In an interconnected world, student privacy concerns take on increasingly higher stakes.
To address the imminent concerns of student privacy, this work-in-progress study investigates
faculty perspectives of student privacy and their practices in relation to emerging learning
analytics tools and initiatives. The project is motivated by the team’s previous research (Jones &
VanScoy, 2019) that analyzed more than 8,000 library and information science syllabi and found
that there is a need to better understand how faculty perceive student privacy issues and
strategize to address them in practice. The current project consists of three phases; during the
first phase, , the research team is conducting a survey with faculty from diverse disciplinary
backgrounds who have online and face-to-face instructional experience. For the second phase,
the team will use phase-one data to pursue interviews with faculty members who participate in
the survey. In the third and final phase, the team will aggregate key findings from the research
phases and the extant literature to facilitate discussions between faculty and librarians. Results
from the phase one survey will be available to present on the poster. Focusing on instructors’
attitudes toward personal privacy and student privacy, their knowledge of privacy policies and
learning analytics, and their instructional practices, the findings will deepen our understanding of
student privacy in the interconnected educational environment.
Jones, K. M., & VanScoy, A. (2019). The syllabus as a student privacy document in an age of
learning analytics. Journal of Documentation, 75(6), 1333-1355
