Every day at campuses across the country—and yes, even in the middle of a pandemic—students do routine things that result in their data being collected by their school or university. They conduct library searches. They swipe in at the gym, the library and their dormitory. They stream media, both educational- and entertainment- based, and text their friends a million TikToks and memes, all delivered over university wi-fi servers.
And most of them have no idea that all this data collection is even occurring.
To be sure, universities have legitimate reasons for collecting data on students. Through learning analytics, schools can understand their students’ needs and habits, improve learning and instruction, and improve user experiences on online platforms. But students’ lack of awareness of, and lack of involvement in, such data collection, along with the absence of consent, raises privacy concerns.
UW-Madison, through its Information School, is one of seven universities participating in Data Doubles, a three-year research project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The project, named for the shadow identities users create through their online activity, is designed to gauge student attitudes toward, and raise awareness of, the ways in which colleges and universities are collecting and using data.
“The people being studied are not being properly informed,” says Dorothea Salo, a librarian and faculty associate with the iSchool. “We’re doing this to the students, not with them.”
The first phase of the Data Doubles project involved a series of open-ended conversations between researchers and students about the latter’s general awareness of and attitudes toward data collection. Some of the things to come out of those conversations raised Salo’s eyebrows.
“There’s a widespread belief that college students don’t care about privacy,” says Salo. “We found a much more nuanced response.”
While some students were concerned about privacy issues on high-profile sites like Facebook and Amazon, many were completely unaware that campus wi-fi use can be tracked and were troubled by the implications of that. In another instance, students were asked what they’d do to react in the event of an online data breach that threatened their personal information.
“There was almost total radio silence from the students,” says Salo. “They didn’t even consider identity theft something that they had to worry about.”
Those gaps in awareness, says Salo, only exacerbate the concerns that sparked the study in the first place. So did the fact that the more the students considered privacy concerns and data collection, the more problematic they found them. If the data privacy issue was obvious, like a clumsy internet scam or a phishing ad, the students were aware of and irritated by it. But the risks of everyday online activity simply weren’t on their radars.
“That concerns me,” says Salo. “Can students consent to what we’re doing if they don’t have a reasonable model to understand it? I’m worried we’re expecting a level of maturity and awareness they simply don’t have yet.”
The second, recently completed phase of the project involved student surveys that further detailed their attitudes and concerns about data. The final phase, set for later this year, will involve a series of focus groups run by Salo and her co-researchers at the other Data Doubles schools. Students will be presented with and asked to react to a series of data scenarios that both break and respect their expectations of reasonable privacy. Their responses will help inform a list of other questions, such as who should have access to student data.
“Students are interested in the idea that studying their data can help us help them,” Salo says. “They want to be helpful.”