Paul Prinsloo
Biographic Data
| ID | 355939 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Paul Prinsloo |
| GIVEN NAMES | Paul |
| FAMILY NAME | Prinsloo |
| SIGNATURE | PRINSLOO P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of South Africa |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1838-540X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 38 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Perspectives from South Africa on GenAI in Higher Education: A Postdigital Dialogue with the Global Context
Drawn from an interdisciplinary gathering of 51 colleagues at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg in March 2025, this collective article shares multiple perspectives from South Africa on our interactions with Generative AI (GenAI) across higher education (HE). Contributors have re-created our dialogue here, in the spirit of Ubuntu and via a postdigital lens, bringing together vital local knowledge and literature to demonstr…
Dimensions of privacy and its implications for learning analytics. Preliminary insights from/for African higher education
This paper delves into dimensions of privacy within the African context, especially in relation to Learning Analytics (LA) in higher education. It highlights how prevailing notions of privacy, influenced by Global North perspectives, may not fully encapsulate the cultural and contextual nuances in Africa. Through phenomenological interpretive research, the study gathers insights from 13 African higher education experts, revealing that African und…
Mapping the imaginary of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in education: The case of Botswana
This article investigates policy-as-discourse and policy-as-technology with specific focus on how the deployment of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education is positioned as a redemptive force in the case of Botswana. Therborn's theory of inequalities was adopted to catalogue ways in which supranational organisations and the national government of Botswana consider the potential of ICT and/ICT in education to address (in)equali…
Returning the data gaze in higher education
Learning analytics offer centralization of a particular understanding of learning, teaching, and student support alongside data-informed insight and foresight. As such, student-related data in higher education can be imagined and enacted as a ‘data frontier’ in which the data gaze is expanding, intensifying, and performing new meanings and practices. But the gaze is not necessarily one-way. In this article we conceptualize different ways the data…
At the intersection of human and algorithmic decision-making in distributed learning
This article seeks to explore different combinations of human and Artificial Intelligence (AI) decision-making in the context of distributed learning. Distributed learning institutions face specific challenges such as high levels of student attrition and ensuring quality, cost-effective student support at scale using a range of technologies, such as AI. While there is an expanding body of research on AI in education (AIEd), this conceptual articl…
Multimodal learning analytics—In‐between student privacy and encroachment: A systematic review
Speculative Social Science Fiction of Digitalization in Higher Education: From What Is to What Could Be
Digitalization and datafication are reshaping roles and practices in higher education. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated this process through the massive increase in the use of educational technology (EdTech) (Teräs et al. 2020). As a part of this development, higher education is becoming increasingly data driven. Simultaneously, attempts to predict and prepare for future scenarios in education are driven by intergovernmental organization rep…
Teaching in the Age of Covid-19—The New Normal
In the nexus of integrity and surveillance: Proctoring (re)considered
Data privacy on the African continent: Opportunities, challenges and implications for learning analytics
Whilst learning analytics is still nascent in most African higher education institutions, many African higher education institutions use learning platforms and analytic services from providers outside of the African continent. A critical consideration of the protection of data privacy on the African continent and its implications for learning analytics in African higher education is therefore needed. In this paper, we map the current state of leg…
The answer is (not only) technological: Considering student data privacy in learning analytics
Evidence shows that appropriate use of technology in education has the potential to increase the effectiveness of, eg, teaching, learning and student support. There is also evidence that technology can introduce new problems and ethical issues, eg, student privacy. This article maps some limitations of technological approaches that ensure student data privacy in learning analytics from a critical data studies (CDS) perspective. In this conceptual…
Teaching in the Age of Covid-19—1 Year Later
In March 2020 I published the 'emergency editorial' in Postdigital Science and Education and invited the community to 'explore all imaginable aspects of this large social experiment that the Covid-19 pandemic has lain down in front of us' (Jandri 2020a: 237). Articles immediately started pouring in; within weeks, the journal's contributions had been recognized by institutions such as the World Health Organization, the US National Library of Medic…
