Categories
Education Technology

Responsible Use of Student Data in the Digital Era

Presenters

  • Martin Kurzweil, Director, Educational Transformation Program, ITHAKA
  • Mitchell Stevens, Associate Professor, Stanford University

Mitchell gave an introduction describing who he is and what he does at Stanford (MOOCs were mentioned…), and reviewed the agenda:

  1. Why this session?
  2. Past and possible futures of student records
  3. Applying and evolving principles of responsible use

Mitchell also shared the Draft Principles for Responsible Use of Student Data, a hard copy of which was provided to all session attendees.  Attendee introductions followed…

Anticipated Takeaways

  • Overview of the current landscape of data-ethics discussions in postsecondary education
  • Recognition of how these discussions are “living” questions on our campuses
  • Tractable principles and policies of potential use in your own institution / organization

MOOCs via Stanford’s Coursera Product had an opportunity to surface the question: “What is the course taker’s status?” Are they a) a student, b) a customer, or c) a human subject? Depending on the course taker’s status, laws governing data usage is vastly different. The Asilomar Convention for Learning Research in Higher Education discussed language describing human beings from an ethical perspective. This convention came up with a concept for “learner,” which is distinct from a “student.” Contractual language surrounding these terms are vastly different.

ru.stanford.edu

Fact 1: There Now is No Default Platform

The classroom:

  • Classroom is physically and temporally bounded location
  • Exists in nested jurisdictions – college, district/system, US state, nation, – with relations negotiated over generations
  • Implies special sovereignty over content and evaluation for instructors

The web:

  • Does not entail physical or temporal boundaries
  • Commingles multiple jurisdictions whose relations are now being negotiated
  • Implies no particular sovereignty over content and evaluation

Fact 2: The Academic Record is Being Remade

Yesterday:

  • Each person had one official college record
  • schools held records exclusively, in trust, in perpetuity
  • Available data for comprising records were thin, controlled by instructor-sovereigns and their designates, and difficult to integrate with other data

Today:

  • There is a rapid proliferation of academic providers and mechanisms for recording accomplishment
  • Schools have lost their cartel on records generally but retain their fiduciary obligations over their own students’ records
  • Available data for comprising records are rich, varied, jointly held, and easy to integrate with other data

Some points we’re going to cover

  • Institutional Practices to Improve Student Learning & Support
  • Data that are granular, collected in larger sets, are longitudinal, or are linked across systems
  • Application for educational improvement
  • Research to build basic knowledge
  • Representation of learning and achievement

Applications

  • Enrollment management
  • Institutional programs and policies
  • Early alert
  • Adaptive courseware

Great Diversity in Data Use

  • 2016 KPMG survey: 41% of respondents use student data for predictive analytics; 29% have internal capacity to analyze own data
  • 2016 Campus Computing Survey: <20% rated their institutions’ data-analytics investments as “very effective”
  • Ithaka S+R Faculty Surveys: minority are using any form of technology in instruction, although 63% want to

Concerns

  • Privacy
  • Consent
  • Algorithmic bias
  • Opacity
  • Self-fulfilling prophecies
  • Institutional interest != student interest

Five Questions

  1. What data goes in the record, what does not, and who decides?
  2. Do educators/researchers have a responsibility to use student data in some ways?
  3. Do educators/researchers have a responsibility to not use data in some ways?
  4. Whose data (and records) are they?
  5. Do we have adequate language for talking about these things?

Principles of Responsible Use

  • Shared understanding: Data themselves are “joint ventures” between students, faculty, campus systems (LMS, SIS, etc.).
  • Transparency: credits are evaluative in nature; students can rightfully expect to understand how data about them is generated (and have that explained to them)
  • Informed improvement: institutions have an obligation to constantly improve themselves based on the data they collect and use.
  • Open futures: education should create opportunity, not foreclose on it. Data used for predictive purposes should be used to expand student opportunities.

We then read the DRAFT Principled for Responsible Use of Student Data document and reviewed at each table. A few of the things we discussed as a group:

  • Contractual language and understanding with 3rd party vendors who aren’t researchers
  • “Ownership” of data
  • Data has a life cycle
  • Principle of data use are not the same as data privacy
  • Needs to be a theory-driven, principled reason for collection of every piece of data
  • Who gets access to this student data?
  • Shared responsibility between students and administration (higher ed is held to a higher standard than other organizations, why can’t we have a EULA-like standard)
  • Reasonable security standard

The session then reviewed three scenarios and discussed as a group.

