Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash
Given the increasing amount of time students spend learning through online platforms, it is important to understand how students’ personal information is protected.
Why Privacy Matters?
Students need to feel safe in their online learning environments to fully engage and participate. If their personal information is not handled properly, it can break the trust between students and schools. Also, how student data is collected and used raises important questions. Issues like who owns the data and how it might be misused are key ethical considerations.
Privacy in Digital Learning
We all want our personal info to be safe, especially when we’re learning online. Schools should be super careful about what info they collect and how they protect it. They should only keep the stuff they really need and make sure it’s locked down tight. Most Canadian universities use multi-factor authentication as an extra security, so hackers are pretty rare.
But privacy isn’t just about hackers. It’s also about feeling comfortable sharing stuff with classmates. Some people are cool with video chats and sharing their space with nearly 100 people online classroom, but others, like me, aren’t so sure. I prefer to keep my face and home life private, even from people in my class. It’s a personal thing, and everyone has different comfort levels.
Photo by Alexandr Podvalny on Unsplash
Privacy vs. Educational Needs
When Might It Be Acceptable or Necessary to Compromise Student Privacy:
- Student Safety: Protecting students is paramount. In cases where there’s a credible threat to a student’s safety, sharing information with authorities might be crucial. For instance, if a student expresses thoughts of self-harm or makes threats towards others, immediate action is necessary to ensure their well-being and the safety of the school community.
- Special Education Services: Collecting and sharing specific information about a student’s learning disabilities or physical challenges is essential to providing appropriate accommodations and support.
- Data-Driven Instruction: Analyzing student performance data (without personally identifiable information) can help teachers identify learning gaps and tailor instruction accordingly.
And to maintain a balance between privacy and educational goals, only collect information that is essential for educational purposes and determine how long it will be kept. Whenever possible, seek student consent before collecting or sharing personal information. Review the rules periodically as technology and educational practices change.
Universal Design for Learning
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a way to make learning accessible to every student. It does this by offering different methods for students to interact with material, receive information, and show what they’ve learned. The aim is to help students become more independent and effective learners.
This video recommends subtitled lectures, providing the material in many languages, and otherwise distributing the material in a Word document to give students the flexibility to change colours and font size to meet their needs. I have found the subtitled lectures to be very useful, which is unique to online learning.
Ethics and Digital Tools in Education
This study concerns neither teachers nor parents, but a generation of machine learning algorithms that will determine the optimal student learning pathway and discriminate against students in ways that society and educators do not currently understand or support. And in this TED talk, the speaker emphasizes the importance of regular reflection on the ethical implications of technology. It’s crucial to continuously assess how these tools impact students to ensure they are developed and implemented in ways that uphold equity and justice.
