Week 4: Privacy in open learning

First and foremost, students should have a reasonable degree of personal privacy, especially during online learning. Individual academic records, especially final grades are confidential according to institution regulations. Other organisations and persons other than the University personnel exercising their official duties, and governments requiring the records for credential evaluation, immigration compliance verification and other legal use, should not be able to access any of the academic records.

In China, which is my home country, privacy in academics is not valued at all. Even high school grades are published to the entire class, visible to anyone who sees them, and failing students are publicly criticized and serve as a negative example. When I come to Canada, however, I realized the importance of personal privacy and the confidentiality of academic records. No one is obligated to tell others their academic performance especially between unfamiliar students.

There are some scenarios, however, when privacy cannot be always guaranteed and data may be stored in servers outside of British Columbia and Canada, the clear examples being Zoom and Microsoft products. When I joined online Zoom meetings even with Netlink credentials, it still shows that the meeting is in United States servers, which may not matter so much in public university courses. However, if it involves private and/or confidential data, such as solicitor-client privileged legal material or health data, it should be in British Columbia servers, or at the minimum, on a secure Canadian server.

As a neurodivergent student myself, I found the UML principle quite helpful and UVic is planning to adopt it and amended its accessibility policies. However, in my opinion, there is no “a-size-fits-all” solution for accessibility issues. Mental health is a particular aspect that is always ignored. Unfortunately, the universities are not legally bound to accommodate all kinds of mental health problems, especially those which may pose a risk to public safety or public health, which must be kept in secure psychiatric facilities and such students, even after discharge, are generally stigmatized and feel excluded at UVic or any other universities. On the other hand, invisible disabilities are usually ignored because UML does not pay attention to such disabilities, including but not limited to mental health, ADHD and Autism. The university courses learning outcomes are normally based on neurotypical students, and while neurodivergent students can request academic accommodations, it is not always granted and does not change the intended learning outcomes. For example, a course whose course outline clearly stipulate “there is no alternative to group work”, or requires group work as learning activities, one cannot apply accommodations to switch to individual work.

For ethical considerations, a clear example can be referred from the SENG 310 (Human and Computer Interaction) course of UVic, which clearly stipulates the rules of handling of data and explicit consent must be obtained from participants before researchers can start to recruit. Gathered data must also be purged permanently from all cloud and local storages when the course ends, or the research concludes. Failure to do so will result in the failure of the course, and in real life, severe legal actions being taken against the researcher. I cannot comment on other SENG courses, but engineers are bound by both personal and professional ethical standards to handle data in a legal and moral fashion. 

In conclusion, accessibility, privacy and ethical considerations in learning are paramount to the future of education, careers and professional life of students and researchers.