Student Data in the Digital Era: An Overview of Current Practices

The Ethical Use of Data

“…Aladmuddin et al. () argue that responsible use of data by HEIs and HESs must include the respect for individuals’ (students or staff) privacy as well ensuring its protection as best as possible. Most HEIs and HESs have data‐governance structures and policies that dictate how data sharing occurs (collected, accessed, and managed) within the organization.…”

“…Higher education has a long and sorted history with individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds and the use algorithms, like Alamuddin et al. () argues above, could exacerbate it. They do not create significant negative externalities.…”

“…Three Basic Tests of Algorithm Use. A major ethical concern of predictive algorithms is that they may reproduce bias or stereotypes based on how they are designed (Alamuddin et al, 2016;O'Neil, 2016). A key question is whether predictions are based on mutable (chosen) or immutable (beyond a person' s control) characteristics (Alamuddin et al, 2016) as they generate differing results.…”

“…They do not disproportionately fail when dealing with protected classes. Higher education has a long and sorted history with individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds and the use algorithms, like Alamuddin et al (2016) argues above, could exacerbate it. 3.…”

Big data in education and the models that love them

“…US law has provided little in the way of guidance on how to proceed, inheriting an antiquated concept of what constitutes the protected student 'record' and lacking due caution with respect to publicly subjecting de-identified data to the contemporary dangers of re-identification [46]. The current practice of the educational analytics community has been to rationally weigh the tangible harms of big data analysis with the benefits [47], acknowledging an opportunity cost to not innovating with data in the learning sciences and in practice [48]. The debate around big data analysis can be analogized to ethnography.…”