The ‘smart’ classroom: A new frontier in the age of the smart university
This article examines developments in the ‘smart classroom’ as a new frontier for the university. It provides a conceptual map of the scope and limitations of smart classrooms, contextualized to smart university initiatives. First, it introduces the notion of ‘smart’ technology in cities, campuses, and classrooms. Next, it examines how the smart classroom is conceptualized, its present applications, and how it may be utilized with or without inte…
Data frontiers and frontiers of power in (higher) education: A view of/from the Global South
‘Data as technology’ has always been, and continues to be an essential part of the structuring of South African society and education, during and post-colonialism and post-apartheid. In the reconfiguration of South African education post-apartheid, student data constitutes a data frontier as un-mapped, under-utilised and ready for the picking. This article maps the data frontier in the nexus of higher education in the global/colonial present and …
A Wake-Up Call: Equity, Inequality and Covid-19 Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning
Produced from experiences at the outset of the intense times when Covid-19 lockdown restrictions began in March 2020, this collaborative paper offers the collective reflections and analysis of a group of teaching and learning and Higher Education (HE) scholars from a diverse 15 of the 26 South African public universities. In the form of a theorised narrative insistent on foregrounding personal voices, it presents a snapshot of the pandemic addres…
(Re)centring students in learning analytics: In conversation with Paulo Freire
Student data, whether in the form of engagement data, assignments or examinations, form the foundation for assessment and evaluation in higher education. As higher education institutions progressively move to blended and online environments, we have access to, not only more data than before, but also a greater variety of demographic and behavioural data. While the notion of ‘student-centred’ is well-established in the discourses and practices sur…
Speaking the unspoken in learning analytics: Troubling the defaults
Assessment and learning analytics both collect, analyse and use student data, albeit different types of data and to some extent, for various purposes. Based on the data collected and analysed, learning analytics allow for decisions to be made not only with regard to evaluating progress in achieving learning outcomes but also evaluative judgments about the quality of learning. Learning analytics fall in the nexus between assessment of and for lear…
Distance education as socio‐material assemblage: Place, distribution, and aggregation
This paper outlines some of the material assemblages that are formed in international distance education (DE) in Africa. It offers a first exploratory study of materialities in DE and how they potentially distribute and aggregate to form a network to provide education. Through the use of interviews, students lived experiences are explored to unpack the multiplicity of networks needed to overcome the de‐aggregated and distributed institution. The …
Narrating the (dis)comfort and multiplicities of becoming faculty
In the broader context of higher education, queer and gay faculty are increasingly visible, yet they are also relatively quiet regarding the assemblages of their identity on the processes of becoming faculty. In authoring our assemblages of coming to be Afrikaner and white and queer and gay as well as faculty, we attempt to narrate our multiplicities as polyphonic in the context of the South African and African higher education. We use new materi…
Of ‘black boxes’ and algorithmic decision-making in (higher) education – A commentary
Higher education institutions have access to higher volumes and a greater variety and granularity of student data, often in real-time, than ever before. As such, the collection, analysis and use of student data are increasingly crucial in operational and strategic planning, and in delivering appropriate and effective learning experiences to students. Student data – not only in what data is (not) collected, but also how the data is framed and used…
Teaching in the Age of Covid-19
This article presents a collection of short testimonies and workspace photographs received between 18 March and 5 May in response to my Call for Testimonies reproduced in the next section. The testimonies are lined up in order of when they were received. Each section starts with the place and time of writing, followed by a brief author biography, their testimony, and one workspace photograph. In numbers, the collection consists of 81 textual test…
Student Vulnerability, Agency and Learning Analytics: An Exploration
The increasing potential and practice of collecting, analysing and using student data necessitates that higher education institutions (HEIs) critically examine their assumptions, paradigms and practices regarding student data. There is a real danger that some current approaches to learning analytics within higher education ignore the fiduciary duty of HEIs and the impact and scope of the asymmetrical power relationship between students and the in…
Queering’ and querying academic identities in postgraduate education
