Ensuring Users’ Rights to Privacy, Confidence and Reputation in the Online Learning Environment: What Should Instructors Do to Protect Their Students’ Privacy?

Introduction

What are the rights to privacy, confidence and reputation as they apply to online instruction? While a person’s right to privacy has been recognized in several forums, the right to confidence or trust, and the right to reputation are less discussed. The United States Supreme Court has recognized a right to privacy emanating from the First, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. In Commonwealth countries, the right to privacy can be protected under the equitable doctrine of breach of confidence. Member nations of the Council of Europe accord a right to privacy under Article 8 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

However, what do the rights to privacy, confidence and reputation mean in the educational context; specifically, what do the rights to privacy, confidence and reputation mean in an online classroom environment? More importantly, how do instructors ensure that those rights are protected? Are instructors building safeguards into their courses to protect users’ rights? Are university policies in place to support instructors’ efforts? Are the instructors aware of, and using, those policies?

To date, research has focused on how best to use the online platform to facilitate learning, with limited attention given as to how online instruction might impact the students’ rights to privacy, confidence, and reputation. Francis (2002) noted that online courses bring into play a new set of instructional factors and variables. We argue that chief among these is the matter of online security without which online learning may be constrained.

As the use of information communication technologies in education continues to grow, and as access to information broadens, institutions and their instructors need to find ways to ensure students’ rights to privacy, confidence, and reputation in the online learning environment. It is not that the need to protect students’ rights is new, but rather that the potential for violation of those rights has increased with expanding internet usage. Technology opens up the world to students and students to the world in ways that educators and policy-makers had not thought possible a decade ago, confirming that the information highway is, if you will, a two-way street.

The focus of this chapter is on: (1) U.S. case law relative to privacy in cyber-space and the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA); (2) expectation of privacy in an online setting and what students believe about the privacy of their communications online; (3) what educational online platforms are doing to advise users of privacy issues; (4) what institutions of higher education are currently doing to ensure students’ rights to privacy, confidence and reputation in online learning programs; (5) what instructors are doing to protect students’ privacy, confidence and reputation in their courses; and (6) suggestions as to what steps institutions might take to effect policies and procedures to ensure users the rights to privacy, confidence and reputation in online learning programs.