JOURNAL ALONG THE USE & MISUSE OF STUDENT'S DATA
Most of us have experienced dealing with those spam (or advertising) messages, calls or emails in our inboxes, from different institutions offering promising study plans and placements. And at some point, we did get surprised about how they get to know about our names and education level, even we haven't registered for it in our life.
There is a strange collusive truth of surveillance society we reside in, that our personal data is bought and sold by numbers of unknown entities. But today, it's just not limited to a technology or a real state sector. Surprisingly, there's a big murky marketplace in the education sector, which is crammed with sensitive information of students from all over the country.
This issue isn't the latest in the news. There have been several cases revolving around this scam. But most of us are vaguely aware of this shady market operated by greedy brokers. Here is a little research effort by me, where I tried to reflect on some questions revolving around those spam SMS we get in our inboxes!
MY ROLE
Research, Strategies,
Analytics, Copywriting
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Nanditha Viswanath
Jnanendra R B
HAVE YOU REALISED?
We read articles over medium, comment on them.
Or watch videos on youtube and add them to our playlists.
Or we record videos from our camera during trips.
Or we eat bananas in the morning and have milk at noon.
Or we walk/ride to our offices.
Or even while reading this article - whats the mutual thing which kept updating itself?
Data has become a new age tarot reader for which, we haven't subscribed for. A psychic medium, examining our actions at a subconscious level. And predicting what will we be like in the next five years. And guess what, just like a good tarot reader, it never fails to recommend effective remedies and shows you the path from the cradle to the grave!
We are aware of the fact that the collection of data has been rapidly embraced by technology, science and business sectors. But imagine what can it do for our education systems?
Government and different associations have put in a lot of work and have introduced guidelines, rules and regulations to fortify a smooth process for the disposal of COVID-19 bio-medical waste. However, the major setback is in its implementation. So through this project, I tried to explore these implementation roadblocks and provide base solutions for them. The project goal would be achieved by addressing the following objectives -
Let us do a quick google search about data and education. If your search were similar to mine, you would find information on learning classroom analytics, student-centric education, tailored learning environment etc.
In short, the collected student data helps to improve the quality of education by allowing teachers and students to make smarter decisions.
Traditionally, student data refers to any information that teachers, schools, government agencies or associations collect on individual students. "Any information" is literally vast as it sounds. We can't imagine what all information is collected in that subset but after some research, we can atleast layout the types.
The Modern Gurukuls with the new-age technologies-mediated classrooms are adding a whole new column called Metadata in the student data-sheet. These online learning platforms and Softwares can fetch a huge amount of metadata about their pupil audience. These pieces of information were traditionally impracticable to track. But this advent of sophisticated technologies and automated analytical tools made the requirements diluted to the human heart and access to a computer!
But what exactly is Student Metadata? Student Metadata refers to the information like the geographic location of the student, Response Time - a student took at certain modules/pages/questions, moreover - how the student is interacting with the technology or the service.
Ugh! Overwhelmed by the potential of data?
Well, Indeed, data is base for everything around us. And precisely in the education sector, there's a huge file of every student at a different level - which accounts as a large amount of data.
In the introduction, I compared the use of data in technology to the use of data in education. But during this whole discussion, we almost left with a point that bigger the data - bigger the misuse. And so there is a need to reflect over the other side of the page too!
Woah! I am sorry. My intent was not to spam your screen with loads of news articles related to data breach and infringements by data brokers in the education sector - Rather, I was trying to aware you all.
- I justified "my spamming page."
But most of us have experienced dealing with those spam (or advertising) messages, calls or emails in our inboxes, from different institutions offering promising study plans and placements. And at some point, we did get surprised about how they get to know about our names and education level, even we haven't registered for it in our life. There are hundreds of surveys and investigations which describes how those anonymous texts know about what you want to pursue! It deals with how the student's data is collected at different platforms and then falsely shared with the so-called "data brokers", who then sell it for "less than a rupee" to different institutions in competitions.
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
Well, even after so many investigations, we still have to establish a report about where are these data brokers getting the data from? Having said that, starting with knowing which all platforms request student data seems to be a perfect way to find the source. And being an optimistic data enthusiast (though amateur) I believe we aren't so far to find the root of this issue! However, right now, we can't point on a single institution. But here's the map of the probable cycle of data infringement and misuse by brokers and other entities.
This was the reply my friend gave when we were discussing how data can be misused in the education sector. I would not say that the data brokers will take your life apart from yourself. But they have enough data that they can do it. This is amazing that we are now trying to lessen our digital footprints as we are getting aware of this issue. But, there is a strange collusive truth of surveillance society we reside in, that our personal data is bought and sold by numbers of unknown entities. "Unknown entities" maybe someone - we haven't listed. The point I am trying to make is that it is a big murky place of which - we have no idea! And there are so many negative potentials of all the data collected other than just spamming! We are being tracked and our virtual profile is created. We can be labeled inappropriately, since we don't have any control over those ill-practices of data manipulation. "It is scary, at least".
Its true that - "not collecting data" isn't the solution for misuse of student data. But there are definitely some points where we should focus on.
