For our major project for LRNT526 in the RRU MALAT Program, our team initially expressed an interest in our critical reflective topic, the digital divide, and then worked backward to identify our delivery technology and learning event. While we are all familiar with the digital divide, we decided to pursue a learning event that discussed the digital divide in greater detail to create a shared understanding of concepts, terminology, and themes. To this end, we enrolled in The Digital Divide online course offered through Coursera as part of the Goodwill Digital Navigator Certificate Specialization. As all members of our team are interested in evaluating this technology through the lens of the digital divide, we each chose different facets through which we could produce a comprehensive, critical academic analysis. For my part of the team presentation and critical reflective academic paper, I chose the commercialisation of digital education and how it intersects with the digital divide.
Framing
While the online course The Digital Divide is interesting and provides some insights, it does not offer university-level academic rigor or depth. To apply a more effective analytical basis, Allie shared a 2022 literature review by Lythreatis et al., which proposes a progressively layered and inter-affecting framework for categorizing factors contributing to the digital divide. For my topic, commercialisation of education likely contributes to the digital divide at levels two, three, and the theoretical fourth layer posited in the paper. In addition to this framework, I intend to apply an ethical lens from Sriphrikash et al.’s 2024 paper on sociodigital futures of education.
Areas of investigation
Areas that I am currently investigating include:
- The purpose of education as defined by Gert Biesta (2024) and the basic human right to education as defined in Article 26 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
- Digital literacy as it applies to the digital divide, particularly through the work of Doug Belshaw (Belshaw, 2014).
- The impact of commercialised platforms on the affordances of education in an environment of abundance (Weller, 2011; Kop et al., 2011)
- The concepts of assetisation, platformisation, and rentiership as they apply to the digital divide (Birch et al., 2025; Komljenovic et al., 2024; Williamson et al., 2020)
- Commercial digital education platforms as economic and political actors influencing the design, mandate, and operation of public education institutions (Bianchi & Ross, 2024; Ortegón et al., 2024; Komljenovic et al., 2023; Williamson & Hogan, 2021a; Williamson & Hogan, 2021b)
Conclusion
While I am still broadly investigating this topic and collecting and analysing resources, I may narrow my scope or eliminate certain avenues due to time and assignment length constraints. Nonetheless, my guiding question of critical inquiry is “What role does commercialisation of education play in the digital divide?” From what I have already read and understood, the potential impacts are deeply concerning.
Postscript
An interesting fact about our team, “the Coasters”; our chosen name is a nod to the fact that our members are spread across four Canadian provinces from coast to coast.
References
Belshaw, D. (2014). The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies. Retrieved from http://digitalliteraci.es
Bianchi, S., & Ross, D. (2024). Regulating non-state actors in education: findings from a collaborative research project. UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000390064
Biesta, G. (2024). Taking education seriously: The ongoing challenge. Educational Theory, 74(3). 434-448. https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12646
Birch, K., Komljenovic, J., & Sellar, S. (2025). Architectures of assetization: Legacy infrastructures and the configuration of datafication in UK higher education. New Media & Society, 27(4), 1868-1887. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251314400
Birch, K., Komljenovic, J., Sellar, S., & Hansen, M. (2024). Data as asset, data as rent? Rentiership practices in EdTech startups. Learning, Media and Technology, 50(1), 15–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2024.2405850
Komljenovic, J., Williamson, B., Eynon, R., & Davies, H. C. (2023). When public policy ‘fails’ and venture capital ‘saves’ education: Edtech investors as economic and political actors. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2272134
Komljenovic, J., Birch, K., & Sellar, S. (2025). Mapping rentiership and assetisation in the digitalisation of education. Learning, Media and Technology, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2025.2469559
Kop, R., Fournier, H., & Mak, J. S. F. (2011). A pedagogy of abundance or a pedagogy to support human beings? Participant support on massive open online courses. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 12(7), 74–93. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v12i7.1041
