IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY, VOL. 4, NO.
1, MARCH 2023
Smart Education in Smart Cities: Layered
Implications for Networked and
Ubiquitous Learning
Jason C. K. Tham , Associate Member, IEEE, and Gustav Verhulsdonck
Abstract—The development of smart cities worldwide is bring-
ing about new processes and methods for enhancing teaching
and learning in a networked age. As smart cities rely on ana-
lytics and digital capabilities to connect people and everyday
activities so as to improve the quality of life, they can bring new
layers of concerns for schools and educational institutions engag-
ing the next-gen learning environment. Drawing from cases from
around the world and specifically from developing smart cities,
this paper calls attention to key implications of smart cities and
smart education design on networked learning. We focus on lay-
ers of design ethics, data practices, roles, and delivery afforded
by new learning infrastructures in smart cities, then proposing
a “stack” analogy for designing ubiquitous learning.
Index Terms—Artificial intelligence, big data, connectivism,
Internet of Things, smart cities, smart education, smart learning.
I. I NTRODUCTION
UR MOTIVATION for calling attention to “smart educa-
O tion” in the context of networked learning—understood
as modern learning strategies augmented by networked tech-
nologies [53]—is driven by the necessity of human-centered
design, design justice, and human-in-the-loop perspectives on
data use. While learning management systems and data ana-
lytics are already a huge part of networked learning, they will
continue to evolve as modern cities become more connected
or “smarter.” We understand this kind of networked learning
in smart cities as layered ubiquitous learning, which repre-
sents new opportunities for student learning that need to be
addressed using a critical lens. Smart cities are often presented
from a techno-utopian view in which data are freely shared in
urban spaces to make things run more efficiently. Yet smart
cities are also critiqued for being “market-based, technocratic,
surveillant, solutionist, militaristic, and reproductive of power
asymmetries” in positioning people as “data points” subject
to the power of code and big data [5]. Likewise, others have
contested how smart cities make the actions of citizens “less
to do with exercising rights, responsibilities and democratic
engagement and more with operationalizing computational
processes” [49].
Manuscript received 9 July 2022; revised 30 November 2022 and 21 January
2023; accepted 21 January 2023. Date of publication 25 January 2023; date of
current version 30 March 2023. (Corresponding author: Jason C. K. Tham.)
Jason C. K. Tham is with the Department of English, Texas Tech University,
Lubbock, TX 79423 USA (e-mail: jason.tham@ttu.edu).
Gustav Verhulsdonck is with the Department of Business Information
Systems, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI 48859 USA
(e-mail: verhu1g@cmich.edu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TTS.2023.3239586
2637-6415 
c 2023 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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87
Hence, especially in education, where students are in sen-
sitive positions as they learn to navigate and understand the
world as citizens, it is crucial to interrogate the datafication
of universities and schools by companies such as IBM and
Microsoft. As these companies often use a data-driven, busi-
ness point of view where education needs to be “optimized,”
it is crucial we take a critical perspective to counter such
market-driven perspectives. It is vital we understand how auto-
mated systems and algorithms may also unwittingly perpetuate
systems of oppression by using biased datasets to perpetuate
and disenfranchise people [48], [51]. Certainly, smart cities
may position students as “quantifiable data objects” and raise
questions with regard to the how and why of pedagogical prac-
tices that derive from use of student data when smart city
code fosters desirable behavior as part of a coercive “smart
citizenship” [5].
Our approach to such questions is to raise various perspec-
tives for smart education, among which:
• Design justice: Smart education is a situated practice
that needs to include community-led design practices
that incorporate marginalized perspectives rather than just
focus on universal accessibility or user-centeredness [47].
• Data-informed, not just data-driven practices: In smart
education, data is used to make decisions, but does
not automatically drive those decision primarily, and is
instead informed by a human perspective first and fore-
most that looks critically at qualitative and quantitative
data and makes decisions for the best of humans involved.
• Human-centered, or playable cities: Smart education
involves citizen-led initiatives, involving crowdsourcing,
citizen hacking, and game-based approaches which may
counter against top-down data approaches of traditional
smart cities by allowing people to negotiate the structures
that surround them [35].
• Human-in-the-loop processes: Smart education involves
data and algorithms and requires human-in-the-loop
approaches to un-black box how algorithms work and
how to modify them for more equitable and socially just
applications that work for all.
