Big Data offers opportunities and challenges in all aspects of human life. In relation to research ethics, Big Data represents a normative difference in degree rather than a difference in kind. Data are more messy, rapid, difficult to predict, and difficult to identify owners; but the principles of informed consent, confidentiality, and prevention…

States serve as the central authority in higher education oversight, playing a critical role in consumer protection and quality assurance within the regulatory triad and as an independent regulatory entity. However, there is a notable gap in understanding the components of renewal processes, how agencies implement them in practice, and the…

Student outcome data is essential for decision-making in higher education, informing choices at the student, institutional, and state levels. Within state authorization--the gatekeeping process for institutional entry, continued operation, and closure--these data support oversight, accountability, and consumer transparency. This brief summarizes…

While research on Learning Analytics (LA) is plentiful, it often prioritises perspectives on LA systems over the practical ways instructors use data to analyse and refine the learning process per se. The present study addresses this inadequacy by investigating how student data is employed by educators in UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and…

This article explores potential uses, misuses, beneficiaries, and tensions of learning analytics in higher education. While those promoting and using learning analytics generally agree that ethical practice is imperative, and student privacy and rights are important, navigating the complex maze of ethical dilemmas can be challenging, particularly…

Higher education has faced increased pressure to prove its quality through 'economic efficiency' and 'value for money', thrusting institutions into what researchers call an 'audit culture'. This study explores whether and how the audit culture has impacted educational developers in Canadian post-secondary institutions. Results include a summary of…

The federal trust responsibility is a legal obligation, rooted in legal and political precedent, in which the U.S. government commits to protect tribal sovereignty, resources, and welfare. For Indigenous communities, there is a long history of broken promises between the U.S. and tribal governments through discriminatory policies and a lack of…

Institutions of higher education are asked to consider how their work can advance equity in institutional outcomes. Assessment, too, has been asked to consider the ways in which traditional student assessment "privileges and validates certain types of learning and evidence of learning over others" (Montenegro and Jankowski 2017, p. 5).…

Student privacy is a critical area of higher education that deserves greater focus, particularly as student data digitalization increases. Many colleges and universities use data literacy as a way to prepare students, sometimes from different disciplines, to work with others' data postgraduation. Data literacy can be an avenue for helping all…

Purpose: As one of the buzzwords in the present age with considerable impacts in tertiary institutions, social media use in online teaching, learning and information dissemination have been extensively discussed in extant literature. This paper aims to explore the existing campus sustainability appraisal (CSA) tools to identify the length at which…

It is essential to save lives during emergencies not only in hospitals but also in colleges and universities. Failure to identify risks and take prompt action during catastrophes and emergency situations could result in the loss of life and property for the campus community. This research aims to explore the feasibility of using data analytics to…

Over recent decades, higher education infrastructures have become increasingly digitized and datafied. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated adoption of online learning platforms, trading the walls of the classroom for digital systems. Yet the surveillance, privacy, and discrimination issues that such systems raise are minimally understood by those…

The U.S. Department of Education has required educational collection and reporting. For postsecondary institutions, this requirement has evolved from the Higher Education General Information Survey (HEGIS), which was used from the 1960s to the 1980s, to the Integrated postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) (Aliyeva, Cody, & Low, 2018).…

Complete College America (CCA) is partnered with the National Student Clearinghouse in promoting the latter's Postsecondary Data Partnership (PDP), a data and reporting tool for tracking student success metrics. The PDP is offered at nominal cost, built for democratized data access, and encompasses transfer data native to Clearinghouse products,…

Most higher education institutions in the United States would not be able to answer, "how many LGBTQ+ students are at your school?" Rarely are colleges and universities asking students to self-identify their sexual or gender identity, leading to disconnect with the community, gaps of information, and difficulty with outreach. The purpose…