From Algorithmic Morals to Decentered Classrooms: Navigating Machine Ethics and Hypertext Pedagogy
Technology, ethics, and education are reshaping how we think, learn, and interact in the contemporary era. This blog post explores two profound experiences that reflect this transition: the MIT Moral Machine Activity—an exploration of automated machine ethics—and the International Faculty Development Programme (FDP) on "A Pedagogical Shift from Text to Hypertext: Language & Literature to the Digital Natives," delivered by Professor Dilip Barad .
Together, these themes reveal a singular truth: whether we are programmers designing the moral frameworks of self-driving cars, or educators guiding "digital natives" through modern communication, we are moving away from fixed, linear structures . We are entering an era of "hypertext"—a decentralized landscape where authors, readers, teachers, and subjects constantly negotiate their roles . This post reflects on these two domains, mapping my journey through machine ethics and synthesizing pedagogical strategies for the next generation of learners.
Navigating Machine Ethics—The Moral Machine Activity
The "Moral Machine," developed by the Scalable Cooperation group at the MIT Media Lab, is a platform designed to gather human perspectives on moral decisions made by artificial intelligence, such as self-driving cars . The premise is ethically harrowing: as an outside observer, you judge which outcome is more acceptable in inevitable, fatal crash scenarios where a driverless car must choose the "lesser of two evils" .
The Mechanics of the Dilemmas
During my session, I was presented with random moral dilemmas where a driverless car's brakes fail, leaving it with two options: continue straight or swerve . The variables are manipulated from turn to turn, forcing the user to weigh competing moral dimensions :
Sparing Humans vs. Animals: Sparing humans at the cost of animals, or vice versa .
Sparing the Many vs. the Few: Choosing to sacrifice passengers to save a larger group of pedestrians .
Sparing the Law-Abiding vs. Law-Breakers: Sparing pedestrians crossing legally over jaywalkers crossing on red .
Sparing Based on Demographics: Prioritizing characters of varying ages (infants, elderly), genders, occupations, and physical states.
My Experience: The Discomfort of the Utilitarian Calculator
Participating was deeply unsettling. The Moral Machine strips away the chaotic urgency of driving, placing you in an omniscient position above the scene . This detachment forced me to confront the rigid, mathematical nature of programming moral choices.
I was caught in a cognitive conflict between utilitarian ethics and deontological rules. My logical mind gravitated toward minimizing casualties—saving five pedestrians over two passengers . However, executing a deliberate "swerve" felt like an active choice to harm, whereas "staying the course" felt like a passive mechanical failure. Sparing a child over an elderly person felt natural, yet choosing to sacrifice a homeless person to save an executive exposed the latent biases that mathematical algorithms could institutionalize.
The Pandemic Extension: Ventilator Allocation
This ethical complexity was magnified by the website’s inclusion of a specialized COVID-19 ventilator allocation module . Here, the focus shifted from vehicles to medical triaging under extreme resource scarcity . The activity asked how much weight various factors should carry when deciding who should receive a scarce ventilator .
I weighed factors such as the chance of recovery, the patient's age, and societal utility . Deciding whether to withdraw a ventilator from a patient to save a newly arrived patient with a higher prognosis felt like a direct parallel to the self-driving car's decision to "swerve" . It highlighted that machine ethics is a mirror of tragic choices human institutions must make during crises.
Learning Outcomes
The primary learning outcome is that there is no objective, universally accepted framework for machine ethics. Comparing my responses against global trends revealed fascinating regional divisions :
The Human-Centric Consensus: Sparing humans over animals and sparing the many over the few are relatively universal .
Cultural Nuances: Western societies show a stronger preference for sparing the young. In contrast, Eastern cultures show a much higher regard for the elderly, reflecting deep-seated respect for age and wisdom.
The Design Responsibility: As AI is integrated into society, programmers encode cultural values. A global, homogenized algorithm risks erasing regional ethical diversities.
Ultimately, the Moral Machine taught me that making machines "moral" is not a technical puzzle, but a philosophical challenge requiring open, cross-cultural dialogue .
Moral Machine Activity Results—Visual Summary & Exported PDF Report
SCREENSHOT and PDF
This screenshot displays my overall ethical profile as plotted by the MIT Moral Machine tool, comparing my decisions against the global average.