In the social imaginary of higher education, there are many mutually constitutive forces shaping academic identities, such as academics' habitus, dispositions, race, gender and student expectations. Our queer academic identities are furthermore robustly intertwined with, and emerging within, cultural, political and economic histories and realities. In post-apartheid South Africa, our academic identities are constituted in the nexus of historical …
Learning Analytics: Ethical Issues and Dilemmas
The field of learning analytics has the potential to enable higher education institutions to increase their understanding of their students' learning needs and to use that understanding to positively influence student learning and progression. Analysis of data relating to students and their engagement with their learning is the foundation of this process. There is an inherent assumption linked to learning analytics that knowledge of a learner's b…
Learning Analytics: Ethical Issues and Dilemmas
The field of learning analytics has the potential to enable higher education institutions to increase their understanding of their students' learning needs and to use that understanding to positively influence student learning and progression. Analysis of data relating to students and their engagement with their learning is the foundation of this process. There is an inherent assumption linked to learning analytics that knowledge of a learner's b…
Teaching in the Age of Covid-19
This article presents a collection of short testimonies and workspace photographs received between 18 March and 5 May in response to my Call for Testimonies reproduced in the next section. The testimonies are lined up in order of when they were received. Each section starts with the place and time of writing, followed by a brief author biography, their testimony, and one workspace photograph. In numbers, the collection consists of 81 textual test…
Distance education as socio‐material assemblage: Place, distribution, and aggregation
This paper outlines some of the material assemblages that are formed in international distance education (DE) in Africa. It offers a first exploratory study of materialities in DE and how they potentially distribute and aggregate to form a network to provide education. Through the use of interviews, students lived experiences are explored to unpack the multiplicity of networks needed to overcome the de‐aggregated and distributed institution. The …
Of ‘black boxes’ and algorithmic decision-making in (higher) education – A commentary
Higher education institutions have access to higher volumes and a greater variety and granularity of student data, often in real-time, than ever before. As such, the collection, analysis and use of student data are increasingly crucial in operational and strategic planning, and in delivering appropriate and effective learning experiences to students. Student data – not only in what data is (not) collected, but also how the data is framed and used…
Queering’ and querying academic identities in postgraduate education
In the social imaginary of higher education, there are many mutually constitutive forces shaping academic identities, such as academics' habitus, dispositions, race, gender and student expectations. Our queer academic identities are furthermore robustly intertwined with, and emerging within, cultural, political and economic histories and realities. In post-apartheid South Africa, our academic identities are constituted in the nexus of historical …
Narrating the (dis)comfort and multiplicities of becoming faculty
In the broader context of higher education, queer and gay faculty are increasingly visible, yet they are also relatively quiet regarding the assemblages of their identity on the processes of becoming faculty. In authoring our assemblages of coming to be Afrikaner and white and queer and gay as well as faculty, we attempt to narrate our multiplicities as polyphonic in the context of the South African and African higher education. We use new materi…
Student Vulnerability, Agency and Learning Analytics: An Exploration
The increasing potential and practice of collecting, analysing and using student data necessitates that higher education institutions (HEIs) critically examine their assumptions, paradigms and practices regarding student data. There is a real danger that some current approaches to learning analytics within higher education ignore the fiduciary duty of HEIs and the impact and scope of the asymmetrical power relationship between students and the in…
Learning Analytics: Ethical Issues and Dilemmas
The field of learning analytics has the potential to enable higher education institutions to increase their understanding of their students' learning needs and to use that understanding to positively influence student learning and progression. Analysis of data relating to students and their engagement with their learning is the foundation of this process. There is an inherent assumption linked to learning analytics that knowledge of a learner's b…
Queering’ and querying academic identities in postgraduate education
In the social imaginary of higher education, there are many mutually constitutive forces shaping academic identities, such as academics' habitus, dispositions, race, gender and student expectations. Our queer academic identities are furthermore robustly intertwined with, and emerging within, cultural, political and economic histories and realities. In post-apartheid South Africa, our academic identities are constituted in the nexus of historical …
