MassPrivateI: How universities are spying on students.

By Bennett Stein:

On Sunday, the New York Times published an extensive piece surveying the ways American universities are using their access to students? information to tailor their college experiences. Universities collect a huge amount of data on their students?course selection and grades, past educational experience and standardized test scores, and other personal information. Austin Peay University analyzes a student?s data and suggests classes in which the student is likely to ?succeed.? Arizona State University uses its data to identify students who are ?off track? based on course selection and course results. ASU is also experimenting with using information on student swipes of ID cards around campus?at the gym, at the dining hall, at the dorm, at the library, etc.?to understand social ties. (Last week, my colleague Catherine Crump also wrote about universities experimenting with monitoring students? internet usage to assess mental health.)

While universities have an important role in supporting students towards graduation, these data mining methods threaten campus as a place of self-exploration, development, and discovery. A student who knows that a computer is analyzing his course selection and grades may be less likely to choose a course out of the ordinary or take a risk on an assignment for fear of being deemed ?off track.?

During my first year of college at the University of Michigan, I took two Spanish classes, a bible lecture, a philosophy seminar, a course on political advertising, and a survey course on arts and culture in public life that was taught by a professor who primarily studied 20^th Century avant-garde Mexican film. Like my academics, my social life was diverse and often disparate as I met kids unlike me and the people I knew growing up. While these courses may not have contributed directly to my eventual degree in public policy this past May nor to my current position with the ACLU?and those freshman year dorm buddies ended up being weirdos?the lessons and experiences from the decisions and mistakes I made as a fresh-out-of-high-school 18 year old still prove invaluable.

This blog has frequently described the chilling effects of similar data analysis programs on free speech and social interactions. These effects are particularly relevant on college campuses where malleable young people work towards critical decisions about lifestyle, world view, and career. Students must not feel restrained by the potential judgment of a computer program as they develop themselves as adults and community members. Pressuring students to fit into an algorithm threatens the intellectual and social vibrancy of the campus (and of society, as my colleague Jay Stanley discussed last week). Even if a student does not expect her behavior to be flagged for further scrutiny, we have seen time and again that these complex computer algorithms make mistakes that have very real consequences.

I am sure that I would have questioned my course selection had I thought it might be flagged as wrong. I might have opted out of second (or third) dinner at the dining hall had I expected my ID swipe would lead to someone noticing my eating habits. Instead, I grew a lot and learned a lot in college because I made choices that my academic advisors, my professors, maybe my mother?and even a computer program!?may have considered off track.

http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-lgbt-rights-religion-belief-reproductive-freedom/big-data-nsa-facebook

Big data on campus.

Universities see such technology as one answer to a big challenge. On average, only 31 percent of students at public colleges get their bachelor?s degree within four years, and 56 percent graduate within six years. Such statistics have come under greater scrutiny as parents and politicians demand accountability from colleges. Tennessee, for example, doles out higher education dollars in part by measuring how effective an institution is at graduating students.

With 72,000 students, A.S.U. is both the country?s largest public university and a hotbed of data-driven experiments. One core effort is a degree-monitoring system that keeps tabs on how students are doing in their majors. Stray off-course and a student may have to switch fields.?

And while not exactly matchmaking, Arizona State takes an interest in students? social lives, too. Its Facebook app mines profiles to suggest friends. One classmate shares eight things in common with Ms. Allisone, who ?likes? education, photography and tattoos. Researchers are even trying to figure out social ties based on anonymized data culled from swipes of ID cards around the Tempe campus.

This is college life, quantified.?

Data mining hinges on one reality about life on the Web: what you do there leaves behind a trail of digital breadcrumbs. Companies scoop those up to tailor services, like the matchmaking of eHarmony or the book recommendations of Amazon. Now colleges, eager to get students out the door more efficiently, are awakening to the opportunities of so-called Big Data.?

The new breed of software can predict how well students will do before they even set foot in the classroom. It recommends courses, Netflix-style, based on students? academic records.?

?If the university could model, at a high level, the social network of the college, that would be a very useful data layer,? says Matt Pittinsky, who co-founded Blackboard, a company that provides a platform for online classes, and later became an assistant research professor in the sociology program at Arizona State. A university might reach out to a student ?who is not showing evidence of social integration,? Mr. Pittinsky says, pointing out extracurricular activities and communities that might tie them more deeply to the institution.?

Working with computer scientists, Mr. Pittinsky started an academic research project that tiptoes toward a better understanding of social connections. The research team?s raw material: anonymous logs from swipes made with Arizona State ID cards. When students use these cards, be it to buy food on campus or access the fitness center, the transaction gets recorded. The question that struck Mr. Pittinsky was whether or not you could infer social ties from those trails.?

The prospect of card-swipe surveillance discomforts Mr. Zimmer. He worries authorities might misuse location data to do things like track foreign students or instigators of a student protest.?

But the broader issue of privacy hangs over even less Orwellian efforts to collect and monitor personal data. In his own courses, Michael Zimmer, assistant professor in the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin includes a disclaimer on his syllabus disclosing what he can see through Milwaukee?s online-learning platform, including ?the dates and times individual students access the system, what pages a student has viewed, the duration of visits, and the IP address of the computer used to access the course Web site.?

Source: http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2012/07/how-universities-are-spying-on-students_26.html

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