This document discusses student data ownership and independent education technology (IndieEdTech). It begins by posing questions about what student ownership of data could look like and how institutions currently get in the way of ownership. It then defines IndieEdTech as seeking to offer an alternative to the algorithms, labels, templates, profiling, extraction, and exploitation used by major education technology companies. Finally, it discusses how being independent ("indie") in education technology is about embracing differences, alternatives, and inclusion rather than disruption. The goal of IndieEdTech is to give students and scholars more ownership and control over their own data and work.

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Open/Indie
Adam Croom
Director of Digital Learning, Center for Teaching Excellence
Instructor, Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication
University of Oklahoma

2. @acroom
Questions
• What can student ownership look like?
• In what ways can students own or reclaim their data?
• In what ways do institutions/platforms get in the way of students
owning data?
• Why are students not included in the design of things they should
inherently own?

3. @acroom
#IndieEdTech
What the hell is that?

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“I Love My Label” Audrey Watters
• “I Love My Label.” These songs – and so many others – all comment on
the music industry’s practices of exploitation and control: who owns
the artist’s lyrics, who owns the artist’s image, who owns the artist’s
sound? What position are unsigned artists in to review, rewrite, rebuke
the legal contracts offered to them by major record labels?

5. @acroom
“I Love My Label” Audrey Watters
• What position are we in to review, rewrite, rebuke the legal contracts
now offered to us by major (education) technology companies? That
is, of course, the Terms of Service that we all click on without reading.
Who owns the student or scholar’s work? Who owns the student or
scholar’s data? Who’s been granted a license to use it, display it, data
mine it, feed it into an algorithm? And an algorithm to what end?

6. @acroom
“I Love My Label” Audrey Watters
• Indie ed-tech, much like the indie music from which it takes its
inspiration, seeks to offer an alternative to the algorithms, the labels,
the templates, the profiling, the extraction, the exploitation, the
control. It’s a big task – an idealistic one, no doubt.

7. @acroom
“I Am #IndieEdTech” Laura Gogia
• “Being indie is not necessarily a disruption, but can be a reflection, a
transformation, an offering of alternatives. It is about embracing the
awkwardness of difference and accepting a multitude of approaches in
terms of format, content, information positioning, and distribution.”
• “Being indie means being yourself, but for me, it also means being in
the presence of and in relation to others. I look forward to a bigger,
broader, inclusive discussion.”

8. @acroom
Students!Students! Colleagues!