LEDA
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THE PROJECT
The Learning Analytics approach adopted in education implies the gathering and processing of sensitive information and the generation of profiles of students, which may have direct or indirect dire consequences for the students. The Educational institutions must manage this data processing according to the General Data Protection Regulation, respecting its principles of fairness when it comes to information gathering and processing. This implies that the students must be well informed and give explicit consent before their information is gathered and processed. The GDPR propose the usage of recognizable standardized icons to facilitate a general understanding and awareness of how personal data is deemed to be processed in each application context, like an online course. This paper presents a project that aims to provide a set of icons to inform about the treatment of educational data in the Learning Analytics processes and a survey about the student's comprehension of the icons, their meaning, and implications for their privacy and confidentiality. The result presented is a set of icons ready to be integrated into educational environments that apply Learning Analytics to increase transparency and facilitate the understanding of data processing.
The learning processes mediated by Learning Analytics collect data of all possible student interactions and
academic performance, both treated as students' behaviors. At the same time, data collection goes beyond what
is strictly educational or academic. This additional data, considered as metadata, are complementary and may
originate from heterogeneous sources such as social networks or financial data. All this data and metadata
collection generate a sensitive context making data fragile in all senses. Consequently, concerns arise
regarding confidentiality, privacy, and security of the students' data and, in it extends, about their
digital identity.
The use of Learning Analytics implies a great responsibility regarding the collection, storage, treatment,
and sharing of educational data, especially when the data is from minors.
Considering the above and the educational context, fast, transparent, and easy to understand forms of
information are required to:
• Raise awareness of current student data treatment processes in any educational context.
• Let the students know how their data is treated and for what purpose, preferably previous registration
to any course.
• Establish a standardized information system and transmission medium in any educational context for
obvious reasons.
Recital 60 of the GPDR informs about the possibility of using standardized icons to combine with textual
information. The purpose of the complementary use of standardized icons is to give a clear, intelligible,
and legible view of the intended processing.
The use of the icons can fulfill the three points of the previous section. Icons can inform how the data
is processed in Learning Analytics and, therefore, generate awareness to students by facilitating access to
this type of information. Consequently, we propose as objectives of the study:
• Design descriptive icons of those parts of the Learning Analytics processes that must be reported to
students, and that other authors have not designed in their work.
• Develop and make available a tool such as Creative Commons where any VLE administrator can create the
appropriate icon packs to inform students of the different treatments of their data from the LMS itself.