For a detailed, step-by-step breakdown of my moral decisions, including individual scenario analyses and regional data comparisons, you can access the full exported PDF report via the link below:
A Pedagogical Shift from Text to Hypertext—FDP Presentation Review
Having examined the moral choices of the digital sphere, we now turn to how we teach within it. This section provides an extensive, three-part review of the International Faculty Development Programme (FDP) presentation titled "A Pedagogical Shift from Text to Hypertext: Language & Literature to the Digital Natives" . This session was delivered by Professor Dilip Barad, Head of the Department of English at M. K. Bhavnagar University, Gujarat, India . The event was organized by SRNM College, Tamil Nadu, in collaboration with Universiti Malaya, Malaysia, on September 14, 2021 .
To experience the session, you can watch the embedded video recording below:
The Decentralized Classroom & The Networked Teacher
Professor Barad opened by sharing the results of a survey he conducted among the FDP’s 90+ registered teacher participants . The survey assessed whether the participants met the criteria of a "networked teacher" for the 21st century .
The Survey Results: A Wake-Up Call for Educators
The findings revealed a significant gap in digital preparedness :
Only 15% owned a personal blog, with only two able to provide active links .
Over 80% did not have a personal website . Some mistakenly submitted LinkedIn profiles or email addresses .
21% possessed a YouTube channel, a direct result of emergency remote teaching during the pandemic .
Professor Barad argued that an independent digital presence is an absolute necessity . When material is hosted on a personal blog or website, educators have absolute control over its distribution, allowing them to edit and share resources instantaneously.
Theoretical Foundations: What is Hypertext?
Hypertext is a system of storing images, text, and computer files that allows direct links to other related media, accessible globally via a web browser . It operates on HTTP, functioning as a request-response protocol between the "teacher and the taught" .
Professor Barad contrasted hypertext with traditional, printed books, which he described as "dead text" . Printed books are static; if a reader taps a word on a physical page, nothing happens . Our minds, however, have been conditioned to expect responsiveness from screens .
Drawing on Silvio Gaggi’s From Text to Hypertext, Barad noted that electronic media destabilizes and decenters the subject, the author, and the reader . In education, digital pedagogy makes the subject—content, teacher, and taught—unstable, fragmented, and decentered . During the pandemic, teachers struggled to maintain engagement with faceless student boxes, experiencing the literal "decentering" of the traditional dynamic .
Professor Barad’s Pedagogical Model
To navigate this environment, Barad proposed a model consisting of four core components:
CMS/LMS: Google Drive for content management, while Google Classroom or Moodle serves as the interface .
Digital Communication Links (DCL): Establishing reliable lines of communication. Barad recommended Google Groups over WhatsApp to protect student privacy .
Synchronous and Asynchronous Learning: Balancing live teaching with flexible, asynchronous resources . For asynchronous learning, Barad records and uploads live lectures to YouTube .
Online Assessment: Assessments must move beyond testing, culminating in student digital portfolios .
Collaborative Classrooms & Interactive Tools in Action
In the second part, Professor Barad demonstrated how teachers can turn passive online listeners into active participants. Rather than viewing digital teaching as a compromised version of face-to-face instruction, he showcased how collaborative web tools can achieve high levels of engagement.
Collaborative Writing with Google Docs and Sheets
To illustrate, Professor Barad engaged the participants in two live, hands-on activities.
The Google Docs Activity: He shared a document with the participants to describe a cartoon and write imaginary dialogues . Within minutes, over a dozen participants were typing simultaneously . On Google Docs, a teacher has a bird's-eye view of the entire class's writing process . Spelling and grammar errors can be discussed and corrected collectively as they occur, providing an immediate, contextual language lesson .
The Google Sheets Activity: To teach structural grammar, he shared a color-coded spreadsheet for active-to-passive voice conversion . Turning a dry exercise into an interactive game .
Solving the "Board Work" Problem: The DIY Glass Board
One of the greatest struggles in online teaching was the loss of the physical whiteboard . Slide presentations are static; they lack the organic, step-by-step "unfolding" of a concept written live .
To solve this, Barad’s department built an innovative, cost-effective Glass Board (or Lightboard) . A sheet of standard window glass is mounted vertically with white LED lights wrapped around the frame, filling the interior with light . The teacher stands behind the glass, facing the camera, maintaining direct eye contact while writing with neon marker pens .
