Community Based Digital Work Products
Digital work products—including websites, apps, audio, video, databases, etc.—allow for broad sharing and ease of access. They allow students and faculty to showcase their work to a broad audience and for community members to disseminate the work of the partnership to their constituencies and beyond. Keep in mind, not all communities have easy access to the internet or may have access primarily through mobile devices. Digital products may not always be the right solution for your partners and their constituents. Always work with the partner to determine the best output for your collaboration.
Digital products are also created things, imbued with the assumptions and decision points that humans bring to all that we do. Angela M. Hass (2021) writes, “computers and composition and technical communication inquiry recognizes technologies not as transparent things but as cultural artifacts imbued with histories and values that shape the ways in which people see themselves and others in relation to technology” (p. 288). The constructed and value-infused nature of technology and related digital artifacts calls for caution on the part of the privileged but also a valuable opportunity for community empowerment as people shape their own ways of gathering, representing, and sharing knowledge. These questions can also be a productive pedagogical point, establishing parameters wherein students can consider how all knowledge is created and cultural, rather than neutral, objective, and/or without bias and assumptions. Thus, creating digital work products for and with community partners brings up some crucial concerns to plan for.
Ownership and Maintenance
We have already discussed the need to work with your community partner(s) to determine the outcomes of your collaboration and who will own the results of that work. With digital work products, it is particularly important to have this conversation for a few key reasons. First, creating a website or other digital product is relatively easy. But such artifacts can quickly fall out of date and it is important that both partners agree on a plan for long-term ownership and curation of the digital work product. This conversation should include who will pay for any ongoing hosting or other financial needs. Note that it is also possible for the output of your engagement to be an artifact that will not need updating or that all partners accept that its relevance and accuracy will wane over time.
A second part of the ownership question arises around the question of sharing: who can access and use your work product and how can it be used and shared? Best practice for PAR and for work with community partners is to agree to these questions related to ownership, maintenance, sharing, data protections, and more in the early stages of the project, before you begin working. Doing so maintains strong collaborative relationships and gets ahead of problems around ownership before they arise.
This conversation around ownership is an important one to have with students as well, presenting a real world opportunity to talk about plagiarism, fair use, copyright, and responsible attribution. With students, you may consider introducing them to Creative Commons licenses for their own intellectual property. Creative Commons is often not appropriate when working with community groups as it can lead to cultural appropriation and intellectual property misuse issues. But introducing students to Creative Commons gives them a useful tool for evaluating the copyright of various online materials and for considering their own desired approach to managing and sharing their intellectual property.
Data Protections and Privacy
Another important point to consider, and to discuss up front with community partners, is around data security. Where will the data live? Does that location (physical or digital) have adequate protections? Are there ways to anonymize the data or otherwise protect participants? These questions are particularly crucial if doing any work with vulnerable communities who stand to lose safety, income, community stature, or more should their data and experiences not be adequately protected.
For example, when our team was first brainstorming this program, we wanted to create an online map that would geo-locate communities of migrant workers in Oregon, in order to daylight their stories and vital presence within the state. But then we realized how that might open up those communities to raids or other harassment, and quickly rethought the idea. This guide touches on Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval in the “Working with Communities” section. Consult with the UO’s Research and Innovation team as well on protocols around privacy, security, anonymization, and so forth.
Student privacy is also a concern, due to FERPA requirements but also basic ethics. Faculty can recommend or prefer various sites or tools but they cannot require students to create accounts on websites or use tools outside the UO system. If using any external tools or sites, students need to be able to opt out without repercussions and the best practice is for faculty to provide alternative assignments from the beginning (so students do not feel pressured to choose a medium they are not comfortable with). Empowering students to make their own decisions about what and how they share also provides a learning opportunity about consent and ownership, and can be knit into your pedagogy.