Implementing next generation privacy and ethics research in education technology
Authors: Marshall Ruth , Pardo Abelardo , Smith David , Watson Tony 
Published: April 2022

For the developers of next‐generation education technology (EdTech), the use of Learning Analytics (LA) is a key competitive advantage as the use of some form of LA in EdTech is fast becoming ubiquitous. At its core LA involves the use of Artificial Intelligence and Analytics on the data generated by technology‐mediated learning to gain insights into how students learn, especially for large cohorts, which was unthinkable only a few decades ago. This LA growth‐spurt coincides with a growing global “Ethical AI” movement focussed on resolving questions of personal agency, freedoms, and privacy in relation to AI and Analytics. At this time, there is a significant lack of actionable information and supporting technologies, which would enable the goals of these two communities to be aligned. This paper describes a collaborative research project that seeks to overcome the technical and procedural challenges of running a data‐driven collaborative research project within an agreed set of privacy and ethics boundaries. The result is a reference architecture for ethical research collaboration and a framework, or roadmap, for privacy‐preserving analytics which will contribute to the goals of an ethical application of learning analytics methods.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

Privacy Enhancing Technologies, including a range of provable privacy risk reduction techniques (differential privacy) are effective tools for managing data privacy, though currently only pragmatically available to well‐funded early adopters.

Learning Analytics is a relatively young but evolving field of research, which is beginning to deliver tangible insights and value to the Education and EdTech industries.

A small number of procedural frameworks have been developed in the past two decades to consider data privacy and other ethical aspects of Learning Analytics.

What this paper adds

This paper describes the mechanisms for integrating Learning Analytics, Data Privacy Technologies and Ethical practices into a unified operational framework for Ethical and Privacy‐Preserving Learning Analytics.

It introduces a new standardised measurement of privacy risk as a key mechanism for operationalising and automating data privacy controls within the traditional data pipeline;

It describes a repeatable framework for conducting ethical Learning Analytics.

Implications for practice and/or policy

For the Learning Analytics (LA) and Education Technology communities the approach described here exemplifies a standard of ethical LA practice and data privacy protection which can and should become the norm.

The privacy risk measurement and risk reduction tools are a blueprint for how data privacy and ethics can be operationalised and automated.

The incorporation of a standardised privacy risk evaluation metric can help to define clear and measurable terms for inter‐ and intra‐organisational data sharing and usage policies and agreements (Author, Ruth Marshall, is an Expert Contributor on ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 32/WG 6 "Data usage", due for publication in early 2022).