Posts on the use of data to understand and improve teaching and learning processes. This may include activities otherwise known as “curriculum analytics” etc.
“Big Data” has – often rightly – had a bad press. Is there a better way to think about it? Starting from potential benefits and discussing how they might be achieved should help us choose the right outcomes to aim for when using data, make it more likely that those aims will be delivered, and […]
It seems easy to come up with new ways we might re-use data we already have. But harder to work out, in advance, whether an idea is likely to be perceived as unethical, intrusive, or just creepy. In a recent paper – “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (of Data)” – I explored […]
[Based on a presentation for the NISO Plus conference, February 22-25, 2021] One thing it seems everyone knows about Europe is that we have a strong privacy law: the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. In this talk I’d like to get you viewing that not just as a law, but as a really useful […]
Since it has provided the foundation for most of the work I’ve been doing on data for the past couple of years, I’ve recorded a video explaining our standard model for “analytics”, in both practical and legal terms If you’d like to know more, a couple of papers set out the theory Downstream Consent: a […]
Perhaps surprisingly – given that its title was “Digital ethics” – last week’s SOCITM panel session spent a lot of time exploring things that aren’t “digital”. Although the discussion focussed on local government, a lot of the ideas seemed relevant to education, too. Don’t be solutionist: technology might not be the right option. When identifying […]
When I was invited to join a panel at the SOCITM ShareNational event for local government I presumed my role was to provide a different, external, perspective on “Ethical Use of Emerging Technologies and Data”. So I offered to contribute a five-minute “sparkler” introduction: a bit of illumination, some striking of ideas, maybe a smile. […]
We’re delighted to have launched our Wellbeing Analytics Code of Practice, something we’ve been working on in the ICO’s Regulatory Sandbox for almost exactly a year. The resulting Code builds on Jisc’s widely-used Learning Analytics Code of Practice and includes tools for Data Protection Impact Assessment and Purpose Compatibility assessment. We hope it will give […]
[UPDATE 2nd June 2020: thanks for your feedback. Final text has now gone into the Jisc production process :)] Jisc has been providing expert, trusted advice on digital technology in the education sector for more than 30 years. We know that technology and data have the ability to transform the student experience. But, as a […]
The question mark in the title of my Digifest talk is the key point, because I wonder whether data is the wrong place to start. In our current digital landscape, we’re all too used to hearing ourselves described as “silkworms”, donating “new oil” to “surveillance capitalists”; even the term “data subject” has a dehumanising feel. […]
[A second post arising out of excellent discussions at the DALTAí project seminar in Dublin this week] We’re all familiar, perhaps too familiar, with how data flows typically work online. We give commercial companies access to data about ourselves; they extract some benefit from it, for example by selling profiled advertising space; they share some […]