Abstract
The intersection between higher education, technology, and mHealth is growing at a rapid pace, bringing with it an array of implications for data privacy. It is important for instructional designers to attend to these new and constantly shifting data privacy considerations when developing mHealth interventions. Therefore, with a connection to both extant instructional design literature and sociocultural theory, the authors of the current work provide strategies for developing more privacy-conscious mHealth interventions for the higher education community.
TopIntroduction
Although health-related interventions can involve the community at large, there are also times when these interventions are directly related to a higher education campus community. Also, there have been numerous uses for applications (apps) and mobile technology in higher education (France et al., 2016; Ibacache, 2019), and some of those uses have included information sharing and engagement related to individual health, such as apps for stress, anxiety, or time management, as well as community health—without much information on how the privacy components of those interactions align with pre-existing university policies or users’ perspectives on the implications for their privacy. However, the quickly converging landscape of public health and United States (U.S.) higher education necessitates interventions that address the implications of app integration and what that means for prospective app users and mHealth overall, especially as it relates to data privacy. Therefore, the current chapter explores using sociocultural learning theory to develop instructional design interventions that support using mHealth in ways that are more transparent, inclusive, and attentive to users’ data privacy.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Application (App): Software for a computer or mobile device.
Higher Education Community: Includes colleges and universities as a whole with a focus on students, professors/instructors, staff/administrators both singly and collectively, particularly as it relates to addressing data privacy.
Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA): A United States (U.S.) federal law that governs the rights of parents and others to access education records for children (K-12) and postsecondary students over age 18.
Data Privacy: The protection of data that includes sensitive and confidential information, as well as information that users would otherwise not want shared without their knowledge or permission.
Collaborative Knowledge: Information and/or skills acquired through working with and learning from others, especially as it relates to communities of learners.
Technology Integration: The incorporation of technology—digital and non-digital—into personal and professional spaces. The current work has a particular emphasis on digital technology integration.
Internet of Things: The various objects connecting and exchanging data using the internet.