(Information) Technologies of the Self: Personalisation as a new mode of subjectivation and knowledge production

Abstract

Personalisation has increasingly become a concern in policy making, public service, information technology (IT) provision and academic traditions. This article is concerned with how personalisation and personalised learning are suggested to reform Swedish higher education. The empirical material is official documents from the Swedish policy process of flexible education from 1998 onwards, including the universities' replies to these proposals and the following government bill. Moreover, material on learning management systems from public instances has been included. Personalisation is regarded as part of a contemporary intensified mode of governingthat makes use of liberal powers and self-government, where individuals are governed and preferably govern themselves through IT-based modes of learning. Specifically, the article examines how personalisation-as a mode of subjectivation inscribed in Swedish education policies-is constituted by two particular and intertwined technologies of government: the IT-based learning environment and self-technologies. The author's argument is that this creates a productive and personalised apparatus, made possible through ethicalself-constitution in IT-mediated learning environments and an ideal performative knowledge production. Questions are raised about the possible limitations of the social and informational action of such an apparatus, and risks of exposure and connectivity in these self-governable learning environments. The learning platform allows each user, whether teacher or student, to make important choicesabout the structure of their own user interface, based on their personal needs and priorities, and their natural way of organising. After all, people are different and think in different ways! Every user has a personal portal displaying updated information relevant tothem. The student's task lists, learning activities, ePortfolio and even their blog are at most a click of the mouse away. (It's Learning, 2008) In the computer age, the question of knowledge is now more than ever a question of government. (Lyotard, 1984, p.9).