Governing Responsible Use

  1. Who should be involved in interpreting and adjudicating principles of responsible use? Who should NOT participate in the process?
  2. What challenges do you anticipate to implementing principles of responsible use?
  3. What kind of cross-institutional coordination, support, or resources would be valuable?
Categories
Education Technology Uncategorized

Student Privacy Boot Camp

Presenters

  • Michael Hawes, Director of Student Privacy Policy, US Department of Education
  • Amelia Vance, Education Policy Counsel, Future of Privacy Forum
  • Rachel Rudnick, Privacy Officer / Assistant Director, University of Connecticut

Resources

What is your top privacy concern?

Attendees have many reasons for being here (several on GDPR, the European Union’s privacy law – something International students will care about). I’m specifically here to learn more about the use of student data within web applications. For example, how do we let students know how we’re using their data, beyond ToS (Terms of Service) or EULA (End User License Agreement).

Types of Risk

Keep in mind the “front page of the newspaper” kinds of risks, because that’s a significant driver on the perception side of things.

  1. An actual security or privacy risk
  2. Risk of not being in compliance
  3. Perception Risk

Michael Hawes’ Segment of the Session

By the end of this session, you’ll know a lot more about PTAC – Privacy Technical Assistance Center. This provides loads of guidance and tools you can use in your work.

ED’s role in protecting student privacy

  • We administer & enforce federal laws governing the privacy of student information (FERPA)
  • Raise awareness of privacy challenges
  • Provide tech assistance to schools, districts, states, colleges and universities
  • Promoting privacy and security best practices

What is Privacy?

Privacy and security are related, but not the same thing.

Privacy: the state of being free from intrusion or disturbance in one’s private life or affairs.” Components include:

  • Info
  • Bodily
  • Territorial
  • Communications

Privacy Principles (from NIST):

  • Authority and purpose
  • Accountability
  • Data Quality and Integrity
  • Data Minimization and Retention
  • Individual Participation and Redress
  • Security
  • Transparency
  • Use Limitation

IT Security:

  • Focused on confidentiality
  • Integrity
  • Availability

Privacy and Security overlap at Confidentiality & Integrity, plus Accountability, Audit and Risk Management

FERPA 101

  • 43 years old, passed in 1974
  • Applies to all institutions receiving federal funds under any program administered by the Secretary of Education
  • Gives eligible students the right to access and seek to amend their education records
  • Protects personally identifiable information (PII) from education records from unauthorized disclosure
  • Requires written consent before sharing PII – unless an exception applies

FERPA definitions

PII: is info that alone or in combination, is linked or linkable to a specific student that would allow a reasonable person in the school community, who does not have personal knowledge of the relevant circumstances, to identify the student with reasonable certainty.

Education records are any records directly related to the student that are maintained by, or on behalf of, an educational agency or institution.

The Netflix Prize from a few years ago is a good case in point (algorithm to improve their movie recommendation engine). The de-identified data was able to be re-identified by data researchers, based on movie preferences! Favorite movie became highly identifiable information.

  • Directory information exception
  • Students don’t attend school anonymously
  • Allows schools to release certain information without consent. A few examples:
    • name, address, telephone, electronic mail address
    • date and place of birth
    • photographs
    • weight & height of athletes
  • Schools/Districts must designate data elements they consider to be directory information. Common uses: yearbooks, concert programs, telephone directories.
  • Students have a right to opt-out of disclosures under the directory information exception.

School Official Exception: schools or LEAs can use the school official exception to disclose education records without consent to a third party if the 3rd party:

  • performs a service / function the school would otherwise do themselves
  • under direct control of the school / district
  • uses education data in a manner consistent

Health or Safety Emergencies Exception

  • Disclosure necessary to protect health & safety of the student or others
  • Articulable threat to health or safety
  • Typically law enforcement

Parents of Dependent Students

  • A school may choose to disclose, without the students consent, a student’s ed record to that student’s parent if the student is sa dependent for IRS tax purposes.

Judicial Orders & Subpoenas Exception

  • School may disclose PII from ed records necessary to comply with a judicial order or lawfully issued subpoena
  • Reasonable effort to notify eligible student of the order before complying with it
  • Some judicial orders and subpoenas are exempt from FERPA’s notification requirement

Financial Aid Exception

  • Ed records may be disclosed in connection with financial aid

Studies Exception

  • Permits disclosure of PII that are for or on behalf of the school for developing, validation, or administering predictive tests
  • Administering student aid programs
  • Improving instruction
  • Must specify purpose, scope, duration

Attendee question: what counts as consent?

