As I read this week’s material, I thought a lot about mixed learning and personal privacy. Looking back on the past learning experiences since childhood, from pure face-to-face teaching in primary school to the blended learning in university, the teaching methods are constantly progressing. During the epidemic, most courses became online, and “the era of online class” opens. Now, as the epidemic has improved, face-to-face courses have resumed, but people have long been used to wearing masks to class. So in this situation where student-teacher interaction becomes less, as stated in Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry, blended learning should be explored in depth to create a more effective way of learning, and at the same time, teachers and students should share the responsibility of teaching and learning.

Moreover, as more and more teaching and daily contact is now done online, the security of personal information has become especially important. Yet the reality is that everyone’s personal privacy has long been collected and tracked with online learning. With big data, everyone is “naked”. While these data can be used to develop more reasonable personalized learning for students based on their preferences and learning progress, it also invariably categorizes students and even leads to problems such as discrimination. And as the article Ethical challenges of edtech, big data and personalized learning says, “FIPPS-based privacy protection is both ineffective and theoretically unsound in the education context” (2016, p. 107). Therefore, I believe that when schools implement blended or online teaching, they should also protect students’ personal privacy to some extent. In this regard, after reading Acceptable Use Policies of University of Victoria, I think some relevant policies of Uvic are effective and reasonable.

 

References:

Regan, P., & Jesse, J. (2019). Ethical challenges of edtech, big data and personalized learning: Twenty-first century student sorting and tracking. Ethics and Information Technology, 21(3), 167-179. DOI: 10.1007/s10676-018-9492-2

Vaughan, N. D., Garrison, D. R., & Cleveland-Innes, M. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. AU Press.