That's [Unethical?] Edutainment!

By Jessie Lambert | Guest Columnist

This column features ethics scenarios and issues that may affect technical communicators in the many aspects of their jobs. If you have a possible solution to a scenario, your own case, or feedback in general, please contact Derek G. Ross at derek.ross@auburn.edu.

Keanu Gist recently graduated from Boston University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in graphic design and a minor in biology. His goal is to use his talents as a scientific illustrator to make science accessible to a broad audience. As a recent graduate, Keanu already has a moderate portfolio with several scientific illustrations, and he hopes to continue building upon this work. Rather than immediately accept a job he knows he wouldn’t like, he decides to move in with his parents, where he spends much of his time applying for jobs and searching for relevant freelance opportunities. He takes on a few freelance jobs primarily to add artifacts to his portfolio, even though the work he does (illustrations of pets and, once, an illustration of a historic building) is not in keeping with the work he hopes to do in the future.

One evening he receives a call from his high school biology teacher Mrs. Bates. After seeing his ad in the Bentoak Tribune, she calls to ask if he would be willing to take on a freelance project pro-bono as a special favor to her. She is creating a study guide to prepare her advanced placement biology class for the standardized biology test, but she also hopes to publish it online to make it available to larger audience. She wants him to create illustrations of both a plant and an animal cell.

Since the Bentoak Public School District has always been underfunded, Keanu feels compelled to accept the pro bono project. He also knows that the illustrations he creates will be excellent artifacts to include in his portfolio, so he accepts without hesitation.

As a gesture of appreciation, Mrs. Bates invites Keanu to visit her class the following week. During the class visit, Keanu meets several of Mrs. Bates students; many are interested in studying biology as either a major or a minor in college. He feels satisfied with his decision knowing that these students share his passion for the sciences.

After the class visit, Keanu shows Mrs. Bates his concept designs. So far he has created basic sketches of the plant and animal cell, which demonstrate his sharp attention to detail. To his disappointment, Mrs. Bates frowns down at his sketches. She asks that he use more vibrant colors and place the cells in a short comic strip discussing, perhaps, the work they do each day or, even better, arguing about which cell works the hardest. She then tells him to remove a few features from the cells that hadn’t appeared on the state test in recent years. Keanu protests, insisting that he should present the science in its truest, most serious form, the better to educate students. Mrs. Bates tells him that her main concern is helping her students pass the state test. She doesn’t believe her students need an overload of information, and she wants to keep the study guide as engaging as possible.

Keanu has a decision to make. He knows that Mrs. Bates won’t be able to pay an illustrator to create these designs for her study guide. He believes that, if he continues developing his realistic illustrations, Mrs. Bates will have no choice but to use them. It would create a rift in their professional relationship, but at least the students would have what Keanu believes to be better study materials.

However, Mrs. Bates has been teaching for nearly thirty years and has always done her part to help her students pass the standardized test. While he trusts that she knows what she’s doing in that regard, he knows that she hasn’t been in a college environment in some time and likely doesn’t understand the rigor of the introductory biology classroom, an environment many of her students will be entering into soon. He knows the cartoon illustrations she has in mind will not prepare them for that environment. What should he do?

Edutainment and Standardized Tests

Edutainment “combines aspects of education and entertainment into products and experiences that seek to improve learning by making it not just painless but also pleasurable” (Beato). Examples are everywhere, from documentaries like Blackfish and An Inconvenient Truth to educational apps, such as Anatomy 4D, which allows users to take an interactive journey through the human body. This “academization of leisure” (Beato) emerged with the popularization of television. As television sets slowly became a staple in American homes, many topics usually reserved for print medium (politics, news, education, etc.) found their place on the new format. As educational programs gained popularity, producers shifted their focus from merely providing information to providing information in an entertaining format. This allowed producers to compete for higher ratings and more program funding. Thus began the edutainment movement. Now edutainment takes on a variety of formats, from television programs to video games to interactive apps. With every new technological advancement, there seems to be a new form of edutainment riding on its coattails.

