Student awareness, perceptions and values in relation to their university data

Learning Analytics (LA) tools analyse data from Learning Management Systems (LMS) and are being increasingly adopted by Higher Education Institutions (HEI). Analysed LMS data can offer helpful insights into student academic performance and allow predictions based on various metrics to be made, it can also help provide personalised feedback and learning experiences/trajectories for students. Adoption of these systems, however, may be potentially hampered by factors such as lack of user trust, ethical issues regarding data collection, unintended negative consequences of its use and a lack of insight into data accuracy and statistical methods applied by the LA systems. To facilitate the adoption and implementation of LA and also to inform data collection policymaking at HEI it is important that values such as trust between the entity collecting data and the student whose data is being collected be maintained. Stakeholders’ views and values are important factors to be taken into consideration when developing these systems. The study was performed at two Swedish HEI, Stockholm University (SU) and Linnaeus University (Kalmar), and although both institutions utilise LMS and collect student data, at the time of writing, neither have defined strategies for using LA. The study consisted of an initial questionnaire to explore student awareness of data collection and usage and how comfortable students are with data collection and what values they consider important. This questionnaire was distributed to students attending courses at the aforementioned universities. A plugin developed for Moodle was then published to several summer courses at Linnaeus University (LNU) and subsequently followed up by a second questionnaire. The plugin presented students with an analytics dashboard where they could explore graphical representations of data being collected about them by the Moodle LMS. The second questionnaire attempted to gauge student perceptions after they reflected on the data collected by the HEI. This gives a more detailed understanding of the contexts in which data collection and usage are considered acceptable by students. It also offers insight into how students expect to be informed about data collection at their HEI. Further, it reveals how awareness seems to influence acceptance, values and identification of possible uses of LA together with associated ethical concerns. The results from the surveys indicate that awareness significantly impacts the value of privacy, in terms of who has access to and control of the data. Awareness also impacts how worried students are about data collection, an increased awareness of how the data can be used increases how worried students are concerning data collection and the use of this data. Furthermore, this awareness impacts students’ levels of engagement with institutions’ privacy policy documents. The results also reveal that acceptance of data collection and use is highly contextual and depends greatly on who the data is shared with and in what context