IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v13y2021i16p9206-d615689.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Privacy and E-Learning: A Pending Task

Author

Listed:
  • Marc Alier

    (UPC, BCNseer Research Group, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, 08034 Barcelona, Spain)

  • Maria Jose Casañ Guerrero

    (UPC, BCNseer Research Group, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, 08034 Barcelona, Spain)

  • Daniel Amo

    (GRETEL Research Group, Universitat La Salle, 08022 Barcelona, Spain)

  • Charles Severance

    (School of Information, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA)

  • David Fonseca

    (GRETEL Research Group, Universitat La Salle, 08022 Barcelona, Spain)

Abstract

Most educational software programs use and gather personal information and metadata from students. Additionally, most of the educational software programs are no longer operated by the learning institutions but are run by third-party agencies. This means that in the decade since 2020, information about students is stored and handled outside premises and control of learning institutions. The personal information about students and their activity while they interact with learning management systems and online learning tools is increasingly in custody of cloud computing platforms, software-as-a-service providers, and learning tool vendors. There is an increasing will to use all the data and metadata from the activity of the students for research, to develop education management strategies, pedagogy approaches, and develop behavior control tools or learning tools informed by behavior analysis from learning analytics. Many times, these studies lack the ethical and moral perspective. In addition, there is an increasing number of cases in which this information has leaked or has been used in a shady way. Additionally, this information will be around for a long time, tied to the future digital profiles of the students whose data has been leaked. This paper hypothesizes that there has been an ongoing process of technological evolution that leads to a loss of control over personal information, which makes it even more difficult to protect user confidentiality and ensuring privacy, that data surveillance has entered the world of education, and that the current legal frameworks are not enough to really protect the student’s personal information. The paper analyzes how this situation came to pass, and why this is wrong. We conclude with some proposals to address it from its different root dimensions: technical, cultural, legal, and organizational.

Suggested Citation

  • Marc Alier & Maria Jose Casañ Guerrero & Daniel Amo & Charles Severance & David Fonseca, 2021. "Privacy and E-Learning: A Pending Task," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(16), pages 1-17, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:16:p:9206-:d:615689
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/16/9206/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/16/9206/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. I. Ooijen & Helena U. Vrabec, 2019. "Does the GDPR Enhance Consumers’ Control over Personal Data? An Analysis from a Behavioural Perspective," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 42(1), pages 91-107, March.
    2. Daniel Amo & Marc Alier & Francisco José García-Peñalvo & David Fonseca & María José Casañ, 2020. "Protected Users: A Moodle Plugin To Improve Confidentiality and Privacy Support through User Aliases," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-16, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fatima Rafiq & Mazhar Javed Awan & Awais Yasin & Haitham Nobanee & Azlan Mohd Zain & Saeed Ali Bahaj, 2022. "Privacy Prevention of Big Data Applications: A Systematic Literature Review," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(2), pages 21582440221, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vacius Jusas & Rita Butkiene & Algimantas Venčkauskas & Renata Burbaite & Daina Gudoniene & Šarūnas Grigaliūnas & Diana Andone, 2021. "Models for Administration to Ensure the Successful Transition to Distance Learning during the Pandemic," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-22, April.
    2. Tara Merk, 2024. "Why to DAO: a narrative analysis of the drivers of tokenized Exit to Community," Papers 2407.14327, arXiv.org.
    3. Philipp Lorenz-Spreen & Stephan Lewandowsky & Cass R. Sunstein & Ralph Hertwig, 2020. "How behavioural sciences can promote truth, autonomy and democratic discourse online," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 4(11), pages 1102-1109, November.
    4. Haifei Yu & Shanshan Zheng & Hao Wu, 2023. "User Privacy Awareness, Incentive and Data Supply Chain Pricing Strategy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-24, February.
    5. Claire M. Segijn & Joanna Strycharz & Amy Riegelman & Cody Hennesy, 2021. "A Literature Review of Personalization Transparency and Control: Introducing the Transparency–Awareness–Control Framework," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(4), pages 120-133.
    6. Daniel Amo & Sandra Cea & Nicole Marie Jimenez & Pablo Gómez & David Fonseca, 2021. "A Privacy-Oriented Local Web Learning Analytics JavaScript Library with a Configurable Schema to Analyze Any Edtech Log: Moodle’s Case Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-28, May.
    7. M. Leszczynska & D. Baltag, 2024. "“Can I have it non-personalised?” An Empirical Investigation of Consumer Willingness to Share Data for Personalized Services and Ads," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 345-372, September.
    8. H. Li & A. Nill, 2020. "Online Behavioral Targeting: Are Knowledgeable Consumers Willing to Sell Their Privacy?," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 43(4), pages 723-745, December.
    9. Siddharth Tiwari & Sharad Sharma & Siddharth Shetty & Frank Packer, 2022. "The design of a data governance system," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 124.
    10. Francisco José García-Peñalvo, 2021. "Avoiding the Dark Side of Digital Transformation in Teaching. An Institutional Reference Framework for eLearning in Higher Education," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-16, February.
    11. Vacius Jusas & Rita Butkiene & Algimantas Venčkauskas & Šarūnas Grigaliūnas & Daina Gudoniene & Renata Burbaite & Boriss Misnevs, 2022. "Sustainable and Security Focused Multimodal Models for Distance Learning," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-26, March.
    12. I. Benöhr, 2020. "The United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection: Legal Implications and New Frontiers," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 43(1), pages 105-124, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:16:p:9206-:d:615689. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.