• A “stack” approach: smart education involves negotiating
different layers of smart environments from land use. to
interface, to end user, and involves recognizing how code
interpenetrates with different elements.
We do not propose to counter all critiques of smart cities
or offer smart education as a panacea in this article, as that
88
isn’t a productive way to examine the next phase of networked
learning, but we want to explore the layers of implications of
smart education from the above perspectives.
To extend mission of the Society on Social Implications of
Technology in examining the impacts of emerging technolo-
gies, we take up the work of connectivist theory in networked
learning to expand upon its framework by looking at affor-
dances of smart cities that affect smart education. Within the
networked learning community, we are familiar with networks
as learning spaces through online connectivity and Web 2.0,
but we may be less familiar with smart cities and smart
education concepts that expand our idea of modern learning.
As educators, we posit that a strong impetus for smart
cities development should be driven by “smart education”—
an educational paradigm that bases its foundations on smart
(networked) devices, data analytics, and intelligent technolo-
gies [1], [2]. As Dumančić argued, the need for educating
all citizens should be the most basic element of smart cities
projects [3]. Successful smart cities should be defined by
its integration of smart learning technologies and accessible
education—formal or informal, as we discuss later—for the
purpose of cultivating a nation of informed, civilized citizens.
Further, the design and coding of smart education requires
we position students as “apprentice data experts and compu-
tational urbanists” who engage with “learning to code, digital
making, data literacy and civic coding initiatives” to shape
such processes [5]. Yet, as Vanolo noted, such approaches may
mimic “government at a distance” by making citizens respon-
sible for urban problems and thus to act in particular ways
through technocratic means of being held responsible to the
“programming” of a smart city [52]. While we acknowledge
that “programming” a smart city may instantiate particular
configurations of power, we also want to make the point of
the need to develop critical perspectives on how smart edu-
cation involves coding, but also design justice, data-informed,
human-centered and human-in-the-loop approaches. Taking up
this discussion, in this paper we advocate for smart learn-
ing in networked processes as data-informed, locative, and
pervasive experiences that still require a “human-in-the-loop”
approach [4]. We are especially concerned with the kinds of
network effects Williamson has highlighted:
In particular, it [smart city] highlights the dependence of
smart schools upon: a constant flow of digital data; the posi-
tioning of students as nodes in networks whose behaviours
can be nudged and tweaked through social network effects;
the deployment of networks of surveillant sensor devices; the
ways they are visualized through graphical displays; the posi-
tioning of students as ‘operatives’ who must ‘learn to code’
in order to become ‘smart citizens’ in the digital governance
of the smart city; and the mobilization of ‘machine learning’-
based techniques of predictive and prescriptive analytics that
enable student data to be used to anticipate their actions and
pre-empt their futures [5].
To counter such technocratic approaches, in this paper we
further complicate Williamson’s argument that students need
to “learn to code” in order to participate in data governance
and become “smart citizens.” Using a “stack” analogy that we
present later, we argue that to engage meaningfully in smart
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY, VOL. 4, NO. 1, MARCH 2023
Fig. 1. Three layers of smartness in smart cities [9].
education, students need to be able to think critically about
where they are positioned in layers of data infrastructures as
ecologies they live in so students as well as educators can
intervene in smart data processing, thus creating a human-
in-the-loop approach to education that fosters data-informed,
rather than merely data-driven practices. Before we identify
the indicators for this smart education goal, we begin the
discussion with common characteristics and infrastructural
approaches in smart cities.
II. L AYERS OF S MARTNESS : W HAT ARE S MART C ITIES ?
Smart cities are essentially an industrial operating system
that lets cities use data, analytics, and optimization to cre-
ate smarter processes [6]. As projected by researchers that,
by 2050, the majority of the world’s population will live in
a city, smart cities are seen by many as an answer to rapid
urbanization and the pressing need for creating sustainable
city spaces [7], [8]. Such processes can mean optimizing traf-
fic, shared energy usage as part of a grid, but also smarter
processes for inhabitants of a city. Many smart city initia-
tives exist where data is shared to optimize various processes,
and these include Beijing (China), Singapore, Amsterdam (the
Netherlands), Detroit (Michigan, USA), London (UK), and
Stockholm (Sweden) among others.
