In recent years, Learning Management Systems (LMS) have become an integral part of higher education and digital technology is in all aspects of education. Analytics are fundamental in schools whether it is for the smooth running of the school or to track students’ progress. These systems are ultimately put in place for educators to monitor and provide personalised, project-based, collaborative assistance in and out of the classroom. They can gather information about the students emotional states, their social interactions and interests.
National Academy of Education. (2017). Big Data in Education: Balancing the Benefits of Educational Research and Student Privacy. A Workshop Summary.
Ng Wan (2015) mentions that Learning analytics are useful for educators to identify the students at risk of dropping out and/or failing the course as they are able to see who has logged on, how long they logged on for and with whom they engaged in.
In the reading ‘Affordances of New Digital Technologies in Education’ (2015) there is a section about Learning Analytics and that fact that ‘most education institutions make use of learning management systems (LMS) such as Moodle to monitor the progress of students’.
As a parent starting out in the NZ school system I find it somewhat alarming that all our children’s work is put into Big data without much knowledge as to whether this information will be passed onto unauthorised people or put to nefarious uses. The information that is collected will follow a child through school, be analysed and monitored and then could subsequently profile a child in the future to a particular profession or further study. I also have concerns that there will be privacy breeches, hacking and the use of my children’s data being used for software developers without my knowledge.
This is particularly evident with the Learning Platform Linc-ed that was created by Paul and Amie Sibson (as a start-up but now has funding by Vodafone). The creation of an easily accessible app to gauge of your child’s progress is ultimately made to help teachers and whanau to address any immediate needs that the student may have. However, in New Zealand schools how many parents are particularly concerned about their 5-year olds’ digital footprint? Is there a naivety that parents, educators and policy makers have about this matter?
This idea is not something particularly alarming for me at the secondary or tertiary levels however it does concern me when we are discussing Primary and Intermediate levels of education. The theory of Siemens (2004 ) noted, “The starting point of Connectivism is the individual. Personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organisations and institutions, which in turn feed back to the network, and then continue to provide learning to the individual.” Knowledge acquisition in this model ins ongoing and more importantly, changing”. Although in Primary schools in NZ this is not quite the case and students are not so globally connected however, I think they will be in the future. If this does occur then the foundations and issues relating to privacy need to be solid and clear.
Who gets to decide how much a 5-year-old child can be monitored and how much data can be generated using digital technologies? Does a child have the right to have their digital footprint started at such a young age?
Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis (2016) compare a lot of “learning management and other education software, where users effectively consent for their learning experiences to be used as data, including manipulation of those experiences for research and development purposes” (p.13) similar to a user agreement for Facebook where the company owns personal data.
The privacy policy in schools is extensive and it discusses privacy and the non-disclosure of any unauthorised personal data and openly says that “there is no guarantee of confidentiality or security, despite the use of firewalls or other security measures including access code numbers for families” (Dalziel, 2009 p. 16). It however doesn’t mention information about students’ work, progress or the collection of information for research. Is this because in New Zealand there is no risk yet or it hasn’t been considered, and if this is the case does it need to be addressed?
I think moving forward with digital technologies and the rapidness of its introduction into New Zealand schools it is a vital area that needs to be explored and deeply considered for the protection and privacy for our children. The person responsible for buying technology to be used at the school needs to be very savvy about what they are using and ensuring that the information is secure. Schools should also carry out a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) that should look at how they will protect the data, where they are storing it and the strength of their password policy. Schools also need be very proactive in destroying the child’s data when they stop using the platform to prevent any breeches that may occur.
References:
English, K. (2016) Education Taitai Aho Rau . Big date and analytics can change education in three positive ways. Retrieved from http://blog.core-ed.org/blog/2016/04/big-data-and-analytics-can-change-education-in-three-positive-ways.html
Dalziel, K. (2009). The Privacy Commission Te Mana Motapono Matatapu. Privacy in Schools: A guide to the privacy act for principals, teachers and board of Trustees.
Doumanis, I., Economou, D., Sim, G. R., & Porter, S. (2019). The impact of multimodal collaborative virtual environments on learning: A gamified online debate. Computers & Education, 130, 121-138. doi: 10.1016/j.compedu.2018.09.017
Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2016). Big Data Comes to School: Implications for Learning, Assessment, and Research. AERA Open. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858416641907
Haniya, S., & Rusch, A. (2017). Ubiquitous learning: Spatio-temporal dimensions of e-learning. In B. Cope & M. Kalantzis (Eds.), e-learning ecologies: Principles for new learning and assessment (pp. 46-64). London: Routledge.
Heath, J. (2014). Contemporary privacy theory contributions to learning analytics. Journal of Learning Analytics, 1 (1), 140-149.
Morrision, N. (2019).Too much information, Tertiary Education Magazine, 5353 (31 May).
Ng, W. (2015). Affordances of new digital technologies in education.In New digital technology in education: Conceptualizing professional learning for educators. (pp. 95-123). New York, NY: Springer.
National Academy of Education. (2017). Big Data in Education: Balancing the Benefits of Educational Research and Student Privacy. A Workshop Summary. National Academy of Education. National Academy of Education. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=ED574440&site=eds-live&scope=site
Ujifusa, A. (2014). State Lawmakers Ramp Up Attention to Data Privacy. Education Week. Available at http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/04/16/28data.h33.html?qs=data+privacy.
Siemens, G. (2004). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. Retrieved from http://elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm
Zeide, E., & Nissenbaum, H. (2018). Learner Privacy in MOOCs and Virtual Education. Theory and Research in Education, 16(3), 280–307. https://doi.org/10.1177/1477878518815340
Virginia Forbes Learning Design Portfolio 