Open Education and Platformization: Critical Perspectives for a New Social Contract in Education

Overview & Synopsis

Public educational systems and institutions have increased their adoption of proprietary educational platforms offered by large private corporations. Platforms now critically mediate content creation and storage, interaction and communication, record-keeping and institutional memory. This platformization of education has led to significant risks to data collection and privacy, technological lock-in and dependency, and educational governance. In this article, the principles of Open Education are presented as a framework to guide the adoption of technological platforms and services in education. Data and examples are presented to demonstrate the significant scope of the integration of platforms within the context of South American higher education and show how it has negatively impacted educational governance. The article concludes with a presentation of alternative models for the adoption of platforms in education guided by public values and not solely by cost savings that reflect a disregard for their adverse impacts on educational governance, privacy, and autonomy.