Page - 38 - in Radical Solutions and Open Science - An Open Approach to Boost Higher Education

40 D.Griffiths practices, studentprofiles, andneeded interventions.Somethingmust change.Fordecades, callshavebeenmadeforreformintheefficiencyandqualityofhighereducation.Now,with the Internet,mobile technologies,andopeneducation, thesecallsaregaininganewlevelof urgency. (Long&Siemens,2011) LongandSiemens(2011)goontodistinguishbetweenLA,whichis“exclusively on the learningprocess” (p.34) and ‘academic analytics’,which is “the application of business intelligence in education” to achievewhat Siemens elsewhere referred toas “organisational efficiency” (LongandSiemens, 2011).Since thenagreat deal ofworkhasbeendone to implementLAsystems,whichhasbeenbestdocumented by the Society for LearningAnalytics Research (SOLAR), in its annual Learning Analytics andKnowledge (LAK)conference series, and in the Journal ofLearning AnalyticswhichSOLARpublishes.Itsoonbecameclearthatthisworkraisedethical issues,andGasevic,DawsonandJovanovic (2016)comment that“questionsrelated toprivacyandethicsinconnectiontolearninganalyticshavebeenanongoingconcern sincetheearlydaysoflearninganalytics”),withmajorquestionsincludingprotection ofpersonaldataanddata sharing. SladeandPrinsloohave takena leadingrole in identifying theethical challenges faced by the implementers of LA, and their papers provide a good picture of the issueswhichwereofconcern to thefield. Inanearlypaper theydiscussedanumber of ethical issues and dilemmas faced byLA (Slade&Prinsloo, 2013), identifying andexploring threebroadoverlappingcategoriesof ethical issues: 1. The locationand interpretationofdata 2. Informedconsent, privacyand thede-identificationofdata 3. Themanagement, classificationandstorageofdata. An influential checklist of ethical concerns proposed byDraschler andGreller (2016) serves as an elaboration of some aspects of the three categories. A fourth important aspect, theobligation toactonknowledge,was identified inPrinslooand Slade(2017).Arecent reportbySladeandTait indicates thecurrentconcerns in the field: …Core Issues that are importantonaglobalbasis for theuseanddevelopmentofLearning Analytics inethics-informedways: • Transparency • Dataownershipandcontrol • Accessibilityofdata • Validityand reliabilityofdata • Institutional responsibilityandobligation toact • Communications • Culturalvalues • Inclusion • Consent • Student agencyand responsibility (Slade&Tait, 2019,p.1)