Students’ Attitudes Towards Personal Data Sharing in the Context of e-Assessment: Informed Consent or Privacy Paradox?

Modern technologies increasingly make use of personal data to provide better services. Technologies using biometric data for identity and authorship verification in the context of e-assessment are a case in point. Previous studies in e-health described a privacy paradox in relation to consent to personal data use: even when people consider protection of their personal data important, they consent fairly readily to personal data use. However, the new European Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) assumes that people give free and informed consent. In the context of e-assessment, this study investigates students’ attitudes towards personal data sharing for identity and authorship verification purposes with the aim of optimising informed consent practice. Students with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) were included as a specific target group because they may feel more dependent on e-assessment. The findings suggest that a privacy paradox exists in the context of e-assessment as well. Furthermore, the results indicate that students are more reluctant to share video recordings of their face than other personal data. Finally, our results confirm the effect found in previous studies on e-health: those feeling a stronger need for technologies, in this case SEND students, are more inclined to consent to personal data use. Implications for informed consent practice are discussed