  • Must be written (electronic must be authenticated).
  • Has to specify PII that will be disclosed
  • Has to specify category of people it’s going to
  • Has to specify purpose
  • Has to be voluntary (for example, it cannot be waived in a “blanket ToS” at the beginning of the term)

Data Governance, Online Services, and Predictive Analytics

  • Increase in data silos at IHEs and the importance of Data Governance
  • Guidance on Protecting Student Privacy while Using Online Educational Services (2014) and Model Terms of Service (2015)
  • Be mindful of privacy and ethics when using predictive analytics in higher education

HIPAA

  • If an institution keeps student medical records, HIPAA (generally, but not always) applies, not FERPA
  • Student and treatment records can be very complex! Engage counsel when working with this data

As recipients of federal student aid, universities are financial institutions under the Gramm-Leach Bliley Act.

Audience question: is there a NIST standard for transmitting FERPA data? Yes! When in doubt, ask the school about their requirements for PII.

CASE STUDY 1: DATA BREACH

Knowing how to respond when you’ve had a data breach can be really helpful. Thank about each of the roles needed in your org. The full extent or impact of a data breach is rarely known up front. Don’t get ahead of yourself.

We broke up into groups and discussed the following:

  • Public & Internal communications/Messaging
  • Response Plan

Things to consider:

  • How can you prevent this in the future?
  • Policies & Procedures
  • Central # to call should they have questions
  • FERPA training implemented in any way? Whoever would respond to such breaches should definitely be trained.
  • Have reporting obligations changed?

Federal Laws and Actions

  • FERPA rewrite
    • Potential rollback of 2008/2011 updates
  • Several student data privacy bills introduced in Congress in 2015 and a FERPA re-write may pass in 2018. One bill has been re-introduced in 2017 so far.
  • 40 states have passed 126 laws since 2013
  • Over last 5 years, states have enacted over 100 laws governing how schools and their service providers collect, use, and protect student data

Unintended Consequences

  • Words matter: definitions and vague language; governance needed
  • Fear-based policies
  • Privacy problems with privacy legislation
  • Need for input
  • Penalties

Big case of unintended consequences: LifeTouch (a billion-dollar photo vendor) is impacted and engaged politically because photos can be classified as PII. What do they sell? Yearbooks.

Interesting Trends

  • Governance
  • Transparency
  • Contracts
  • Opt-in or Out Requirements
  • Device and social media privacy
  • Audits
  • Training
  • Penalties (financial & criminal)

State Laws

  • Of 106 state laws passed on student privacy since 2013, only 26 are applicable to higher education.
  • Most laws discussing higher ed either do not differentiate between private or public institutions or higher ed, or only apply the law to state schools.
  • Reflects a perceived inability by state legislators to govern private institutions of higher education.

Lack of laws

  • 75% of data breaches occur in higher ed, so it’s surprising that there aren’t MORE laws governing data breaches in higher ed.
  • In total, 19 states since 2014 have passed laws that included at least one provision targeted at researches. Most of these are governance-focused, but some are far more restricted.

What is Driving These Laws?

Typical comments that encapsulate what’s driving these laws:

  • “What is ed research, and why do I care about it?”
  • “Researchers are able to get access to student data and use it for whatever they want”
  • “Parents should always be allowed to opt their child out of research that will not directly improve their child’s ed or help their child in some direct way”
  • Beyond IRBs

Rachel Rudnick, University of Connecticut Privacy Officer

I think of my role as mostly a compliance function. How many campuses have a privacy office and officer? It differs from campus to campus; there’s no one way to manage it.

Do you have a designated Privacy Officer?

  • What is a privacy officer?
  • Privacy vs. Information Security
  • Privacy Office
  • Centralized function vs. embedded?
  • Just part of someone’s job?

Where Should Privacy Report?

  • Compliance (good place to start, should have buy-in of C-suite)
  • Legal
  • IT
  • Audit
  • Provost
  • Registrar
  • President/Board
  • Nowhere? Everywhere?

Models to Consider

  • Compliance/regulatory function vs. Program
  • Centralized vs. distributed (embedded)
  • Big picture comprehensive program vs. regulation-by-regulation
  • Reactive vs. Proactive approach

What is Privacy?

