How Third Parties Can Collect Student Data Without Parental or Individual Consent

Henry Kronk writes:

With each new semester and school year, educators are constantly seeking to determine how they can improve their teaching methods and learning outcomes. And in the past few years, that quest has repeatedly taken the same route: digital technology. Pedagogies like personalized or blended learning have shown promising results. Use of tools such as G Suite for Education by Google, AI-powered platforms, or curricula that direct content to students using deep learning algorithms have begun to change they way students learn. But there’s another aspect of these teaching methods that many parents have found difficult to stomach—they collect student data.

In order to personalize learning, an application needs to know a thing or two about the learner it’s teaching. That means they’ll need to track students’ grades, keep track of areas in which they study and spend the most amount of time, along with countless other metrics.

Many services also collect student data for their own purposes. These companies typically offer their product for free or at a very low cost.