[MyData & Open Data] [Open-education] The Quantified Student

Fri Sep 19 09:15:09 UTC 2014

Hi all,

This is a good discussion that should be carried forward (thanks Marieke - restart it again when it dies out).

The laceproject.eu<http://laceproject.eu> had a workshop this week in Graz - and I introduced the theme of Privacy and LA by looking at how we understand Privacy - suggesting a contextual framing inspired by the work of Helen Nissenbaum. You find my slides at http://www.slideshare.net/toreh/privacy-la-laceworkshopgrazsep2014

We will also organise a workshop on Ethical questions and dilemmas of Learning Analytics in Belgrade next week (don’t expect a huge turn out, but will publish slides on my Slideshare channel).

I support Terry’s points on being careful to reduce learning to everything measured. However, that does not solve the privacy problem we have - a problem we have not yet really got our heads around, e.g., if privacy is all about contexts - how do we scale LA?

Cheers

-Tore

-----
Tore Hoel
Twitter: @tore

On 18 Sep 2014, at 20:35, Terry Loane <terryloane at aol.com<mailto:terryloane at aol.com>> wrote:

The key issue here for me is not one of data confidentiality (although that is surely important). No, what really concerns me is the fact that the data-mongers seem to believe that the more data we have about learners the better we will understand their learning. But this is simply not true. Human learning is a complex phenomenon (using the word 'complex' in its correct scientific sense), and there has been increasing awareness among life scientists for at least 70 years that one can neither understand nor predict the behaviour of complex phenomena by taking measurements. Being obsessed with measurement and data is a manifestation of what has been called the 'reductionist myth'.

In the infographic at http://www.marketplace.org/content/lc-privacy-infographic we read the following:

"The idea behind data-driven education is that greater measurement will lead to better grades, test scores and graduation rates."

But education should surely be about far more than better grades and test scores. There is no point at all in a 'grade' unless what is being graded is worthwhile, and the obsessive focus on grades, scores, measurement and data stops teachers, parents and students from asking what constitutes 'worthwhile' in education. What activities are worth doing and why? These are questions that desperately need addressing when there is evidence of the harm done to mental capacity and mental health by chronic stress during adolescence (http://medicine.buffalo.edu/news_and_events/news.host.html/content/shared/smbs/news/2012/03/yan-adolescents-chronic-stress-126.detail.html).

I believe that we see around us the evidence that a reductionist data-driven approach to educational performance  leads to a reductionist hollowed-out (and stressful) educational experience. Do other agree that as educators we ought to spend more time focusing on our students as people and less time focusing on our spreadsheets.

Best wishes

Terry Loane

On 18/09/2014 18:01, Sander van der Waal wrote:
(Looping the Open Education group in again)

On 18 September 2014 18:56, Mark Lizar <mark.lizar at gmail.com<mailto:mark.lizar at gmail.com>> wrote:
Thanks Sander,

This is really useful. There is new California Law in the works (I think) for the end of the month to address this issue.  Parents really upset about domestic issues, behaviour problems, learning difficulties etc being sold and shared beyond the performative educational context.   Its a big topic at MIT (where I am today) and here is an article about it.

http://tech.mit.edu/V134/N38/edprivacy.html

Thanks Mark that's a really interesting article - good to see this issue being addressed.

Sander

- Mark
On 18 Sep 2014, at 11:08, Sander van der Waal <sander.vanderwaal at okfn.org<mailto:sander.vanderwaal at okfn.org>> wrote:

Sorry for cross-posting but I think this may be interesting to some of you on this list too:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Marieke Guy <marieke.guy at okfn.org<mailto:marieke.guy at okfn.org>>
Date: 18 September 2014 17:03
Subject: [Open-education] The Quantified Student
To: open-education at lists.okfn.org<mailto:open-education at lists.okfn.org>

Some of you might be interested in this...

Marketplace is running a series on student data "how it’s gathered, how it’s used, and, most important, how it is protected".

  *   http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/navigating-data-driven-education
  *   http://www.marketplace.org/topics/education/learningcurve/day-life-data-mined-kid
  *   http://www.marketplace.org/topics/education/learningcurve/how-student-data-improves-lunch-line
  *   http://www.marketplace.org/content/lc-privacy-infographic - infographic on quantified student
  *   http://www.marketplace.org/topics/education/learningcurve/youre-invited-come-chat-about-studentdata

Amazing claim from Learning company Knewton: “We have five orders of magnitude more data about you than Google has,”  “We literally have more data about our students than any company has about anybody else about anything, and it’s not even close.”

And quite a lot of this data is being sold: "A study released last year (in the US) by Fordham Law professor Joel Reidenberg found that very few school districts explicitly restrict the sale or marketing of student information in contracts with service providers."

They are also hosting a twitter chat tonight - We’re hosting a Twitter chat - tonight from 5-6 p.m. PST. The hashtag is #studentdata.

Marieke

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