On the Block: Student Data and Privacy in the Digital Age (original) (raw)

Who Is Reading Whom Now: Privacy in Education from Books to MOOCs

The arrival of new technologies in schools and classrooms around the nation has been met with a mixture of enthusiasm and anxiety. Education technologies ("ed tech") present tremendous opportunities: they allow schools to tailor programs to individual students; make education more collaborative and engaging through social media, gamification, and interactive content; and facilitate access to education for anyone with an Internet connection in remote parts of the world. At the same time, the combination of enhanced data collection with highly sensitive information about children and teens presents grave privacy risks. Indeed, in a recent report, the White House identified privacy in education as a flashpoint for big data policy concerns. This Article is the most comprehensive study to date of the policy issues and privacy concerns arising from the surge of ed tech innovation. It surveys the burgeoning market of ed tech solutions, which range from free Android and iPhone apps to comprehensive learning management systems and digitized curricula delivered via the Internet. It discusses the deployment of big data analytics by education institutions to enhance student performance, evaluate teachers, improve education techniques, customize programs, and better leverage scarce resources to optimize education results. This Article seeks to untangle ed tech privacy concerns from the broader policy debates surrounding standardization, the Common Core, longitudinal data systems, and the role of business in education. It unpacks the meaning of commercial data uses in schools, distinguishing between behavioral advertising to children and providing comprehensive, optimized education solutions to students, * Jules Polonetsky is Co-chair and Executive Director of the Future of Privacy Forum.

Unpacking the Privacy Paradox for Education

2019

While people claim that they want to control access to their personal information, the ease and convenience of online applications put their personal data at risk with a keystroke. The sale of personal information and subsequent behavioral tracking happens in invisible ways not fully understood by most end users. Younger online participants, such as students, who are accustomed to sharing information online, may not be aware of digital footprints or digital permanence. Similarly, student users may be unaware of risks to participating online at school or how to manage these risks. Selected countries and international organizations have offered policy solutions that, when analyzed expose policy gaps and vulnerabilities. The authors unpack the issue of digital privacy for schools with a three level approach to the research. First, they report on what is known about the identified risks to students of vulnerable ages who access online programs in schools and reported levels of awareness...

Aligning the Effective Use of Student Data with Student Privacy and Security Laws

Data Quality Campaign, 2011

This legal and policy guidance provides a summary framework for state policymakers as they work to use longitudinal data to improve student achievement while also protecting the privacy and security of individual student records. 1 Summarizing relevant federal privacy and security laws, with a focus on the Family Educational Records and Privacy Act (FERPA), 2 this guidance illustrates how constraints placed on states by federal privacy and security laws can be harmonized with the appropriate use of student data for significant educational purposes. Key points of guidance regarding well-established FERPA interpretations, described below, include:  Sharing student data that are not personally identifiable is permissible.  Even with regard to personally identifiable student information, clearly permissible disclosures (without written parent or eligible student consent) includeo Evaluating/auditing state and local programs and implementing school and district 3 accountability. o Monitoring and analyzing assessment, enrollment, and graduation data. 1 The guidance updates and expands guidance and suggestions provided by EducationCounsel and the Data Quality Campaign (DQC) in a March 2007 publication, Maximizing the Power of Education Data While Ensuring Compliance with Federal Student Privacy Laws: A Guide for Policymakers. This guidance does not provide specific legal advice, nor does it advocate any specific state or district action. Policymakers should consult with their legal counsel and the state attorney general's office, as appropriate, as they build, strengthen, and use their state longitudinal data systems.

Safeguarding student privacy in an age of analytics

Educational Technology Research and Development

In this special issue, we have collected three responses from scholars who are currently doing work in learning analytics to react to, better explain, and expound upon the Ifenthaler and Schumacher's findings in their own settings as researchers and practitioners.

Changing Policies Concerning Student Privacy and Ethics in Online Education

International Journal of Information and Education Technology, 2016

Whereas the growth in global distance and online education has blossomed, especially with the arrival of massive open online courses (MOOCs), the same technological infrastructure permits unprecedented access to knowledge about students and their behaviors. This knowledge extends far beyond scores on tests to include the measurement of noncognitive factors such as persistence, and intrusive metadata such as geolocation information. Moreover, the growth in the internet of things (e.g., via smart phones and RFID chips) is rapidly complexifying the problem of intrusive data collection. In this paper, we review some of the policy challenges facing student privacy in online learning.

Student privacy self-management

Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Learning Analytics And Knowledge - LAK '15, 2015

Optimizing the harvesting and analysis of student data promises to clear the fog surrounding the key drivers of student success and retention, and provide potential for improved student success. At the same time, concerns are increasingly voiced around the extent to which individuals are routinely and progressively tracked as they engage online. The Internet, the very thing that promised to open up possibilities and to break down communication barriers, now threatens to narrow it again through the panopticon of mass surveillance.

De-escalating dataveillance in schools

Phi Delta Kappan

Technologies meant to promote student safety may also invade their privacy and treat them as threats to be managed, rather than learners to be cared for.

Privacy and E-Learning: A Pending Task

Sustainability, 2021

Most educational software programs use and gather personal information and metadata from students. Additionally, most of the educational software programs are no longer operated by the learning institutions but are run by third-party agencies. This means that in the decade since 2020, information about students is stored and handled outside premises and control of learning institutions. The personal information about students and their activity while they interact with learning management systems and online learning tools is increasingly in custody of cloud computing platforms, software-as-a-service providers, and learning tool vendors. There is an increasing will to use all the data and metadata from the activity of the students for research, to develop education management strategies, pedagogy approaches, and develop behavior control tools or learning tools informed by behavior analysis from learning analytics. Many times, these studies lack the ethical and moral perspective. In a...