The role of design ethics in maintaining students' privacy: A call to action to learning designers in higher education

Maintaining students' privacy in higher education, an integral aspect of learning design and technology integration, is not only a matter of policy and law but also a matter of design ethics. Similar to faculty educators, learning designers in higher education play a vital role in maintaining students' privacy by designing learning experiences that rely on online technology integration. Like other professional designers, they need to care for the humans they design for by not producing designs that infringe on their privacy, thus, not causing harm. Recognizing that widely used instructional design models are silent on the topic and do not address ethical considerations such as privacy, we focus this paper on how design ethics can be leveraged by learning designers in higher education in a practical manner, illustrated through authentic examples. We highlight where the ethical responsibility of learning designers comes into the foreground when maintaining students' privacy and well-being, especially in online settings. We outline an existing ethical decision-making framework and show how learning designers can use it as a call to action to protect the students they design for, strengthening their ethical design capacity.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• Existing codes of ethical standards from well-known learning design organizations call upon learning designers to protect students' privacy without clear guidance on how to do so.
• Design ethics within learning design is often discussed in abstract ways with principles that are difficult to apply.
• Most, if not all, design models that learning design professionals have learned are either silent on design ethics and/or do not consider ethics as a valid dimension, thus, making design ethics mostly excluded from learning design graduate programs.
• Practical means for engaging in ethical design practice are scarce in the field.

What this paper adds

• A call for learning designers in higher education to maintain and protect students' privacy and well-being, strengthening their ethical design capacity.
• A demonstration of how to use a practical ethical decision-making framework as a designerly tool in designing for learning to maintain and protect students' privacy and well-being.
• Authentic examples—in the form of vignettes—of ethical dilemmas/issues that learning designers in higher education could face, focused on students' privacy.
• Methods—using a practical ethical decision-making framework—for learning design professionals in higher education, grounded in the philosophy of designers as the guarantors of designs, to be employed to detect situations where students' privacy and best interests are at risk.
• A demonstration of how learning designers could make stellar design decisions in service to the students they design for and not to the priorities of other design stakeholders.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Higher education programs/institutions that prepare/employ learning designers ought to treat the topics of the designer's responsibility and design ethics more explicitly and practically as one of the means to maintain and protect students' privacy, in addition to law and policies.
• Learning designers in higher education ought to hold a powerful position in their professional practice to maintain and protect students' privacy and well-being, as an important aspect of their ethical design responsibilities.
• Learning designers in higher education ought to adopt a design thinking mindset in order to protect students' privacy by (1) challenging ideas and assumptions regarding technology integration in general and (2) detecting what is known in User Experience (UX) design as “dark patterns” in online course design.

     

Understanding privacy and data protection issues in learning analytics using a systematic review

The field of learning analytics has advanced from infancy stages into a more practical domain, where tangible solutions are being implemented. Nevertheless, the field has encountered numerous privacy and data protection issues that have garnered significant and growing attention. In this systematic review, four databases were searched concerning privacy and data protection issues of learning analytics. A final corpus of 47 papers published in top educational technology journals was selected after running an eligibility check. An analysis of the final corpus was carried out to answer the following three research questions: (1) What are the privacy and data protection issues in learning analytics? (2) What are the similarities and differences between the views of stakeholders from different backgrounds on privacy and data protection issues in learning analytics? (3) How have previous approaches attempted to address privacy and data protection issues? The results of the systematic review show that there are eight distinct, intertwined privacy and data protection issues that cut across the learning analytics cycle. There are both cross-regional similarities and three sets of differences in stakeholder perceptions towards privacy and data protection in learning analytics. With regard to previous attempts to approach privacy and data protection issues in learning analytics, there is a notable dearth of applied evidence, which impedes the assessment of their effectiveness. The findings of our paper suggest that privacy and data protection issues should not be relaxed at any point in the implementation of learning analytics, as these issues persist throughout the learning analytics development cycle. One key implication of this review suggests that solutions to privacy and data protection issues in learning analytics should be more evidence-based, thereby increasing the trustworthiness of learning analytics and its usefulness.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• Research on privacy and data protection in learning analytics has become a recognised challenge that hinders the further expansion of learning analytics.
• Proposals to counter the privacy and data protection issues in learning analytics are blurry; there is a lack of a summary of previously proposed solutions.

