The Use of Fiction in Technology Education
Mariana Tamashiro
Technology is evolving at a concerning pace. Not only in technical terms, but also regarding its impact on society. Although there are many initiatives on how to teach students about emerging technologies, such as AI, the majority of them focus on the technical part and only a few highlight the societal aspects of those technologies (Van Mechelen, 2022). Among different pedagogical strategies to teach students about the complex impacts of technology on society, one seems particularly interesting to scaffold students' understanding of complex issues: the use of fiction in learning activities.
Hansen (2021) explains that one of the most relevant benefits of fiction in education is that while it might represent stories, characters, and situations realistically, it is not a direct replica of reality. Vermeule (2010) also states that “narrative can be seen as a vehicle by which people test various scenarios without risking too much”. Specifically, regarding technology, it is possible to use stories to create curiosity both for technical and societal elements of technology, characters to exercise perspective-taking of different stakeholders, and mischief to spark ethical discussions (Tamashiro, 2021).
Table 1 Examples on how to use fiction in technology education
|
Fiction Elements |
Why use it in technology education? |
|
Story |
Inspired by the sociological expression of "making the familiar strange," stories have the power to unveil relationships, interactions, and scenarios that we might take for granted. Considering that students are constantly immersed and in contact with digital technologies, just giving lectures about them in traditional teaching might not be the most engaging for them. By creating fantastical and fictional worlds, we highlight aspects that otherwise pass unnoticed or even be boring to students. |
|
Characters |
Characters can be used by students to role-play and understand, in an embodied way, the different intentions of people involved in technology development (developers, policty-makers, companies, politicians). By playing a character of someone who has priorities that maybe the student hasn't thought about, it is possible to start creating a more nuanced understanding of the technology process, that goes beyond perceiving people as "good" or "evil". |
|
Mischief |
Mischief can be defined as a "playful misbehaviour, especially on the part of children” or "bending rules without intent to do harm" (Bundy et al., 2001). Mischief-inspired activities can create connections for ethical discussions, such as surveillance, bias, hacking, and security. The difference between using mischief instead of other approaches such as solution-based – prompting students to design a solution for a problem – is that mischief has an aspect of disruption and transgression that can be more engaging to students. |
References and further reading
Bundy, A. et al. (2001) Validity and Reliability of a Test of Playfulness. The Occupational Therapy Journal of Research, 21(4), 276–292. https://doi.org/10.1177/153944920102100405
Hansen, K. (2021) Optimistic Fiction as a Tool for Ethical Reflection, STEM, J. Acad. Ethics. 19 425–439. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-021-09405-5.
Hardy, A. (2018) Using design fiction to teach new and emerging technologies in England., in: Technol. Eng. Teach., pp. 16–20. https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/35113
Tamashiro, M. et al. (2021) Introducing teenagers to machine learning through design fiction: an exploratory case study, Interaction Design and Children. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1145/3459990.3465193
Van Mechelen, M. (2022), Emerging Technologies in K–12 Education: A Future HCI Research Agenda, ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. https://doi.org/10.1145/3569897.
Vermeule, B. (2010) Why do we care about literary characters?, JHU Press, 2010.
