Editorial 32(5): A question of ethics

Abstract

The rapid change of technologies and the social and pedagogical practices that surround them mean that institutional procedures and the published field are often lagging behind. Those of us who work in the field of educational technology need to recognise that satisfying the requirements of institutional ethics compliance may not satisfy a broader ethical responsibility to our research participants. We face opportunities and threats based on the ever-increasing recording of data and the correlation of those data in a variety of areas in our lives. Teaching and learning is no different, with its opportunities to connect data across institutional repositories, reporting on micro, meso and macro levels. The field of learning analytics is grappling with the issues of ethics on a variety of dimensions, ranging from privacy and consent to the responsibilities around reporting.