The Data Doubles research project conducted a student-centered, three-year research agenda into student perspectives of privacy issues associated with academic library participation in learning analytics (LA) initiatives. Very little research has addressed LA and student privacy issues from a student perspective, and extant research suggests that the student voice is missing from LA conversations.
The team sought to answer this overarching research question: How do LA initiatives align with and run counter to student expectations of privacy; and with these insights, how might libraries maximize the benefits of LA while respecting student expectations?
Three iterative research phases structured this project:
Phase One: The research team conducted preliminary interviews with students to identify themes about library participation in LA and LA generally with regard to privacy.
Phase Two: The research team deployed a survey to undergraduate students at each researcher’s respective institution.
Phase Three: The research team conducted a series of scenario-based focus groups with students to explore possible applications of LA that respect and break expectations of privacy.
With the third and final phase of the project complete, the research team is now looking to close out the project with two webinars. In these webinars, members of the team provide an overview of the project, summaries of research findings across all three independent projects (interviews, survey, focus groups), and discuss how other researchers and practitioners can make use of the myriad documents in our research repository to replicate and extend the research.
Webinar One:
Date: Thursday, April 7th @ 3:30 ET
Link: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/93863256464
Webinar Two:
Date: Tuesday, April 12th @ 3:30 ET
Link: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/92692437883
All are welcome to attend. We will leave time at the end of the webinars for Q&A.
For more information about the project, see https://datadoubles.org