Students' Perceptions about Data Safety and Ethics in Learning Analytics

Abstract

Analytics and its various subfields such as data analytics and learning analytics enjoy varying popularity as measured by public attention. Commonly, applications of learning analytics in the European area have been talked about lately partly because of the still fresh European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Higher education institutions in Finland have all become active in standardizing learning analytics in recent years, with multiple nation-wide multi-institutional projects conducted around the topic. In this article, we present a study where we surveyed the students about the ethical issues of data collection and usage in learning analytics. The survey was conducted in two universities in Finland: University of Helsinki and Satakunta University of Applied Sciences. In addition to finding out students' general perceptions of the topic, we wanted to find out if there are differences in the attitudes and opinions between different types of higher education institutes. Based on the results, students seem to be quite positive about the possibilities of learning analytics but are also concerned about the safety and usage of their personal data. The university students seem to be even more cautious, but also less informed about the data handling procedures

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