I’ve had various discussions recently about students consenting to learning analytics and whether they should be able to opt out. Institutions are understandably concerned not only to do the right thing ethically for their students but, perhaps more pressingly, to comply with legal requirements. The imminent imposition of the General Data Protection Regulation brings stricter data […]
I’ve just submitted a paper to a forthcoming “Special Section on Ethics and Privacy” in the Journal of Learning Analytics (JLA). The paper documents the development of Jisc’s Code of Practice for Learning Analytics through its various stages, incorporates the taxonomy of ethical, legal and logistical issues, and includes a model for developing a code of practice which could be […]
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 […]
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]. I’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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Retweeting matters – hugely. A scan of my tweet stream shows that most tweets have already been retweeted or are themselves retweets of other tweets. It’s the same situation with Facebook. Social media is an endless recycling of other people’s thoughts or creations. The simple fact is that most of us don’t have the […]
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 […]