This is a gross oversimplification, but this helps folk understand privacy a little better, especially when they need to call someone for help:

  • Privacy is the WHAT
  • Security is the HOW

What does a Privacy Officer Do?

  • Does not mean I have a “Do Not Disturb” sign on my door!
  • Knowledge of ever-evolving rules
  • Oversee program
  • Serve as privacy resource/Subject Matter Expert
  • Write and possibly enforce policies
  • Review/draft contract language
  • Assist/provide guidance to faculty, staff, students, constituents
  • Investigate concerns/complaints
  • Educate/conduct training
  • Breach mgmt
  • Internal/external communication
  • Create and maintain relationships/partnerships
  • Work hand-in-hand with the ISO
  • Be a team player > committees, committees, committees…

To manage privacy properly on a campus, you need great partnerships!

Partnerships & Collaboration with Stakeholders

  • ISO
  • Legal
  • Audit
  • Risk Mgmt
  • Senior Mgmt (buy-in, elevator speeches)
  • Functional Offices (registrar, bursar/financial aid, research compliance/sponsored programs, HR/Payroll, Health-related units, etc.)
  • Compliance Cowboys: liaisons to support your efforts; train the trainer

Tools

  • Data inventories
  • Records retention & Info Mgmt strategies
  • Privacy Impact Assessments (PIA)
  • Maturity Modeling
  • Nymity’s comprehensive approach
  • Beg, borrow and steal from colleagues

External resources

  • HE-CPO group (supported by EDUCAUSE)
  • IAPP
  • Law firms
  • Vendors (webinars, free tools)
  • NACUA/AACRAO
  • FERPA|Sherpa
  • PTAC

Want to Be a Privacy Officer?

EDUCAUSE has resources, search for Higher Ed CPO Primer, Parts 1 & 2 on their web site

 

Categories
Student Affairs Technology

Applying the Technology Competency on Your Campus

Presenters

Resources

  • There’s a Google Drive link coming that contains all the information
  • #ApplyTechComp

Pretty good turnout for this session, considering it’s at 8:30 and down in the convention center’s basement 🙂 Got an opportunity to finally meet Lisa Endersby in person and catch up with some #SATech friends. Let’s see what Jeremiah has in store for us…

Lisa introduced Jeremiah and made a few shameless plugs for other sessions at the conference.

 

Agenda

  • Competency Background
  • Michigan Tech Background
  • Our Process
  • You and Your Campus

Competency Background

  • Provides a game plan and establishes what we should be doing
  • Tech was incorporated into many different areas in bits and pieces, and talk about a standalone technology competency began in earnest in 2010
  • Special thanks to: Matthew Brinton, Joe Sabado, Josie Ahlquist, Lisa Endersby
  • Established rubric in October 2016! This is a tool that will help members of the student affairs profession to utilize and engage with the competency areas on their campuses.

Michigan Tech Background

  • 7,000 students, founded 1885
  • Our Student Affairs division contains advancement, which is a bit unique.
  • January 2012: a charge from Dr. Les Cook to form a committee to address the 2035 vision of “High Tech, High Touch.” Central idea behind the group to consider how we embrace and push the technology agenda.
  • Technology Advance Committee: multi-member group from all areas of SA and Advancement; research & present seminars/trends and work with professional development committee and leadership team to provide recommendations.
  • Challenge: small surveys work great, redundancy of seminars, needed a plan

Our Process

  • Large doc; how to apply, how to inform, how to standardize?
  • Break down the competency
  • Assess the areas: technical hardware/software; professional dev (networking); technology like SoMe and collaboration tools.
  • We let our IT division know we were planning to do this assessment. Bring them into the conversation!
  • Use your professional networks!
  • Every department has its own SoMe accounts; we needed to figure out what was going on and who was in charge of things. Transition was a concern .
  • How to evaluate? Create a baseline evaluation and rubric survey for all staff members. NASPA HAS DONE THIS FOR YOU!
  • Our survey: questions a user can self-rate; comfort levels; open questions; 50 questions in total including department identification.
  • Our VP helped to hype the survey, including how we planned to use the information to inform increased resources/training.
  • CampusLabs is the backbone of our survey.
  • 39.75% response rate; largely mid-ranged responses; additional areas of professional development needed
  • Wanted to figure out where our people were uncomfortable. It turned out that a lot of our people didn’t know where to turn for help.
  • You can use our assessment for your own campuses, and we encourage you to use it!
  • Next Steps: present findings to SA and Advancement directors; meet with professional dev committee for recommendations; assist in professional development; reassess one year from initial survey.
  • We’re right in the middle of this process…we hope to see improvement next year!

