Despite the ever-accelerating take up of educational technology products in higher education, there is still a lot of work to be done around data privacy and control, the direction of innovation in edtech, and democratic governance.
Students and staff do not currently have much insight or much say into which technology they should use for their studies and work, with what functionalities, what user data is collected, for what purpose now and in the future, for what kind of innovation, and so on.
It’s true that students and staff generally are asked to give user consent for the tools they use. But there is a clear power asymmetry here in that terms and conditions and privacy policies are issued by their respective universities and edtech companies, and individuals basically have no choice but to agree.
As in other sectors, student and staff personal data in higher education is legally protected by privacy legislation. While this legislation is important and relevant, it does not cover non-personal and de-identified user data. It also does not address instances of data enclosure (a platform owner capturing and controlling user data collected by the platform, benefitting from data aggregation and processing), monopoly tendencies in the business models common in the digital economy, barriers to competition in providers of data-based services, potential value redistribution from data innovation, or democratic discussion about the kind of innovation we want.