Because writing on a transparent sheet creates a mirror image, software must flip the video horizontally . Live synchronous classes require a real-time solution . Barad recommended using Droid Cam / Droid Cam X, which turns a mobile phone into a webcam and features a built-in horizontal flip utility .
Blended and Flipped Models
Barad highlighted flipped learning, where students watch a short video lecture before class . In his instructions, students are told: "Your only task while watching this video is to write down questions on the board when you arrive" . He recommended Ed.Ted.com to build interactive lessons around YouTube videos . If a student answers incorrectly, the platform uses hypertext linking to point the student to the exact timestamp in the video where the answer is explained .
Unpacking Literature in the Hypertext Era & Digital Portfolios
Professor Barad addressed the challenges of teaching English literature to post-graduate students in regional contexts, demonstrating how hypertext serves as a vital bridge to cross-cultural understanding.
Overcoming Cultural and Mythical Aloofness
English literature carries a "foreignness" due to geographical remoteness, different social codes, and what Barad termed "mythical aloofness"—specifically a heavy reliance on Greek and Christian mythologies .
Hypertext acts as a digital key that unlocks these dense, multi-layered literary texts . Barad shared two examples:
Decoding Poetry with Reverse Search: He analyzed a poem containing the line "hawthorn's smile like milk splashed down" and a reference to "noon's blue picture" . By conducting a quick Google Image Search, students discover that hawthorns are green shrubs that bloom with milk-white flowers, and Susan Noone is a painter who painted a famous blue picture of splashing flowers . Hypertext makes these obscure allusions instantly visual and comprehensible .
Deconstruction Web Quests via Google Arts & Culture: To teach Derrida’s Deconstruction, Barad set up a web quest on artsandculture.google.com . Students searched for Bruegel’s painting, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus . When students first look at the painting, they see a peaceful landscape . However, by "de-centering" their gaze and looking at the lower-right margin, they discover two tiny, legs splashing into the sea . This demonstrates Derrida's theory: meaning resides on the periphery (the margins) rather than the center .
Generative Literature: AI as the New Poet
Perhaps the most forward-looking segment was the discussion on generative literature—literary texts produced by computer algorithms and AI .
To challenge the assumption that creative writing cannot be replicated, Barad administered a live quiz, presenting short poems and asking if they were written by a human or a computer . For several poems, responses were split exactly 50/50, showing that educators could not reliably distinguish algorithmic poetry from human-authored texts . He introduced various "poetry generators" where users feed keywords into an algorithm and produce a poem overnight . This rise of generative literature destabilizes traditional notions of authorship . He also touched upon corpus linguistics, highlighting the University of Birmingham's CLiC project, which has digitized Charles Dickens's works to run computational queries .
Reimagining Assessment: The Power of Digital Portfolios
Finally, Barad argued that traditional examinations are outdated . Instead, he advocates for Digital Portfolios built on Google Sites or Blogger .
Citing educator Holly Clark (2015), Barad explained that digital portfolios allow students to curate, archive, and expand on the work they produce in class . Over two years, students compile all of their academic work—including essays, blog assignments, and recorded video presentations hosted on their personal YouTube channels—into a unified Google Site . This process teaches vital digital citizenship and literacy skills, showcasing their actual academic journey as a far more authentic measure of learning .
Conclusion: The Path Forward in the Hypertext Era
When we bridge the ethical inquiries of the MIT Moral Machine with the pedagogical innovations of Professor Dilip Barad's Hypertext Pedagogy, a unified vision of our digital future emerges. We are no longer passive consumers of pre-packaged, linear narratives. Whether we are navigating the moral algorithms of autonomous transport or redesigning how we teach literature to digital natives, the digital era demands that we become active, critical, and networked participants.
The transition from "dead text" to "hypertext" is a fundamental shift in how we construct meaning . It requires teachers to abandon the role of the centralized, all-knowing authority and become curators of collaborative, decentralized learning spaces . By embracing tools like collaborative documents, DIY glass boards, digital portfolios, and interactive myth-mapping, we can ensure that language and literature education remains vibrant, engaging, and deeply relevant to the digital natives who will inherit—and write the code for—the world of tomorrow .
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