The Side Effect of Learning Analytics: An Empirical Study on e-Learning Technologies and User Privacy

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

“…Both staff and students held general concerns about the impact of data analytics on privacy, particularly that individual privacy rights would be affected and that data analytics could constitute an invasion of privacy (Bischel, 2012; May et al, 2017; Roberts et al, 2016; Slade & Prinsloo, 2014). For example, although a forum of 50 students at Open University (United Kingdom) recognized the “positive intentions associated with a learning analytics approach” (Slade & Prinsloo, 2014, p. 296), many did not think that the university needed to collect all the information that they did, viewing “some questions as impertinent and intrusive” (Slade & Prinsloo, 2014, p. 295).…”

“…For example, although a forum of 50 students at Open University (United Kingdom) recognized the “positive intentions associated with a learning analytics approach” (Slade & Prinsloo, 2014, p. 296), many did not think that the university needed to collect all the information that they did, viewing “some questions as impertinent and intrusive” (Slade & Prinsloo, 2014, p. 295). More explicitly, students wanted to control access to their data so that they would be able to selectively or completely opt out of the use of their data for analytics (Heath & Fulcher, 2017; Khan, 2017; Knight et al, 2016; May et al, 2017; Slade & Prinsloo, 2014). For example, nearly half of all students surveyed at a Scottish University wanted all their data to be removed on graduation (Adejo & Connolly, 2017).…”

“…Students wanted the ability to choose how data analytics operates for them in a tertiary education setting to include the opportunity to be well informed, provide consent (May et al, 2017; Roberts et al, 2016), and potentially opt out from data use (Heath & Fulcher, 2017; Knight et al, 2016; Slade & Prinsloo, 2014). For example, one Australian student saw data analytics as a sort of forced participation and expressed the desire to completely opt out from learning analytics: “Ignorance is bliss, I—just take me out of the equation, like I don’t want to know anything about it” (Roberts et al, 2016, p. 8).…”

“…Slade & Prinsloo 2014Lack of institutional ethics boards governing data analytics , West et al (2016) Inadequate policy/guidelines on ethical use of student data Most papers (n = 24) focused on student and staff knowledge, preferences, and concerns about the use of learning analytics in universities (Adejo & Connolly, 2017;Arnold & Pistilli, 2012;Arnold & Sclater, 2017;Atif et al, 2015;Bischel, 2012;Brooker et al;Corrin & De Barba, 2014;Corrin et al, 2013;Dobozy, 2017;Havergal, 2016;Heath & Fulcher, 2017;Heath & Leinonen, 2016;Ifenthaler & Schumacher, 2016;Jones, 2016;Kammer, 2015;Khan, 2017;Knight et al, 2016;Maghrabi, 2014;Mahroeian et al, 2017;May et al, 2017;Newman & Beetham, 2017;Reimers & Neovesky, 2015;Wook et al, 2015Wook et al, , 2017. Although a number of papers (n = 22) acknowledged these concerns as ethical issues, only a small number (n = 8) discussed the issues in depth and/ or explicitly used an ethical framework to analyze them.…”

Progressive Teaching Improvement For Small Scale Learning: A Case Study in China

“…online-course platforms rejected to publish users' data due to confidentiality and privacy issues in the work done by Dalipi et al [3]. May et al [4] also proved that promising absolute privacy, confidentiality, and anonymity are impractical. For small scale on-site education, however, the aforementioned limitations are mostly nonexistent because learning data are collected by teachers or universities only for the purpose of course improvement.…”