Student Vulnerability, Agency and Learning Analytics: An Exploration
The increasing potential and practice of collecting, analysing and using student data necessitates that higher education institutions (HEIs) critically examine their assumptions, paradigms and practices regarding student data. There is a real danger that some current approaches to learning analytics within higher education ignore the fiduciary duty of HEIs and the impact and scope of the asymmetrical power relationship between students and the in…
The ‘smart’ classroom: A new frontier in the age of the smart university
This article examines developments in the ‘smart classroom’ as a new frontier for the university. It provides a conceptual map of the scope and limitations of smart classrooms, contextualized to smart university initiatives. First, it introduces the notion of ‘smart’ technology in cities, campuses, and classrooms. Next, it examines how the smart classroom is conceptualized, its present applications, and how it may be utilized with or without inte…
Data frontiers and frontiers of power in (higher) education: A view of/from the Global South
‘Data as technology’ has always been, and continues to be an essential part of the structuring of South African society and education, during and post-colonialism and post-apartheid. In the reconfiguration of South African education post-apartheid, student data constitutes a data frontier as un-mapped, under-utilised and ready for the picking. This article maps the data frontier in the nexus of higher education in the global/colonial present and …
A Wake-Up Call: Equity, Inequality and Covid-19 Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning
Produced from experiences at the outset of the intense times when Covid-19 lockdown restrictions began in March 2020, this collaborative paper offers the collective reflections and analysis of a group of teaching and learning and Higher Education (HE) scholars from a diverse 15 of the 26 South African public universities. In the form of a theorised narrative insistent on foregrounding personal voices, it presents a snapshot of the pandemic addres…
(Re)centring students in learning analytics: In conversation with Paulo Freire
Student data, whether in the form of engagement data, assignments or examinations, form the foundation for assessment and evaluation in higher education. As higher education institutions progressively move to blended and online environments, we have access to, not only more data than before, but also a greater variety of demographic and behavioural data. While the notion of ‘student-centred’ is well-established in the discourses and practices sur…
Speaking the unspoken in learning analytics: Troubling the defaults
Assessment and learning analytics both collect, analyse and use student data, albeit different types of data and to some extent, for various purposes. Based on the data collected and analysed, learning analytics allow for decisions to be made not only with regard to evaluating progress in achieving learning outcomes but also evaluative judgments about the quality of learning. Learning analytics fall in the nexus between assessment of and for lear…
Distance education as socio‐material assemblage: Place, distribution, and aggregation
This paper outlines some of the material assemblages that are formed in international distance education (DE) in Africa. It offers a first exploratory study of materialities in DE and how they potentially distribute and aggregate to form a network to provide education. Through the use of interviews, students lived experiences are explored to unpack the multiplicity of networks needed to overcome the de‐aggregated and distributed institution. The …
Narrating the (dis)comfort and multiplicities of becoming faculty
In the broader context of higher education, queer and gay faculty are increasingly visible, yet they are also relatively quiet regarding the assemblages of their identity on the processes of becoming faculty. In authoring our assemblages of coming to be Afrikaner and white and queer and gay as well as faculty, we attempt to narrate our multiplicities as polyphonic in the context of the South African and African higher education. We use new materi…
Of ‘black boxes’ and algorithmic decision-making in (higher) education – A commentary
Higher education institutions have access to higher volumes and a greater variety and granularity of student data, often in real-time, than ever before. As such, the collection, analysis and use of student data are increasingly crucial in operational and strategic planning, and in delivering appropriate and effective learning experiences to students. Student data – not only in what data is (not) collected, but also how the data is framed and used…
Teaching in the Age of Covid-19
This article presents a collection of short testimonies and workspace photographs received between 18 March and 5 May in response to my Call for Testimonies reproduced in the next section. The testimonies are lined up in order of when they were received. Each section starts with the place and time of writing, followed by a brief author biography, their testimony, and one workspace photograph. In numbers, the collection consists of 81 textual test…
