When I first saw this PittWire article's headline (Pitt Sets Course for Student Success With Inaugural Advanced Analytics Summit) about Pitt's first-ever Advanced Analytics Summit, my initial thought was, "will the article address the potential downsides of student data analytics?"
Certainly, there are some benefits potentially offered by analysis of data generated about students. Chief among them, greater self-awareness by students themselves; assuming that students are given the opportunity to access data collected about themselves. (Let's remember, also--as surprising as it may seem to digital cognoscenti--that not everyone may want to know and see the kinds of educational data that is generated and collected about themselves in the digital age, just as biomedical providers, ethicists, and users have been debating the thorny issues implicated by the right to know and not know one's own medical information (see here and here, as some examples of varying perspectives about whether to know-or-not-know your own genetic information.) Some among those who do see their educational data analytics may still want to elect to opt out of future collection and use of their personal data.
(Aside: Consider that most U.S. consumers currently have no statutorily-mandated and enforceable rights to opt out of data collection on themselves, or to view and make informed decisions about the petabytes of information collected about them. Indeed, at a privacy conference in Brussels recently, Apple CEO Tim Cook excoriated tech companies for the ways that "personal information is being "weaponized against us with military efficiency.""
Contrast this with the European Union's game-changing 2018 General Data Protection Regulation.
Perennial consumer protection leader California, with its legislature's passage of the most stringent consumer data privacy protection law in the nation and signing into law on September 23, 2018 by California Governor Jerry Brown, was recently sued by the U.S. Department of Justice for that law's adoption.
All the more reason that a recent Forbes article author exhorts "Why "Right To Delete" Should Be On Your IT Agenda Now".)
Having qualified persons to guide students in interpreting and deciding if and how to operationalize data about themselves is crucial. (Student Data Analytics Advisor, anyone?) In what ways can students, and those entrusted to advise them, use data about themselves to make the best possible decisions, during their time as students, as well as afterwards in their personal and professional lives. As Pitt Provost Ann Cudd is quoted in the article:
“Two of our main objectives are raising graduation rates and closing achievement gaps. Things to focus on are excellence in education, building a network and identifying and pursuing life goals and leading a life of impact.”
Kudos that Provost Cudd, as reported in the article, explicitly acknowledged "that as advanced analytics moves forward at the University, two topics of focus include identifying whether the use of data is universally good and what potential dangers exist, and how to keep the human components to avoid generalizing." The overarching, driving focus of student data analytics must always be on what is best for the individual, the student, the human being.
It was good to see that data privacy and cybersecurity issues were identified at the summit as significant concerns. These are HUGE issues with no magic bullets or easy answers. In an age in which even the Pentagon and White House are not innoculated from documented cyberintrusions, does anyone really feel 100% sure that student data won't be breached and misused?
Disappointingly, the article sheds little light on the various stakeholder interests who are eager to harvest and harness student data. As quoted at the end of the article, Stephen Wisniewski, Pitt's Vice Provost for Data and Information, states that "“The primary reason is to better serve our students". Ask yourself, is "better serving students" Google's primary reason for student data analytics? Or a third party vendor? Or the many other parties who stand to benefit from student data analytics? Not just in higher education settings, but in K-12 settings as well. It's self-evident that the motivations for student "advanced analytics" are more complex and nuanced than primarily "better serving students".
As always, when looking at ethical issues and engaging with ethical decision-making, it's critically important to identify the stakeholder interests. To that end, when looking at the issue of student data analytics, we must identify who all of the actual and potential stakeholders are and then think about what their respective interests are, in order to more critically assess the issues and holistically apprise, understand, and make highly informed decisions about the potential risks and benefits. And, as I often remind myself, what people don't say is often just as important, if not sometimes more important and revealing, than what they do say.
Any mention of "informed consent", with regard to data collection and use, is noticeably absent from this article's reporting, though it hopefully was front and center at the summit.
Student data analytics offer some tantalizing possibilities for students to better know thyself. And for the educational institutions that serve them to better know--with the goal of better advising--their students, within legally bound and yet-to-be-bound limits, human individual-centered policies, and ethically-grounded guardrails that are built and reinforced with core values.
It's paramount, too, amidst our all-too-frequent pell-mell rush to embrace new technologies with sometimes utopian thinking and breathless actions, that we remember to take some stabilizing breaths and think deeply and broadly about the ramifications of data collection and use and the choices we can make about what should and should not be done with data--data about ourselves. Individual choice should be an essential part of student data analytics. Anything less places the interests of the data above the interests of the individual.