As the Internet of Things (IoT) facilitates data from sen-
sors, such data, together with data from various networks and
shared by inhabitants, can create radically different models for
urban environments. As such, smart cities have three layers
of “smartness”—a network base where sensors and connected
devices (smart devices) create data of various processes, an
applications layer where data analytics and artificial intelli-
gence (AI) help process such data and make it visible; and the
result of processing such data to create better decision-making
and smarter use of resources [9] (Fig. 1).
In essence, a smart city is a data infrastructure that helps
to augment a physical space and its processes. That is, a
smart city detects, tracks, monitors, and optimizes various
processes [10].
As smart cities provide models for infusing various
processes to create data-informed practices and can help keep
track of various interactions by humans, we are compelled
to ask how they form insight for future networked learning,
in the same way that we are keen to propel smart learning
THAM AND VERHULSDONCK: SMART EDUCATION IN SMART CITIES: LAYERED IMPLICATIONS
which we think will make for better smart cities. As smart
learning involves questioning and understanding how struc-
tures work and developing new ways of doing things, it is vital
we have smart learning to critically interrogate the different
layers of a smart city. In other words, in order to function
well in smart cities, inhabitants must be given smart learning
techniques to connect to various processes. Often times, these
processes involve networked learning and we think students
can benefit from insights developed from networked learning
to form smart education. Hence, below we review some of
these concepts.
III. S MART E DUCATION : A C ONCEPTUAL F RAMEWORK
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our idea of learning has
dramatically shifted into an unprecedented level of networked
learning, as universities and schools pivoted to blended,
hybrid, “hyflex,” online synchronous/asynchronous forms of
learning facilitated by online networks. Indeed, the networked
learning community has existed since the early 1990s and
has focused on how online networks afford different ways
of learning for learners and instructors by fostering differ-
ent interaction and collaboration. A recent article by the
Networked Learning Editorial Collective sought to redefine
networked learning as informed by “a commitment to social
justice and empowerment” and as requiring a post-digital
lens that seeks not to separate “digital or material, virtual
or real, online or face-to-face, artificial or natural, technical
or human” with an emphasis on what makes technologies
“convivial” [50]. A convivial perspective seeks to create tools
“which lend themselves to creative use by networks of peo-
ple who are joined in one or more shared social or political
projects. They afford opportunities for people to make their
lives together (con ‘with’ + vivere ‘live’)” [50]. We think a
convivial approach is also important to approach smart educa-
tion, as it makes students aware of how smart technologies are
tools involved in making and shaping their lives. As part of
smart education, we argue that a post-digital approach looks
at what works best at that moment, which requires critical
perspectives on tools, technologies, and structures. Below, we
take up the call for networked learning from a post-digital
perspective where smart education does not merely involve
creating citizen coders, but involves negotiating a “stack,” or
layer metaphor for the design of learning environments.
The notion of smart education originated outside the context
of smart cities. For example, in 1997, Malaysia had first car-
ried out a nationwide smart education project, the Malaysian
Smart School Implementation Plan as part of the “Wawasan
2020” long-term vision [11]. The goal of this knowledge-based
effort to grow and sustain the Malaysian economy (knowl-
edge economy, or K-Economy) was motivated by the nation’s
desire to participate more fully in the global economy by
means of a technologically literate, critically thinking work-
force. With similar intentions, developed nations like South
Korea, Finland, and the United Arab Emirates have also rolled
out reformed educational infrastructures to emphasize the role
of technology in education as part of growing the respective
economies [12], [13], [14]. However, the rise of cloud-based
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89
Fig. 2. Essential elements in smart education: Smart environments, smart
pedagogies, and smart learners [14].
computing and the proliferation of smart personal devices has
shifted many schools’ attention from beefing up classroom
technologies to designing a learning ecology that leverages
connectivity and interactivity in education.
We can see this shift to ecologies in smart learning con-
cepts proposed by education technologists. For instance, Gwak
stated that smart learning is focused on learners and con-
tent rather than devices; it should be effective, intelligent, and
tailored based on advanced information technology infrastruc-
ture such as the Internet of Things (IoT) [15]. EDUCAUSE
Learning Initiative listed some examples of such infrastruc-
tures powered by IoT:
The increasingly connected network of devices and data
streams could coordinate campus physical spaces, integrat-
ing information from sensors embedded in objects including
library resources, whiteboard writing surfaces, game boards,
and robots· · · . Off campus, students can visit historical loca-
tions or study urban environments where information is
transmitted from nearby sensors· · · . Student profiles could be
mapped to the physical campus, such as classrooms, labs,
libraries, and gyms, and wearable devices could ensure that
students are granted appropriate access· · · . All such data could
be accessed by the LMS or various other applications for use
in analytics for faculty and students [16].
