Decolonising Computing (eSTEeM)

Decolonising the curriculum (DTC) is a university-wide initiative within the broader decolonising the university (DTU) project overseen by the EDI Dean with mandate from the VC. The current focus of DTC work in the STEM faculty is on Level 1 modules in all schools.

This exploratory project aims to complement that work by setting out a vision and roadmap for what computing could – and arguably should – mean for computing educators at the Open University once decolonised. It will do this by critically interrogating both content and pedagogy, informed by critical race theory and decolonial thought. The goal is to re-orient the teaching of the subject at module, curriculum and programme level. This re-orientation is informed by an attempt at developing materials aimed at educating students as critical practitioners, whereby ‘critical’ is understood a commitment to a decolonial ethics and politics.

The project assumes the form of a ‘deep dive’ that is complementary to university EDI initiative(s) targeted at addressing the degree awarding gap and DTC, yet focused on the specificities of computing and the curriculum within the School of Computing and Communications. The project will document the method employed, which is participatory, with a view to disseminating this as a proof-of-concept to educators within the school and the wider computing education sector, both national and international, about how existing computing material can be decolonised and colonialism prevented from being (re-)introduced into computing curricula. Insofar as the approach explored in the project may be replicable across other STEM disciplines, project outcomes will also be disseminated to the OU STEM faculty. As a longer term, post-project aim, it is envisaged that the outcomes of the project will inform the development of a workshop/training session for central academics and ALs, as well as computing educators within HE and industry more widely.

Rationale

The project is fundamentally informed by, and seeks to advance, the university’s stated commitment to enhancing social justice. The role of computing and ICT in promoting this entanglement has been explored at length in the literature and includes critical studies of the digital divide, ICT4D, internet governance etc.

The project is informed at a theoretical level by published work in postcolonial computing (Irani et al. 2010) and decolonial computing (Ali 2014, 2016). Researchers and practitioners adopting a decolonial computing perspective are required, at a minimum, to do the following: firstly, consider their locatedness and subjectivity when designing, building, researching, or theorizing about computing and ICT; secondly, embrace the ‘decolonial option’ as a political-ethical stance, considering what it might mean to design and build and govern computing and ICT systems with and for those situated at the peripheries of the world system, informed by the ways of thinking and knowing located at such sites, with a view to challenging asymmetric local-global power relationships.

The project will initially seek to review related efforts planned or underway at other UK institutions and internationally, with a view to potentially establishing collaborative links.

The project contributes to the university-wide DTC (Decolonising the Curriculum) initiative as well as the Inclusive Curriculum audit (part of the OU’s Access and Participation Plan) that the STEM Faculty is currently undertaking. It also contributes to the OU’s Strategic Goal Four: enacting our values to increase Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, specifically ‘Ensuring our undergraduate and postgraduate degree content includes a greater focus on EDI’ and ‘Conducting more engaging research that has a focus on EDI’.

References

• Ali, S.M. 2016. A brief introduction to decolonial computing. XRDS 22(4): 16-21.
• Ali, M. 2014. Towards a decolonial computing. In Ambiguous Technologies: Philosophical Issues, Practical Solutions, Human Nature. International Society of Ethics and Information Technology, 2014, 28–35.
• Irani, L. et al. 2010. Postcolonial computing. In Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’10. ACM, New York, 2010.