What this study contributes

• Establishment of what privacy and data protection issues exist at different phases of the learning analytics cycle.
• Identification of how different stakeholders view privacy, similarities and differences, and what factors influence their views.
• Evaluation and comparison of previously proposed solutions that attempt to address privacy and data protection in learning analytics.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Privacy and data protection issues need to be viewed in the context of the entire cycle of learning analytics.
• Stakeholder views on privacy and data protection in learning analytics have commonalities across contexts and differences that can arise within the same context. Before implementing learning analytics, targeted research should be conducted with stakeholders.
• Solutions that attempt to address privacy and data protection issues in learning analytics should be put into practice as far as possible to better test their usefulness.

     

Students' privacy concerns in learning analytics: Model development

Understanding students' privacy concerns is an essential first step toward effective privacy-enhancing practices in learning analytics (LA). In this study, we develop and validate a model to explore the students' privacy concerns (SPICE) regarding LA practice in higher education. The SPICE model considers privacy concerns as a central construct between two antecedents—perceived privacy risk and perceived privacy control, and two outcomes—trusting beliefs and non-self-disclosure behaviours. To validate the model, data through an online survey were collected, and 132 students from three Swedish universities participated in the study. Partial least square results show that the model accounts for high variance in privacy concerns, trusting beliefs, and non-self-disclosure behaviours. They also illustrate that students' perceived privacy risk is a firm predictor of their privacy concerns. The students' privacy concerns and perceived privacy risk were found to affect their non-self-disclosure behaviours. Finally, the results show that the students' perceptions of privacy control and privacy risks determine their trusting beliefs. The study results contribute to understand the relationships between students' privacy concerns, trust and non-self-disclosure behaviours in the LA context. A set of relevant implications for LA systems' design and privacy-enhancing practices' development in higher education is offered.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• Addressing students' privacy is critical for large-scale learning analytics (LA) implementation.
• Understanding students' privacy concerns is an essential first step to developing effective privacy-enhancing practices in LA.
• Several conceptual, not empirically validated frameworks focus on ethics and privacy in LA.

What this paper adds

• The paper offers a validated model to explore the nature of students' privacy concerns in LA in higher education.
• It provides an enhanced theoretical understanding of the relationship between privacy concerns, trust and self-disclosure behaviour in the LA context of higher education.
• It offers a set of relevant implications for LA researchers and practitioners.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Students' perceptions of privacy risks and privacy control are antecedents of students' privacy concerns, trust in the higher education institution and the willingness to share personal information.
• Enhancing students' perceptions of privacy control and reducing perceptions of privacy risks are essential for LA adoption and success.
• Contextual factors that may influence students' privacy concerns should be considered.

     

Authority and ethics: A case for estrangement in educational research and research education

This article focuses attention on an underexamined issue in the literature on educational research ethics: how ethical authority is established in educational research. We address this from a perspective that disrupts naturalised approaches to ethics, arguing that rather than seeking ‘rights’ or ‘wrongs’, researchers are always tasked with constructing ethical stances. Attention can then be placed on the array of embodied and objectified resources that might be recruited in establishing these. Through an engagement with published academic accounts of ethical reflection and decision-making, the article explores the ways that educational researchers achieve or sometimes question their ethical security in respect of their research activity. The analysis we present draws out the referential strategies that constitute ethical subjectivity and maps the diversity of anchoring points that might be recruited in this action. We also draw attention to the process of recontextualisation that is inevitable when one activity (or aspect of an activity) regards another, introducing necessary incoherence into ethical practice. The case we present celebrates rather than seeking to conceal or repair such disruption.     