While IoT facilitates an efficient and seamless flow of data
and metadata to enhance the learning experience and creates
an ecology, speed and accuracy aren’t the main features of
smart education and thus counter the ideas of many tech-
nology companies such as IBM and Microsoft that smart
learning requires student learning to be “optimized”. Smart
learning focuses on people and their relationship with tech-
nologies. Kim et al. contended that smart learning combines
the advantages of social learning and ubiquitous learning and
is a learner-centric and service-oriented paradigm [1]. In syn-
thesizing these perspectives as part of an ecology, Zhu et al.
offered the following conceptual framework to capture the
essence of smart education [14] (Fig. 2).
Smart pedagogies address methodological issues by intro-
ducing the concept of smart learning environments (ecologies)
90
that seek to cultivate smart learners. In this conceptual
framework, the materiality of technology is minimized—
almost made invisible—to emphasize qualitative (human)
competencies such as critical thinking and problem solv-
ing in smart education. For instance, gamified techniques
and personalized feedback helps create an impetus in stu-
dents to want to continue while learner performance can be
analyzed by AI which provides targeted exercises to stu-
dents. Nevertheless, with the growing deployment of data
analytics tools in networked classrooms today, including
performance trackers and predictive analytics in learning
management systems, we consider it vital to make visi-
ble the presence of smart technologies within smart edu-
cation environments in order to enhance digital literacy in
smart learners. Given this concern, we next discuss the
implications of smart education and data technology in
schools.
IV. L EARNER AND DATA L AYERS : S CHOOLS
AS DATA P LATFORMS
Current initiatives by software companies to enter education
(such as IBM’s Smarter Education and Microsoft’s Educated
Cities) look to reconfigure education around using student
data for learning purposes. According to Williamson, smart
education creates education as “sentient infrastructure” where
“increasingly automated processes data collection, analysis,
visualization and feedback” create ways to collect learn data
and so create “real-time feedback, individualization and per-
sonalization of the education experience” that can also help
predict individual learner needs [17]. However, Williamson
also argued that this approach creates “programmable peda-
gogies” in which students are positioned as citizens subject
to smart cities standards where “digitally enacted big data
systems constantly regulate and govern people’s conduct
according to the standards and social codes of conduct that are
written into the lines of code” [5]. As mentioned earlier, smart
education initiatives may thus perpetuate particular instances
of power and thus need to be carefully negotiated at various
levels. However, we argue that smart cities, as public spaces,
can also create opportunities for student learning when nego-
tiated from a “stack” perspective that elides a focus on code
and interrogates the infrastructure of data that surrounds that
student.
Among the biggest changes smart cities impose onto educa-
tional institutions would be the datafication of schools—which
involves “a reimagining and reconfiguration of schools as data-
based sites of real-time monitoring and measurement” [5].
Scholars have been wary about this imposition and questioned
the ethics of data mining and computation in educational con-
texts [18], [19], [20], [21], [22]. Smart education proponents
aspire for smart schools to leverage analytical technologies to
extract relevant student (and teacher) data in order to design
programs that educate computational citizens to compute the
future of their city [17]. But the partnership between schools
and commercial computing firms such as IBM, Cisco, Intel,
Siemens, and Microsoft—which often results in projects that
promote these firms’ products—calls for serious examination
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY, VOL. 4, NO. 1, MARCH 2023
of the administrative and pedagogical politics in “datafied”
education.
To foster better outcomes and practices, our understanding
here is to foster dialogues between learning stakeholders to
foster stronger data-informed practices and attention to learner
agency. Since data-informed decision-making is used in edu-
cational contexts to improve student learning and considers
the fit with different human stakeholders’ contexts where data
informs but is not solely used to drive decision-making, it is
also important in smart education contexts where often argu-
ments of data need to be considered in relation to human
agency [23].
Data-driven practices use quantitative data, whereas data-
informed practices recognize that decisions need to be
made using both quantitative data and qualitative understand-
ing through personal insight, as well as learner-preferences
to create better overall practices [23]. Networked learning
researchers need to consider how smart education infrastruc-
tures affect learner agency—that is, their ability to assume
autonomy in making choices and participate in knowledge-
building activities—and to consider the role of data-informed
decision-making practices more strongly by using data as
a point of learning conversations rather than an end in
itself. Such conversations need to be centered around design
justice, ethics, and human-centered understandings of what
works and what doesn’t.
