The security of electronic devices used in the classroom is the subject of a study by the University of Windsor.
Dr. Bonnie Stewart, a professor in the U of W education department, is leading a study on how educators feel about privacy when it comes to the technology used in today's digital classrooms. Stewart says the goal is to show the effectiveness of these devices in how students prepare for teaching careers.
"Classroom tools and platforms are designed to extract data and monitor users in ways the that traditional four walls of a classroom are not," said Stewart in a media release. "Educators and knowledge workers need to better understand the changing system we work and learn in."
The project began in the summer of 2020, when Stewart conducted a survey on how the digital world works in the classroom. A total of 339 educators in higher learning in 26 countries responded.
This time, Stewart is going back to 11 of those respondents to conduct in-depth interviews.
Stewart said people are more at the mercy of technology, as platforms and apps collect information on users, often leading to targeted advertising. She also pointed out that COVID-19, and the technological changes educators were forced to make to deal with it, put the whole issue front and centre.
"Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education has moved online at a scale previously unseen, fast-forwarding academia's entanglement in proprietary, datafied systems," said Stewart. "We need to ask ourselves what are we signing off on, on behalf of our students, and what are failing to teach them to question."
Stewart has been given a $63,500 grant by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to complete the study.
