'Your U-Well-Being Journal Is Due Today': On Some Possible Intersections between Surveillance and Student Wellbeing in the Future University

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Bibliographic Details
Title: 'Your U-Well-Being Journal Is Due Today': On Some Possible Intersections between Surveillance and Student Wellbeing in the Future University
Language: English
Authors: Anna Wilson (ORCID 0000-0001-6928-1689), Jen Ross (ORCID 0000-0001-6923-4102)
Source: Studies in Higher Education. 2025 50(6):1233-1247.
Availability: Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 15
Publication Date: 2025
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Higher Education
Postsecondary Education
Descriptors: Well Being, Observation, Universities, Futures (of Society), Fiction, Higher Education, Foreign Countries, Technology Uses in Education, Data, Learning Management Systems, School Holding Power, College Students, Stress Variables, Ethics, Educational Methods
Geographic Terms: United Kingdom, North America
DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2024.2368264
ISSN: 0307-5079
1470-174X
Abstract: This paper uses Participatory Speculative Fiction to explore the convergence of two important dynamics that are currently at play within the Higher Education sectors in the UK, North America and elsewhere: digital surveillance capacities and student wellbeing. We use short stories that were contributed and published anonymously through the "Telling Data Stories" website to show how their authors spontaneously connected surveillance capacities and potentials with contemporary concerns about student wellbeing. In the fictions they created, our contributors imagine how current and proximal future technologies might be enrolled in increasingly intrusive and interventionist neuro-psycho-bio-surveillance employed at all stages of the student journey. The stories problematise the relationship between visibility and wellbeing, expose complex assemblages of people, technologies and discourses and suggest possible outcomes ranging from embrace and perhaps enculturation to subversion and even inversion of power. We suggest that these possible futures are important signals of the need for wise decisions in the present.
Abstractor: As Provided
Entry Date: 2026
Accession Number: EJ1496443
Database: ERIC
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Abstract:This paper uses Participatory Speculative Fiction to explore the convergence of two important dynamics that are currently at play within the Higher Education sectors in the UK, North America and elsewhere: digital surveillance capacities and student wellbeing. We use short stories that were contributed and published anonymously through the "Telling Data Stories" website to show how their authors spontaneously connected surveillance capacities and potentials with contemporary concerns about student wellbeing. In the fictions they created, our contributors imagine how current and proximal future technologies might be enrolled in increasingly intrusive and interventionist neuro-psycho-bio-surveillance employed at all stages of the student journey. The stories problematise the relationship between visibility and wellbeing, expose complex assemblages of people, technologies and discourses and suggest possible outcomes ranging from embrace and perhaps enculturation to subversion and even inversion of power. We suggest that these possible futures are important signals of the need for wise decisions in the present.
ISSN:0307-5079
1470-174X
DOI:10.1080/03075079.2024.2368264