When a Nudge Feels Like a Shove

Ernest Ezeugo's panel discussion at SXSW EDU was covered by EdSurge:

Colleges must consider the ethics of any big-data project involving students, argued another member of the panel, Ernest Ezeugo, a program associate at New America. Otherwise, a friendly nudge could end up turning into a shove.

“It takes great forethought to use this technology in a way that doesn’t harm students,” he said, noting that the algorithms can end up furthering the implicit biases of whoever builds the system. To help guide colleges through the design process, he pointed to a 2016 New America report, “The Promise and Peril of Predictive Analytics in Higher Education.”