Higher Education’s Panopticon? Learning Analytics, Ethics and Student Engagement

Abstract

Is learning analytics a movement that seeks to rebalance the effects of higher education's apparent blindness to privilege, its unequal access regimes and persistent retention and attainment gaps through a more skilful and strategic use of student data? Or is it part of a larger project to surveil students and staff in higher education, in pursuit of greater efficiency and control? Both perspectives are alive and well in debates surrounding higher education's changing relationship with its students. The systematic institutional use of student-generated data known as learning analytics is raising practical, methodological and ethical questions, which are yet to be answered. However, a proposed framework for assessing and comparing the quality of learning and teaching in the UK is poised to use such data as one of its metrics. Learning analytics and its relationship to student engagement is explored through the first known research to utilise an adaptation of Kuh's National Survey of Student Engagement with people studying Massive Open Online Courses. Contrasting perspectives are offered by Siemen's theory of connectivist learning and Foucault's notion of the panopticon. If the potential of analytics is to be realised in terms of meaningful quality improvement, questions remain concerning ethics, trust, its role in engagement in learning, and the ways in which policy might effectively safeguard the longer-term individual and collective interests of students.Keywords 1,* 1 e.Proofing

Student and Staff Perspectives on the Use of Big Data in the Tertiary Education Sector: A Scoping Review and Reflection on the Ethical Issues

“…Third, if tertiary institutions are to establish good processes and governance around data analytics and address the concerns raised in the studies included in this review, they will need a variety of ways to engage with staff and students. An ethical student-centered program of learning analytics will include clear channels for student and teacher voices in the development, implementation, and modification of learning analytics to promote and maintain a collegial culture (Heath & Leinonen, 2016; Wintrup, 2017). The Jisc Code of Practice for Learning Analytics 2015 (Sclater & Bailey, 2015, p.4) recommends, “Student representatives and key staff groups at institutions should be consulted around the objectives, design, development, roll-out and monitoring of learning analytics.” Processes to support this approach include student and staff representation (a) on committees providing oversight of data-use and (b) in the development and implementation of codes of conduct and policies that set boundaries on data use and provide guarantees of transparency.…”

“…Awareness of the potential ethical issues associated with the use of big data and predictive data analytics in the tertiary education sector is developing, albeit in a patchy way (Adejo & Connolly, 2017; Jones, 2016; Pardo & Siemens, 2014; Roberts, Chang, & Gibson, 2017; Rubel & Jones, 2016; Scholes, 2016; West et al, 2016; Wintrup, 2017). There are clear benefits for students and staff but also a range of potential harms and risks (Daniel, 2019).…”

A Framework to Support Interdisciplinary Engagement with Learning Analytics

“…Analytics use in higher education administration is often discussed in terms of big data that encompasses classroom data as well as data from campus card access and students' usernames for other online services a campus may provide (Aguilar, 2018;Long & Siemens, 2011;Shorfuzzaman, Hossain, Nazir, Muhammad, & Alamri, 2019;Wintrup, 2017). The term "big data" has become one of the educational buzzwords that encapsulates many meanings.…”

Learning Analytics: A Systematic Literature Review

“…They emphasized that if learning analytics wants to be used in education, it needs to solve its ethical and privacy challenges in instructional design. Wintrup (50) stated that in learning analytics, ethics and student engagement are correlated and student's engagement could be increased when students have no ethical and privacy issues. West, Huijser, and Heath (48) underlined putting an ethical lens on learning analytics and pointed out that by increasing the importance and application of learning analytics in education, considerations about ethical and privacy issues would be increased as well.…”