Teaching in the Age of Covid-19—1 Year Later
In March 2020 I published the 'emergency editorial' in Postdigital Science and Education and invited the community to 'explore all imaginable aspects of this large social experiment that the Covid-19 pandemic has lain down in front of us' (Jandri 2020a: 237). Articles immediately started pouring in; within weeks, the journal's contributions had been recognized by institutions such as the World Health Organization, the US National Library of Medic…
Speculative Social Science Fiction of Digitalization in Higher Education: From What Is to What Could Be
Digitalization and datafication are reshaping roles and practices in higher education. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated this process through the massive increase in the use of educational technology (EdTech) (Teräs et al. 2020). As a part of this development, higher education is becoming increasingly data driven. Simultaneously, attempts to predict and prepare for future scenarios in education are driven by intergovernmental organization rep…
Teaching in the Age of Covid-19—The New Normal
In the nexus of integrity and surveillance: Proctoring (re)considered
Data privacy on the African continent: Opportunities, challenges and implications for learning analytics
Whilst learning analytics is still nascent in most African higher education institutions, many African higher education institutions use learning platforms and analytic services from providers outside of the African continent. A critical consideration of the protection of data privacy on the African continent and its implications for learning analytics in African higher education is therefore needed. In this paper, we map the current state of leg…
The answer is (not only) technological: Considering student data privacy in learning analytics
Evidence shows that appropriate use of technology in education has the potential to increase the effectiveness of, eg, teaching, learning and student support. There is also evidence that technology can introduce new problems and ethical issues, eg, student privacy. This article maps some limitations of technological approaches that ensure student data privacy in learning analytics from a critical data studies (CDS) perspective. In this conceptual…
Returning the data gaze in higher education
Learning analytics offer centralization of a particular understanding of learning, teaching, and student support alongside data-informed insight and foresight. As such, student-related data in higher education can be imagined and enacted as a ‘data frontier’ in which the data gaze is expanding, intensifying, and performing new meanings and practices. But the gaze is not necessarily one-way. In this article we conceptualize different ways the data…
At the intersection of human and algorithmic decision-making in distributed learning
This article seeks to explore different combinations of human and Artificial Intelligence (AI) decision-making in the context of distributed learning. Distributed learning institutions face specific challenges such as high levels of student attrition and ensuring quality, cost-effective student support at scale using a range of technologies, such as AI. While there is an expanding body of research on AI in education (AIEd), this conceptual articl…
Multimodal learning analytics—In‐between student privacy and encroachment: A systematic review
Perspectives from South Africa on GenAI in Higher Education: A Postdigital Dialogue with the Global Context
Drawn from an interdisciplinary gathering of 51 colleagues at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg in March 2025, this collective article shares multiple perspectives from South Africa on our interactions with Generative AI (GenAI) across higher education (HE). Contributors have re-created our dialogue here, in the spirit of Ubuntu and via a postdigital lens, bringing together vital local knowledge and literature to demonstr…
Dimensions of privacy and its implications for learning analytics. Preliminary insights from/for African higher education
This paper delves into dimensions of privacy within the African context, especially in relation to Learning Analytics (LA) in higher education. It highlights how prevailing notions of privacy, influenced by Global North perspectives, may not fully encapsulate the cultural and contextual nuances in Africa. Through phenomenological interpretive research, the study gathers insights from 13 African higher education experts, revealing that African und…
Mapping the imaginary of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in education: The case of Botswana
This article investigates policy-as-discourse and policy-as-technology with specific focus on how the deployment of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education is positioned as a redemptive force in the case of Botswana. Therborn's theory of inequalities was adopted to catalogue ways in which supranational organisations and the national government of Botswana consider the potential of ICT and/ICT in education to address (in)equali…
Computer Science (13 works) · Political science (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Online Learning and Analytics (8 works) · Data science (7 works) · Digital Education and Society (7 works) · Learning analytics (7 works) · Mathematics education (7 works) · Analytics (6 works)