Assessment,technology and democratic education in the age of data

This paper contends that powerful techniques to manipulate data, enabled by technological and economic developments, can be easily co-opted to serve the restrictive frameworks of hyper-controlling, managerial accountability that characterise current cultures of summative assessment in education. In response to these challenges, research is urgently needed to increase our understanding of the impact that assessments have on individuals and society. The paper concludes that social research ought to contribute to the identification of responses – educational, technological and political – that can minimise inequalities and potential abuses through the encouragement of data literacy across society.     

Enhancing consent forms to support participant decision making in multimodal learning data research

Advances in the field of multimodal learning analytics (MMLA) research is often accomplished by actively exploring new technologies and techniques related to the collection and analysis of data. Exploration of ethical principles and procedures for governing the use of new technologies and techniques, however, is not as readily pursued. As collected data grow in complexity and invasiveness, potentially, a growing need is arising to scrutinize ethical aspects of MMLA research. In our study, we introduce an informed consent comprehension test for educational technology research and assess the effects of enhancing MMLA consent forms on comprehension of informed consent and on rates of enrollment in a MMLA study. One form is written from a researcher perspective and the other from a participant perspective. Results of the study involving first-year undergraduate students suggest that the overall level of comprehension did not differ between conditions. Yet, the participant-oriented consent form resulted in significantly lower rates of enrollment. Implications for MMLA researchers are discussed.     

论体育教学训练中的道德教育

在体育教学训练中向学生传授道德知识 ,树立道德榜样 ,进行集体道德实践 ,培养学生德、智、体全面发展 ,是体育工作者的职责     

Cultivating engineering ethics and critical thinking: a systematic and cross-cultural education approach using problem-based learning

In May 2008, the worst earthquake in more than three decades struck southwest China, killing more than 80,000 people. The complexity of this earthquake makes it an ideal case study to clarify the intertwined issues of ethics in engineering and to help cultivate critical thinking skills. This paper first explores the need to encourage engineering ethics within a cross-cultural context. Next, it presents a systematic model for designing an engineering ethics curriculum based on moral development theory and ethic dilemma analysis. Quantitative and qualitative data from students’ oral and written work were collected and analysed to determine directions for improvement. The paper also presents results of an assessment of this interdisciplinary engineering ethics course. This investigation of a disaster is limited strictly to engineering ethics education; it is not intended to assign blame, but rather to spark debate about ethical issues.     

A systematic review on the deployment and effectiveness of data analytics in higher education to improve student outcomes

Abstract

This is a systematic review conducted of primary research literature published between 2007 and 2018 on the deployment and effectiveness of data analytics in higher education to improve student outcomes. We took a methodological approach to searching databases; appraising and synthesising results against predefined criteria. We reviewed research on the effectiveness of three differentiated forms of data analytics: learning, academic and learner analytics. Student outcomes are defined as retention, academic performance and engagement. Our results find that three quarters of studies report the use of educational data analytics to be effective in improving student outcomes but their relationship with student outcomes requires further and more robust investigation and assessment. We argue that research must interpret and communicate effectiveness qualitatively, as well as quantitatively, by including the student voice in assessments of impact.     

Using learning analytics to assess student engagement and academic outcomes in open access enabling programmes

Curriculum design, teaching methods, assessments and range of academic support need to be inclusive in Open Access Enabling courses. The findings of this study confirm a correlation between student access to online learning materials and a positive impact on grades in science courses. More specifically, students who frequently use the online learning system to access materials have better assessment and exam results.     

Implementing randomised control trials in open and distance learning: a feasibility study

Randomised control trials (RCTs) are an evidence-based research approach which has not yet been adopted and widely used in open and distance education to inform educational policy and practice. Despite the challenges entailed in their application, RCTs hold the power to robustly evaluate the effects of educational interventions in distance learning and conclude on whether (or not) these interventions should be adopted and used extensively. The aim of this paper is to spark discussions around the use of RCTs in distance learning by illustrating their benefits and drawbacks including challenges in adopting RCTs in education. To achieve this aim, a RCT was implemented to examine whether a small-scale intervention in four language modules could improve attendance at an end-of-module speaking assessment, and in consequence, performance, completion and pass rates. Results raise the need for further research in order to identify what type of interventions should be designed and put into practice to elicit a positive impact on learners. The paper concludes with a discussion on why RCTs should be brought to the forefront as a viable method for the effective evaluation of the impact of open learning analytic interventions.     