As we promote data-informed solutions to address edu-
cation gaps and system efficiency, our urbanist ideals must
be grounded in ethical design-justice methods when deploy-
ing computational operations, including machine learning
processes. Such design justice approaches question how data
is used, who benefits, and whether or not existing biases
exist to perpetuate inequities. While interpretability of machine
learning algorithms are an intractable problem, human-in-
the-loop approaches can question whether the outcomes are
satisfactory or require they need adjusting. Indeed, adaptive
algorithms and statistical models in machine learning can gen-
erate predictive outcomes that help teachers improve their
pedagogical practices; students can use predictive analytics
to identify learning behaviors and explore better ways to
learn. When schools function as data sites for these multi-
faceted purposes, administrators, teachers, and students alike
need to share perspectives about the value of data privacy
and ownership juxtaposed against the value of data-driven
education in a situated context [24] so these purposes are data-
informed. While smart cities may be critiqued to instantiate
“government at a distance” [52] such conversations between
students and teachers are also vital to discuss and shape how
power is enacted in smart education. Among the conversa-
tions needing to take place is how smart technologies are truly
augmenting the learning experience, hence our next layer of
contention—intelligent delivery.
V. I NTERFACE AND I NFORMATION L AYERS : I NTELLIGENT
D ELIVERY AND D IGITAL T WINS OF L EARNING
Smart cities are also environments concerned with intelli-
gent delivery. As data analytics, IoT, and AI work to optimize
THAM AND VERHULSDONCK: SMART EDUCATION IN SMART CITIES: LAYERED IMPLICATIONS
various just-in-time processes, how to deliver that in an intel-
ligent manner is key to inform smart citizens. We think such
intelligent delivery is also important to students in their learn-
ing. That is, intelligent delivery is the delivery of information
that is appropriate to the learner’s context, time, place, and at
their preferred device and personalized to them.
Two important components to intelligent delivery are
1) intelligence derived from “digital twins” of students, and
2) using effective content delivery derived from content
modeling.
Digital twins “represent real objects or subjects with their
data, functions, and communication capabilities in the digital
world” which are used in a hybrid manner to better develop
smart systems based on personalized data representing an
object (a machine) or a person [25]. The idea of digital twins
is that this keeps track of performance, issues, and effectively,
keeps a history. Such a history is used by instructors when
they work with students, but digital twins could keep track of
what students are good at, where they need to be better and
their overall learning journey at a much greater granularity to
develop more intelligent learning practices. At the same time,
we recognize that digital twins are fraught with implications as
to future student performance, which is why we advocate for
data-informed conversations between students and instructors
where relationships are emphasized over top-down data.
In order to deliver in intelligent ways, content modeling
needs to be applied to the student’s preferred methods of learn-
ing. Content engineering and digital marketing analytics [26]
have made the most progress in this area, as content developers
seek ways to distribute content across platforms and channels
in a preferred manner for users. This brings with it an intense
focus on creating multi-purpose content that can be used across
different contexts, and multi-touch attribution—figuring which
channels are preferred. For this reason, intelligent content
is defined as “modular, structured, reusable, format-free and
semantically rich and, as a consequence, discoverable, recon-
figurable, and adaptable” content [26]. Intelligent delivery
hinges thus upon developing learning content that is multi-
purpose and that can be deployed across numerous learning
contexts and channels.
We consider these layers as important for networked learn-
ing contexts and see their promise in smart learning but are
also concerned at the level this may suggest single-sourcing
content delivered to learners. Seeing data-informed ways to
engage with this content in smart learning is important, as are
human-in-the-loop approaches [4] we advocate in this paper.
VI. M EASUREMENT: S MART L EARNING I NDICATORS
Smart education requires updated performance indicators to
determine academic success and, perhaps more importantly,
the usefulness of technology in facilitating learning. Within the
smart cities’ context, technology is often deemed the heroic
actant that enables augmented actions. For the purpose of
a more objective evaluation, scholars have considered using
smart learning indicators (SLIs) to study the impact of smart
education technologies on learning outcomes. SLIs can be
seen as a data dashboard of learning objectives that can be
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91
used by students and instructors to determine performance.