Mrs. Bates’s decision to use edutainment as a means to prepare her students for standardized tests is far from a new concept. Edutainment is on the rise in the American school system, and this may seem like an improvement over more traditional modes of education. If the goal of edutainment is to engage learners and the goal of school systems is to provide students with an education, then the marriage of the two certainly makes sense. However, does a more entertaining learning experience translate to a more useful one? Trotter (1991), among others, would argue that it doesn’t. Edutainment, while enticing, can overwhelm students with too much information or even underwhelm them with too little depth. Most modes only require students to recall information to pass interactive quizzes. Such programs encourage memorization rather than understanding.

While most would agree that we should ask more of our students than basic memorization, standardized tests generally operate on the same modes of testing, prioritizing recall over understanding. Does this mean that educators should turn to edutainment as a way to train students to pass the standardized tests? If the answer is yes, then should educators only teach students what will appear on the tests, as Mrs. Bates wants to do? Or should educators instead offer students a more rounded education, even if this means focusing less on what students will be tested on?

More Questions to Consider

What should Keanu do? Should he continue creating the realistic illustrations to prepare Mrs. Bates’s students for the college learning environment? Or should he listen to his client and focus only on training the students to pass the standardized tests? Should he back out of the position entirely?

This scenario leads us to yet another question: As technical communicators, do we possess any authorship over the work that we produce? I’m by no means the first to pose such questions regarding the nature and value of our work. Johnson-Eilola points out the many problems with technical communicators being considered as service and/or support workers who have little to no authorial power. Not only do these role descriptions fail to encompass the varied skillset technical communicators possess, but such descriptions also command less respect, less value. In the ethical scenario presented, it’s obvious that Mrs. Bates considers Keanu to be a service worker rather than a contributor to her project. This treatment is not atypical of technical communicators. Nearly ten years after Johnson-Eilola explored the concept of the value technical communicators bring to the workforce, we’re often still classified as service or support workers. To combat this, Johnson-Eilola suggests we classify our work as symbolic-analytic. Such work entails the ability to “identify, rearrange, circulate, abstract, and broker information” (Johnson-Eilola), which all technical communicators should have the skill to do. Therein, Johnson-Eilola believes, lies the true value of technical communication, a type of value that will command more respect and offer us more authority over the projects we take on.

While this illustrates the root of the problem driving the ethical scenario presented (that, as technical communicators, we are generally considered to be service or support workers rather than contributors or authors), it doesn’t bring us to a solution. How much authorship, if any, do we have? Slack, Miller, and Doak offer some insight by asserting that whether we are given attribution or not, technical communicators are authors because we play a significant role in knowledge production, a role made very clear in the ethical scenario presented here. As technical communicators, we choose how to shape and deliver information to our target audience, and these decisions can be the difference between helping the audience understand and causing confusion.

Slack, Miller, and Doak offer a reasonable argument for why technical communicators should be considered authors, but they don’t cover how much authorship we possess or even when we possess this authority. The Society for Technical Communication makes an attempt at doing this by stating that “we attribute authorship of material and ideas only to those who make an original and substantive contribution.” Even this is problematic, and we’re still left with several questions. What constitutes an original or substantive contribution? What rights do we have as authors? Circling back to the ethical scenario, does Keanu (and, by extension, technical communicators) have the power to disregard the client’s request to prioritize the recipients’ expected needs? Or is this a step too far?

JESSIE LAMBERT is pursuing the Master of Technical and Professional Communication degree at Auburn University. She serves as a graduate writing center consultant as well as a teacher of record for English Composition I and II. Her research interests include visual rhetoric, composition pedagogy, and the ethics of risk communication.

References

Beato, G. THAT’S EDUTAINMENT! New York Times, (20 March 2015), F1–F6.

Johnson-Eilola, J. Relocating the Value of Work: Technical Communication in a Post-industrial Age. Technical Communication Quarterly 5.3 (1996): 245–270.

Slack, J. D., J. D. Miller, and J. Doak. The Technical Communicator as Author: Meaning, Power, and Authority. Journal of Business and Technical Communication 7.1 (1993): 12–36.

Society for Technical Communication. Ethical Principles. Retrieved 20 November 2015 from https://www.stc.org/about-stc/the-profession-all-about-technical-communication/ethical-principles.

Trotter, A. Technology in Classrooms: “That’s Edutainment!” Education Digest 57.5 (1992): 3.