Post-abyssal ethics in education research in settings of conflict and crisis: Stories from the field

This article draws heavily on the post-abyssal philosophy of Boaventura de Sousa Santos in order to theorise new ways of thinking about research ethics in settings affected by armed conflict and crisis, and to put them into practice. Our article explores the dilemmas and tensions faced by four graduate students and a supervisor across diverse international settings. For some of us, these are places we call home, for others these are places that provide refuge to our people: Afghanistan, Jordan, Lebanon and India. We seek to deepen standard understandings of ethics as institutionalised in university forms, arguing that tidy checklists for safety and risk mitigation do not adequately address the complex affective and socio-political struggles permeating research, and the bodies of researchers, in these settings. Our main focus here is on how we can synthesise our various experiences in order to offer something of value to others who may be about to go into the field in settings affected by armed conflict and crisis. The question that we address, then, is: how can researchers avoid the limitations, obfuscations and silences of traditional institutional ethics in order to adopt a situated, embodied, post-abyssal research ethic that might open up new spaces for emotion, encounter, and engagement with struggle, risk and voicing? We use an autoethnographic approach that enables congruence with the aims of this article, and that supports our aspirations for enhanced impact through powerful narrative. We end with discussion that contains suggestions for institutions, supervisors, researchers, and for funding and professional bodies.     

Governing software: networks,databases and algorithmic power in the digital governance of public education

This article examines the emergence of ‘digital governance’ in public education in England. Drawing on and combining concepts from software studies, policy and political studies, it identifies some specific approaches to digital governance facilitated by network-based communications and database-driven information processing software that are being discursively promoted in education by cross-sectoral intermediary organizations. Such intermediaries, including National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, Demos, the Innovation Unit, the Education Foundation and the Nominet Trust, are increasingly seeking to participate in new digitally mediated forms of educational governance. Through their promotion of network-based pedagogies and database-driven analytics software, these organizations are seeking to delegate educational decision-making to socio-algorithmic forms of power that have the capacity to predict, govern and activate learners' capacities and subjectivities.     

Straw Godzilla: Engaging the academy and research ethics in artistic research projects

Abstract

In Australia, the university ethics approval process is guided by the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research. The National Statement does not provide a hurdle to be overcome or avoided, nor is it a Godzilla-like monster that must be slain for truth to survive. Rather the National Statement provides an affirmation of an abiding respect for all life and a mechanism for beginning the intelligent questioning, theorization and contextualization for a work of art. Focusing specifically on the emergent discipline of artistic research, this article addresses the question of how the supervisory process may take on the ‘spirit’ of the National Statement to engender genuine ethical debate, rather than merely focus on the instrumental obstacles that seem to get in the way of the research. It specifically addresses the emergent field of artistic research and the concomitant resistance to ethical regulation of artistic research, in which bureaucratic instrumentalism and compliance or censorship are considered to potentially emasculate the vitality of an art work and the ability of art to serve as a truthsayer or agent provocateur. In this, the attitude of the supervisor toward research ethics in artistic research is considered a key factor in determining their students attitudes towards the ethics process. This article will present several initiatives undertaken with the intent of more fully engaging supervisors and students with research ethics.     

Modelling blended solutions for higher education: teaching,learning, and assessment in the network and mobile technology era

The article addresses the role of network and mobile technologies in enhancing blended solutions with a view to (a) enriching the teaching/learning processes, (b) exploiting the opportunities it offers for their observability, and hence for their monitoring and formative/summative assessment. It will also discuss how such potential can only be captured by solidly integrating the process of instructional design with that of monitoring and assessment. First, the article presents the proposed conception of blended solutions, giving examples. In the second part, the article discusses a possible breakdown of blended solutions into its various components and how these can enrich both the teaching/learning and the assessment processes. Finally, it addresses the question of how to combine and/or use singly the various components of blended solutions. To conclude, implications for the implementation of blended solutions are discussed, also in relation to emerging contexts such as Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs).