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Consent Service Ethics Institutional Use Legal Issues Policy

Consent for learning analytics: some practical guidance for institutions

What information do students need about the use of their data for learning analytics? When should students be asked for their consent for this? How is it best to obtain that consent? What happens if a student wishes to opt out? Consent continues to be one of the main concerns for universities and colleges when […]

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Accessibility Ethics Legal Issues Policy

Accessibility considerations for learning analytics

Enshrined in our Code of Practice for Learning Analytics is the principle that learning analytics should be for the benefit of students. It’s important for ethical and legal reasons to ensure that students with special needs are able to benefit equally from the technologies, and are not put at a disadvantage by the collection and use of […]

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Code of Practice Ethics Institutional Use Legal Issues Policy

Institutions working together to address learning analytics deployment issues

Last Friday, representatives from a number of early adopter universities came together at Jisc’s Bristol offices to work on some of the areas that need to be tackled in their institutional learning analytics projects. Jisc’s Director of Data and Analytics, Michael Webb, demonstrated a new Data Explorer tool which provides useful visualisations, enabling institutions to […]

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Code of Practice Ethics Institutional Use Legal Issues

Code of Practice for Learning Analytics launched

Today Jisc is launching the Code of Practice for Learning Analytics at the UCISA Spotlight on Digital Capabilities event here in the amazing MediaCityUK at Salford Quays. Developing this document was chosen by institutions as the number one priority for Jisc’s learning analytics programme.  The Code aims to help universities and colleges develop strategies for dealing […]

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Code of Practice Ethics Institutional Use Legal Issues

Code of Practice for Learning Analytics – public consultation

Jisc’s draft Code of Practice for Learning Analytics is now available for public consultation for the next two weeks: Code of Practice for Learning Analytics v04 [MS Word].  We’ve already had some very useful comments back from a number of invited organisations and individuals which will help to enhance the document and the accompanying online guidance. The background to […]

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Code of Practice Ethics Institutional Use Legal Issues

A taxonomy of ethical, legal and logistical issues of learning analytics v1.0

Jisc, Apereo and the Lace Project held a workshop in Paris on 6th February to discuss the ethical and legal issues of learning analytics.  The focus of this meeting was the draft taxonomy of issues that I prepared previously.  It was extremely helpful to have comments from experts in the area to refine the list, which is forming […]

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Architecture Ethics Open learning analytics Systems

Refining a systems architecture for learning analytics

European experts came together last week in an icy Paris to review Jisc’s evolving architecture for learning analytics.  The event at L’Université Paris Descartes was jointly hosted by Apereo and Jisc.  Delegates included representatives from the Universiteit van Amsterdam, the Pädagogische Hochschule Weingarten in Germany, Surfnet in the Netherlands, CETIS and the Lace Project, as […]

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Code of Practice Ethics Institutional Use Legal Issues

A taxonomy of the ethical and legal issues of learning analytics v0.1

In discussions around the ethics and legal issues of learning analytics I’ve found the same issues cropping up again and again. Almost always they’ve already been covered somewhere in the growing collection of publications on learning analytics. Sometimes they’re expressed in different ways but boil down to the same underlying problem. The literature review of […]

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Code of Practice Ethics Legal Issues

Developing the Code of Practice

A wide-ranging discussion took place in London last week to discuss the emerging Code of Practice for Learning Analytics.  A new advisory group for the Code includes representatives from the National Union of Students, Edinburgh, Huddersfield, Lancaster and Loughborough Universities, Bucks New University, The Open University, Croydon College and Jisc. A Code of Practice for Learning […]

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Co-design Ethics Systems

A student app for learning analytics

Many applications for learning analytics have been proposed, are under development or are already being deployed by institutions.  These range from prompting staff to intervene with students at risk of drop-out to attempting to understand whether some learning content or activity is effective. Much of this is about providing better information to staff about students and […]