Ethics, Big Data

Universities in the internet age have begun to collect student’s performance data and use it as a metric to measure a student’s ability to keep on a track that has worked for previous students. The universities collect the data from students from many years to help improve the learning experience of future students so that they may determine a students a current progress in a class and how it compares to others that have preceded them to allow the university to counsel the student if they are falling behind. In “Ethics, Big Data, and Analytics: A Model for Application”(Pistilli, Willis, 2013) the author focuses on the ethical consideration that universities and students are responsible for; it considers the fact that students must have some …show more content…
It may also require them to change their major if they are off track for too long. Article one feels that this is a great thing and that it leads to a greater percentage of overall completion of a course. Article two however, feels that this could lead to babying the students where they do not need to keep track for what they need to accomplish and that they are losing an education in time management. Article two also feels that the students are adults and they should be responsible for their own time management. I feel that although it may coddle the student some, however students may still need some help to make sure that they are on course. Students may not even realize that they are not doing well and that they are on a path to failure. This system would allow a student to realize that they are not doing well and enable them to correct the …show more content…
Universities are able to track students not academically, but the places they visit, the relationships they have, and other on campus behaviors. They are able to collect student’s location data from phones that are connected to the public wifi and keep trace their location from their card swipes. Companies like Google do similar things. Google maintains a record of all searches you make, all locations that you visit via your phone’s GPS, and through any services that are connected to your Google account. Google uses this information to target ads that are most appealing to you. This is why it is worrisome to many that institutions could have such data. They fear that if the institution could begin to sell the student’s information. Institutions that intend to software that have these capabilities must make it a top priority to secure this information and make the institutions intentions very clear when referring to the private data. Privacy and anonymity should be top priority for any university that intends to utilize these sort of