As data dashboards display on-going live performance, such
a dashboard is promising but needs to be situated in the
larger discussion of data-informed decision-making processes
in pedagogical contexts.
Fortunately, networked learning heuristics can be applied in
the conceptualization of SLIs. Goodyear et al. defined net-
worked learning as “. . . learning in which information and
communications technology (ICT) is used to promote connec-
tions: between one learner and other learners; between learners
and tutors; between a learning community and its learning
resources” [27]. Based on this definition, it can be derived
that SLIs should include connectivity and connectivist think-
ing as the core of quality learning. Connectivism, a learning
theory coined by Siemens [28], [29] and Downes [3], [31],
posits that learning in the digital age requires understanding
of network properties, including chaos, nodes, links, ties, flow,
and the self-regulation of students in relation to these proper-
ties. In other words, we think connectivism creates room for
crucial conversations between students as learners and instruc-
tors. For SLIs, connectivism offers a framework for building
layers of criteria for observing, assessing, and improving smart
education. While there have not been formal SLIs established
for use in smart education, connectivist principles such as the
following can be adapted to develop SLIs that pay attention
to connections among learners and technologies [29]:
• Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or
information sources (see also Ryberg on personal learning
networks [54]).
• Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
• Nurturing and maintaining connections between students
and instructors are needed to facilitate continual learning.
• Capacity to know more is more critical than what is
currently known.
• Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent
of all connectivist learning activities.
Further, the networked nature of smart learning, thanks
to IoT infrastructures, shifts the emphasis of education from
formal to non-formal and informal learning.
VII. S PACE AND P LACE L AYERS : F ORMAL ,
N ON -F ORMAL , AND I NFORMAL L EARNING
Perhaps the most discussed matter about smart learn-
ing in smart cities is the affordance of continuous learn-
ing. Smart education typically takes place within for-
mal institutional settings such as schools and universi-
ties. Nonetheless, citywide connectivity means learning can
also take place non-formally and informally. According to
Eurydice (a division of the European Commission), non-
formal learning and informal learning can be distinguished as
followed.
Non-formal learning is an intentionally chosen learning that
takes place outside the formal education and training system.
It takes place in any organisation with educational and train-
ing purposes, also in voluntary bodies, national civil service
organizations, organizations of the private social sector or
enterprises. . . . Informal learning refers to activities carried
92
Fig. 3. Learning environments in a smart city [33].
Fig. 4. Interactive learning activities supported by smart learning environ-
ments [46].
out in every-day life, at work, at home and in leisure time,
even without an intentional choice [32].
Smart cities provide opportunities that support continuous
learning across formal, non-formal, and informal contexts. As
Huang et al. demonstrated, learning in a smart city can span
from schools to the public [33] (Fig. 3).
Smart learning is thus lifelong and lifewide. Learners can
engage with information by accessing formal sources (like in
schools) as well as community sources (e.g., museums, pub-
lic installations, and crowdsourced knowledge bases). Smart
cities learning environments can be transformative to tradi-
tional modes of learning in that adaptive technologies can be
used to support personal learning goals. Moreover, these envi-
ronments also create opportunities for role-switching between
teachers and learners (Fig. 4) to foster more authentic, social
learning.
For juxtaposition, we point in the direction of playable smart
cities research, which focuses on developing gamified spaces
of exploration and learning in smart cities through altered-
reality games, geo-caching, and other ways to invest spaces
with educational and exploratory perspectives [34], [35], [36].
We think such playable environments are excellent at bring-
ing learners into real-world contexts using smart technology,
social interaction, and in the role of questioning and using data.
For example, learners can be placed in an environment where
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY, VOL. 4, NO. 1, MARCH 2023
they have to speak to customers for a business knowing their
interaction may be tracked. Rather than see this as a means of
panopticon, learners could sit down with instructors to replay
what they did and foster stronger experiential learning. And,
as playable initiatives create what Innocent calls strategies of
“appropriation, datafication, and conversation” between differ-
ent stakeholders—in turn such playable, networked experience
creates appropriation by students of their environment, make
use of data in new ways, or enact conversations about public
space with other civic actors including their instructors [36].
We think such human-in-the-loop approaches to networked
learning are important if smart learning is to work.
