36,200 So in other words, we have a conflict of both interests and values with the users and the producers stressing the need 276 00:35:36,200 --> 00:35:43,900 for inclusion and the teachers emphasising the risk of surveillance and unintended consequences. 277 00:35:43,900 --> 00:35:53,140 And this difference is to a large extent, related to the structural position of the teachers and as the head of the class. 278 00:35:53,140 --> 00:36:01,700 Teachers have other interests and role obligations which motivate them to think more critically about the robot. 279 00:36:01,700 --> 00:36:14,790 So as the teachers and the users and the producers occupy different social worlds, so to speak, they also come to see the robot quite differently. 280 00:36:14,790 --> 00:36:28,800 But with that being said, I should add a final crucial point, namely that not all teachers considered everyone to be a tool of surveillance. 281 00:36:28,800 --> 00:36:36,000 In fact, several interviewees amongst the teachers explicitly dismissed this interpretation. 282 00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:45,540 Insisting instead, things, sexual acts, the robot being harmless or that they're teaching should be able to withstand outside scrutiny, 283 00:36:45,540 --> 00:36:54,900 or that everyone posed no more threat than the surveillance they were already under by the 20 other students in class. 284 00:36:54,900 --> 00:37:02,820 So this shows that we must be careful not to talk about the teacher's perspective in singular form. 285 00:37:02,820 --> 00:37:10,920 In fact, we should actually expect to find several conflicting perspectives we're in and then single group. 286 00:37:10,920 --> 00:37:15,900 One reason for this is that most people have multiple group memberships. 287 00:37:15,900 --> 00:37:23,880 Teachers aren't just teachers. They might also be parents or Christians or football coaches or whatever. 288 00:37:23,880 --> 00:37:32,580 All of which have consequences for what they assume, believe and value that is for their perspectives. 289 00:37:32,580 --> 00:37:38,550 So while there is a close link between people's roles and their perspectives, 290 00:37:38,550 --> 00:37:45,420 we cannot assume that a single role determines how a person who comes to see the world. 291 00:37:45,420 --> 00:37:51,960 And this is why we have to do actual empirical studies of people's perspectives rather than 292 00:37:51,960 --> 00:37:59,770 automatically introducing how they see the world from an analysis of their structural position. 293 00:37:59,770 --> 00:38:06,970 Now, when I focussed almost exclusively on the perspective of the critical teachers in this lecture, 294 00:38:06,970 --> 00:38:13,450 this is because it's this perspective that's most relevant to answer my research question, 295 00:38:13,450 --> 00:38:20,590 namely why someone could be sceptical to use such a seemingly well intentioned technology. 296 00:38:20,590 --> 00:38:27,220 So in other words, this perspective is what's most relevant for my analytical purposes. 297 00:38:27,220 --> 00:38:32,650 So what I'm trying to drive home with this slide is more of a theoretical point, 298 00:38:32,650 --> 00:38:41,630 namely to remind you the complexity in how people interpret and act in the world. 299 00:38:41,630 --> 00:38:50,810 Having said that, it's time to finish this lecture by doing a quick summary of some key points. 300 00:38:50,810 --> 00:38:56,360 OK, so I've talked about the importance of perspectives and especially competing 301 00:38:56,360 --> 00:39:04,130 perspectives for the implementation of technological innovations in real life settings. 302 00:39:04,130 --> 00:39:07,520 I've also talked about the value of qualitative methods for exploring these 303 00:39:07,520 --> 00:39:12,860 different perspectives based on principles of first hand and thick description. 304 00:39:12,860 --> 00:39:18,550 And I illustrated all this with my case study of the classroom about a month. 305 00:39:18,550 --> 00:39:26,170 Focussing on how the robot looked completely different from the perspectives of teachers and users producers. 306 00:39:26,170 --> 00:39:33,220 In short, whereas the users said producers saw the robot as a tool for virtually including homebound students. 307 00:39:33,220 --> 00:39:40,690 The teachers emphasised it's more risky and threatening aspects for those in the classroom and all this 308 00:39:40,690 --> 00:39:52,600 complicated implementation of the robot to the great frustration of both the users and the producers. 309 00:39:52,600 --> 00:39:57,250 So that's it for now. Thank you for listening so far. 310 00:39:57,250 --> 00:40:07,180 If you want to get in touch, you can reach me on email or Twitter or through my web page or, of course, in the upcoming live discussion. 311 00:40:07,180 --> 00:40:11,912 Until then, thanks and goodbye.