You & Your Campus

  • This is very accessible, and the model we think is useful for any size campus
  • Join TKC
  • Self-assessment:Figuring out what you’re comfortable with is important
  • Training resources: YouTube, knowledge base, ticket database
  • Reach out and ask! People out there have had the exact same problem as you in the past.
  • What to do at the campus level?  Join the TKC; create a committee (does not have to meet on a regular basis), talk to others; use the rubric/create an assessment; training resources; reach out and ask.
  • To get people to complete your assessment, tell them what you’re doing and what they’re going to get out of it.
  • The main thing is to TRY SOMETHING! Now is the time to jump on this!

Questions

  • How were the survey results shared with your IT division? How were they received, and did it result in changes in service/collaboration between divisions? Our IT department gets 250 tickets a day, they’ve been able to use our assessment to help streamline some processes and develop some training materials to help improve services.
  • Did you have others in your division who were interested in participating in the competency area? Yes, but we were able to use this assessment and model as a starting point.
Categories
Student Affairs Technology Uncategorized

The 2016 EDUCAUSE MEGA Post

Hey y’all! Here’s my “MEGA POST” for my stint at the 2016 EDUCAUSE national conference in Anaheim from October 25 – 28.

Tuesday, October 25

Wednesday, October 26

Thursday, October 27

Friday, October 28

  • [ KEYNOTE ] Because I Said I Would
Categories
Technology

Student Mobile Takeover: Announcing the Winners of the Great Mobile Appathon

Presenters

  • Mark Albert, Director, University Web & Identity Services, The George Washington University
  • Andrew Yu, Founder and CTO, Modo Labs, Inc.
  • Matthew Willmore, mobileND Program Manager, University of Notre Dame

Goal was to get the tools for managing web apps into the hands of non-technical people at universities, so that they could make amazing apps themselves.

Schools participating in this event iteration included:

  • George Washington
  • Harvard
  • Florida State University
  • Notre Dame
  • Arizona State University

FSU

  • 14 teams, 56 students competing in total
  • Students and university benefited from this competition
  • We like the fact that through this competition, we can see exactly what student want
  • Students enjoyed the experience
  • “NutitioNOLE” was the winner at FSU
  • Eat, move learn

George Washington

  • Great way to raise awareness of the platform
  • Better understand how students wish to use their mobile devices
  • Better understand the gap between the app and student needs
  • To get the word out, we did posters, postcards, email blast, reminders to students in class
  • 80+ students; 12 teams competed
  • Outstanding ideas from our students
  • Modo’s support was great
  • 2nd place: parking app
  • 1st place: Gworld – campus ID card: dining/retail, printing, load $$, places to study

ASU

  • Fun and competitive environment to find out what our students want
  • Marketed via web site, My ASU banner ads, email
  • 10 teams, great wide-ranging ideas
  • Of our judges, each had a different winner
  • 2nd place: travel on campus
  • 1st place: ASUFit – targets fitness culture and social engagement

Harvard

  • Driven by student interest; strong culture of hackathons; event that allowed non-programmers to participate
  • Marketed via Student IT interest groups, student houses, SoMe, school CIOs
  • Intense, collaborative, inspiring
  • 2nd place: dining app that includes nutritional information so students can choose the correct
  • 1st place: bliss, a resource for maintaining mental health

Notre Dame

  • Always seeking opportunities to engage students in real-world development and design
  • Equal interest in students with and without technical chops
  • First opportunity for us to see how well students could use Publisher
  • Proved to us that we can use students more to manage our mobile app material
  • Marketed via: campus flyers, table tents, email, banner and home screen icon, co-promotion with other like events
  • 7 teams
  • 2nd place: Rate My Plate – allows students to provide feedback about dining services.
  • 1st place: Mary’s View – highly visual way to find events of interest around campus; incorporates maps so students can find events near their location.

Judges & Judging Criteria

  • Chris Barrows, NYU
  • Jenny Gluck, Syracuse
  • Julia Zaga, Uber
  • Santhana Naidu, Indiana State
  • Sarah Hoch, GE Power
  • Eric Kim, Modo Labs
  • Judging Criteria: address challenge of improving campus life; creativity and innovation; design/user experience; completeness

Harvard’s “Bliss” App is the winner!