VIII. P LACE AND S PACE , C ODA : U RBAN I NTELLIGENCE
While it may seem radical, smart cities infrastructures will
bring about new locative, ubiquitous teaching and learning that
emphasize the notions of place and space given the connected
nature of information and location in smart cities. Zhuang et al.
observed that “smart learning can provide strong support for
citizens’ life-long learning, which is also the key feature
of self-evolution of the urban system” [38]. Further, other
scholars have argued that smart schools are now “complex
sensory ecosystems and data infrastructures” in which sensing
of biometric and environmental data create new mechanisms
for embodied and environmental learning [41]. In “Pervasive
Citizenship,” Boyle offered the perspective that smart cities
will shift civic organization through information circulation,
thanks to data collection sensors, thus creating “pervasive
information spaces” that can support learning [37]. However,
Boyle also cautioned that next to this “sense commons” of
data in smart cities, we also needed “common sense” in using
data [37].
In her book, A City is Not a Computer: Other Urban
Intelligences, Mattern thus critiqued computational mod-
els of urbanism and provided ontological implications of
smart cities technologies on citizens’ engagement with
places and spaces [40]. Mattern warned us that the city-as-
computer model “conditions urban design, planning, policy,
and administration—even residents’ everyday experience—in
ways that hinder the development of healthy, just, and resilient
cities” [39]. Yet, Mattern also noted that some aspects are
not able to be captured through sensors. The kind of “non-
semantic information” that Mattern had considered—including
“performative knowledge” such as dance, ritual, cooking,
sports, and “ambient data” like shadows, wind, and rust—
call for a ubiquitous and data-informed, playable, immersive
pedagogy if we wish to engage smart education meaningfully.
The pedagogy of ubiquitous experience considers interac-
tivity between people, places, and learning in complex digital
urban environments [43]. Ubiquitous pedagogy in smart cities
emphasizes an attunement to “the socio-cultural-historical con-
textual relevance of place” [43] and layers of networked
information in the scoping, planning, and designing of smart
learning. This layer analogy situates learning among the phys-
ical and technologized ecologies of information akin to the
“stacked” metaphor offered by Bratton [44]. In Fig. 5, we
THAM AND VERHULSDONCK: SMART EDUCATION IN SMART CITIES: LAYERED IMPLICATIONS
Fig. 5. Stacked layers to smart, ubiquitous learning.
mapped ubiquitous pedagogy onto the layers of urban intel-
ligence. Practically speaking, this kind of locative learning
enables learners to tactically use media and data to enact
their learning. What this then does is create a new smart eco-
sphere of them critically engaging with how bots and machine
learning shape data practices, recognizing how shaping and
reconsidering interfaces can create new contexts for ongoing
learning, as well as negotiating new layered locative places
and spaces as information rich environments where data needs
to be retrieved and negotiated for opening up new learning
contexts and data-informed discussion. In turn, such locative
awareness makes use of data in localized ways to connect to
data that can be mobilized in specific geographic locations.
In asking our students to consider design justice and playable
approaches, we ask them to interrogate how data is enacted
and how data can be used to better the lives of smart citizens.
By insisting on human-in-the-loop approaches we ask students
to consider where they can intervene. For this purpose, the
“stack” analogy lets students interrogate a smart infrastruc-
ture from the perspective from earth (land & people), to the
interface, and its effects on the end user. We argue that this
kind of ubiquitous learning creates not just data-driven ways
of smart learning, but data-informed practices where data is
contextualized and negotiated. If we are to educate students
in using data in smart contexts, that also means negotiating
which data is privileged and how it operates in a particular
context.
A “stack” analogy for smart education encourages design-
ers of learning environments to identify the roles of the
learner (vs. bots or digital twin) in smart contexts, expands the
“interface” for learning to include digital and physical sources
of information, consider the flow of data, and connect to the
real earth-land where learners are grounded.
IX. C ONCLUSION : T OWARD U BIQUITOUS L EARNING
Smart cities present a new level of opportunities and chal-
lenges to networked learning. In this paper, we have noted
the concerns of smart cities as being used as a model for
education, noting how smart cities may create top-down mod-
els where data is used to shape human actions, surveil human
activities and enact a particular “smart citizenship” that is sub-
ject to code. However, we have also articulated the emergent
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93
properties of smart education and how they might augment
networked learning:
• Data-Informed, Not Data-Driven Practices: Smart cities
create a need for data-informed (rather than mere data-
driven) learning practices that allow learners and educa-
tors to negotiate and contextualize data using qualitative
perspectives on what works and what doesn’t work.
