Ethical and privacy principles for learning analytics

Abstract

He is working on research projects exploring how technology can be used to understand and influence human behavior. He has experience in the use of digital devices in areas such as behavioral analytics, social networks, computer-supported collaboration, personalization and technology-enhanced learning. George Siemens is the Executive AbstractThe massive adoption of technology in learning processes comes with an equally large capacity to track learners. Learning analytics aims at using the collected information to understand and improve the quality of a learning experience. The privacy and ethical issues that emerge in this context are tightly interconnected with other aspects such as trust, accountability and transparency. In this paper, a set of principles is identified to narrow the scope of the discussion and point to pragmatic approaches to help design and research learning experiences where important ethical and privacy issues are considered. Introduction: privacy in learning environmentsThe use of information and communication technology has significantly changed how learning experiences are conceived and deployed. The widespread use of various digital devices together with cloud computing allows for learning scenarios not previously considered. Students are now able to access a myriad of learning resources, interact with applications focusing on a specific topic, enhance their experience in virtual environments, augment reality and connect with others through social networks. The progress of technology evolves together with the capacity to record the events occurring in a learning environment. Every interaction and resource accessed can be captured and stored. As a consequence, learning scenarios can now be analyzed using big-data analytics techniques. Although the use of new technology is shaping the way we learn, a more significant change may derive from the use of big-data analytics (Siemens & Long, 2011).

Guest Editorial: Ethics and Privacy in Learning Analytics

“…As with ethics, there have been few attempts to define privacy in the learning analytics literature. Pardo and Siemens (2014) regard it as "the regulation of how personal digital information is being observed by the self or distributed to other observers" and as something that is handed over in a transaction. This does not make it clear in what way these data differ from other data and why they should be accorded special treatment.…”

Learning Analytics in Small-scale Teacher-led Innovations: Ethical and Data Privacy Issues

“…In parallel with the increasing impact of the proposals coming from the field, there is a need to reflect on the consequences that these proposals have on the persons involved (Slade & Prinsloo, 2013), and on how learning analytics must be shaped to respond to these demands (Pardo & Siemens, 2014).…”

“…Several authors have reflected on the ethical issues that affect the field (Slade & Prinsloo, 2013;Sclater, 2014) and have made proposals to deal with them, like the set of design guidelines proposed by Pardo and Siemens (2014). However, most of these analyses and proposals apply to higher education institutional contexts.…”

Orchestrating learning analytics (OrLA): Supporting inter-stakeholder communication about adoption of learning analytics at the classroom

“…Many of these codes of practice have indeed a strong focus on ethics in the application of LA (Pardo & Siemens, 2014;Rodríguez-Triana, Martínez-Monés, & Villagrá-Sobrino, 2016;Sclater, 2014;Sclater & Bailey, 2015;Slade & Prinsloo, 2013).…”