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 […]
Do institutions need to obtain consent from students before collecting and using data about their online learning activities? Should learners be allowed to opt out of having data collected about them? Could showing students predictions about their likelihood of academic success have a negative effect on their motivation and make them more likely to drop […]
I’m back from yesterday’s excellent Workshop on Ethics & Privacy Issues in the Application of Learning Analytics in Utrecht organised by LACE and SURF. Hendrik Drachsler from the Open University of the Netherlands kicked off the session by presenting a background to learning analytics and some of the resulting ethical and privacy issues. He mentioned the situation in […]
We had a lively session on ethics and legal issues at the Jisc Effective Learning Analytics workshop last week, kicking it off by outlining some of the key questions in this area: Who should have access to data about students’ online activities? Are there any circumstances when collecting data about students is unacceptable/undesirable? Should students be […]