• Digital twins: Learners may have digital twins that keep
track and monitor their progress. Rather than see the dig-
ital twin as something that can hold students back, it
is vital that discussion is enacted between learner and
instructor so the digital twin can be updated.
• Smart learning indicators: We need to develop new SLI
heuristics for understanding and assessing learning goals,
conditions, roles, and outcomes. These indicators are like-
wise, important to foster discussions between learners and
instructors.
• Formal, non-formal, and informal learning: Smart educa-
tion promotes lifelong and lifewide learning that leverage
community knowledge sources. We need to cultivate sen-
sitivity toward place and space-based learning that spans
beyond traditional or formal educational environments.
• Urban intelligence and ubiquitous pedagogy: Smart
learning mixes locative data and learning situations that
creates opportunities for critical dialogues between stake-
holders. Smart education breaks down the divide between
“real world” places and the classroom with smart con-
texts of anywhere, anyplace learning with localized data
and simulations. Playable approaches provide opportuni-
ties for questioning one’s surroundings and create critical
approaches to data practices.
• Stack: Ubiquitous pedagogy also creates the need for
students questioning how the stack of actors work in
learning situations by negotiating different components
that make up a smart environment (user in relation to
interface as situated in a particular location) can create
data-informed negotiation of places and spaces, as part
of learning practices.
The current state of networked learning is connected to
networks to navigate information in learning environments.
Learning is still primarily formal and facilitated. What we
can expect in the future of smart cities is that networked
learning will become increasingly experiential, sensorial, and
immersive. The kind of ubiquitous learning afforded by smart
education will remove silos in urban spaces and situate the
learner within different layers of data structures and networks.
Educators need to pay attention to smart cities technologies
and development to prepare to critically engage with smart
education. To that end, we have offered a stack analogy to
make visible the layers of smart activities in smart education
and to address the implications of creating networked learn-
ing in smart cities contexts towards fostering data-informed,
human-centered and ethical practices and conversations. While
smart cities are rightfully critiqued for being top-down data
infrastructure, we do think it is crucial to open up critical
discussion regarding how learning may be facilitated in such
infrastructure while also making place for human-centered
approaches through our stack analogy.
94 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY, VOL. 4, NO. 1, MARCH 2023
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THAM AND VERHULSDONCK: SMART EDUCATION IN SMART CITIES: LAYERED IMPLICATIONS
Jason C. K. Tham (Associate Member, IEEE) is an Assistant Professor of
Technical Communication and Rhetoric with Texas Tech University, where
he co-directs the User Experience (UX) Research Lab. He teaches courses
in UX research, information design, instructional design, web publishing,
and digital rhetorics. He is a Research Partner with the Digital Life Institute,
Ontario Tech University. His current research interests are design thinking
approaches in technical communication pedagogy and practice. In addition
to his four books Keywords in Design Thinking (WAC Clearinghouse,
University of Colorado Press, 2022), Design Thinking in Technical
Communication (Routledge, 2021), Collaborative Writing Playbook (Parlor
Press, with Joe Moses, 2021), and Designing Technical and Professional
Communication (Routledge, with Deborah Andrews, 2021), his scholarship
has appeared in Technical Communication, Journal of Business and Technical
Communication, Journal of Technical Writing & Communication, Computers
and Composition, Technical Communication Quarterly, and IEEE
T RANSACTIONS ON P ROFESSIONAL C OMMUNICATION, among other
journals and edited volumes. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE
T RANSACTIONS ON P ROFESSIONAL C OMMUNICATION and a Book Review
Editor of Composition Studies.
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95
Gustav Verhulsdonck is an Assistant Professor with the Business Information
Systems Department, Central Michigan University. He teaches business, pro-
fessional, and technical communication along with visual communication
and digital media. He has also worked as a Consultant for clients, such
as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the U.S. Army
Research Laboratory in helping them consider how to leverage virtual real-
ity for countermeasure purposes. His research interests are user experience
design, technical and business communication, behavioral design, and mobil-
ity. He has worked as a Technical Writer for International Business Machines
and as a Visiting Researcher with the University of Southern California’s
Institute for Creative Technologies. His research has appeared in Computers
and Composition, Communication Design Quarterly, Journal of Business
and Technical Communication, Intercom, and Technical Communication
Quarterly.