Ortegón, C., Decuypere, M., & Williamson, B. (2024). Mediating educational technologies: Edtech brokering between schools, academia, governance, and industry. Research in Education, 120(1), 35-53. https://doi.org/10.1177/00345237241242990
Sriprakash, A., Williamson, B., Facer, K., Pykett, J., & Valladares Celis, C. (2024). Sociodigital futures of education: reparations, sovereignty, care, and democratisation. Oxford Review of Education, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2024.2348459
United Nations. (1948). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
Weller, M. (2011). A pedagogy of abundance. Spanish Journal of Pedagogy, 249, 223–236. Retrieved from https://oro.open.ac.uk/28774/2/BB62B2.pdf
Williamson, B., Bayne, S., & Shay, S. (2020). The datafication of teaching in higher education: critical issues and perspectives. Teaching in Higher Education, 25(4), 351–365. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2020.1748811
Williamson, B., & Hogan, A. (2021a). Pandemic privatisation in higher education: edtech and university reform. Education International, Brussels, Belgium. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/216578/
Williamson, B., & Hogan, A. (2021b). Post-pandemic reform of higher education: Market-first or purpose-first digital transformation? Education International, Brussels, Belgium. https://www.ei-ie.org/en/item/23685:post-pandemic-reform-of-higher-education-market-first-or-purpose-first-digital-transformation-by-ben-williamson-and-anna-hogan
Hi Chris,
It was interesting to learn about the Lythreatis framework and how you’re using it to unpack the layers of the digital divide. I hadn’t come across it before, so it gave me a new perspective on how complex and interconnected these issues are.
Your point about the commercialization of education really resonated with me. While I’m focusing on YouTube and how its algorithm affects visibility and perceived legitimacy of educational content, I see a lot of parallels with your work. Especially around how platforms can reinforce certain norms while sidelining others.
I’m curious to see how your work evolves as you narrow the focus. Looking forward to hearing more about which areas you decide to emphasize in your final reflection.
Thanks Asha, you’ve landed on one of the significant points in my inquiry – datafication practices in commercialisation. I’ve been reading some very interesting papers about how the datafication of education involves trade-offs, particularly in terms of pedagogies, cultural norms, or perspectives that are difficult to quantify or apply a reductionist lens to. And then harm is produced because the data model begins to be perceived as reality, and policy and decision-making are built on a flawed model. The term “digital colonialism” has emerged, and I think that’s a compelling concept, particularly as these platforms and embedded models are being sold to lower- and middle-income countries to elevate their educational practices to “global standards” (which is rife with bias). Williamson’s 2020 paper, referenced in my list, is an excellent read on this topic.
Hi Chris,
I’m loving your reading list there! You’ve been very busy I can see 😉 Whilst I can sense the enthusiasm for your topic, you do need to bring the focus back in a little to your chosen technology and learning event – what are the issues related to commercialisation of education and the digital divide that might apply specifically to the Coursera platform and your experience with the specific course you’ve chosen? You might even find it useful to narrow your scope down further to perhaps just commercialisation?
Alex Usher in 2021 wrote a nice round up of the post-MOOC hype at 10 years which I think is an interesting reflection: https://higheredstrategy.com/moocs-at-10/ He picks up on some of the reasons that they didn’t result in the end of the university as we know it (as a two-times graduate of a 400+ year old university this stuff always makes me laugh!), but in that I think is revealed some information about what the people running MOOC platforms thought education was about and who it was for and it’s deeply revealing.
I’m looking forward to where you go with this work!
Thanks, Anne-Marie, I think you read my mind. As I was writing my learning plan, I ended up having to narrow the scope of my inquiry down to commercialisation. Belshaw’s digital literacy concepts and Gert Biesta’s work are intensely interesting, but something for another time. For my presentation and final paper, I’m focused on how MOOCs and other digital course platforms impact the digital divide through ratification and assetisation/rentiership. I’ll also discuss how these mechanisms enable private organizations to influence public education by becoming social and economic actors. Some dense reading involved, but fascinating learning!