Background

From its very beginnings, Learning Analytics (LA) has sought to understand the risks associated with a heavy reliance on data and analytics without engaging with the underlying models, algorithms, and assumptions about how students learn (Siemens, 2013).

More recently, concerns have arisen in connection with issues regarding potential inequalities (West et., 2016), discrimination (Jones, 2019), data-surveillance (Selwyn, 2019), algorithmic fairness & bias (Holstein & Doroudi, 2019), as well as advisors' rejection of LA systems because of moral discomfort and violation to a professional, ethical code (Jones, 2019). Cases of misuse of students' data have also been reported regarding teachers' lack of data literacy (Lawson et., 2016).

These issues are all the more pressing in light of protests from, for example, teacher unions in the UK against plans to transform teaching and privatize education data with AI technologies and predictive analytics (Pearson, 2019). Societally, international events have also sparked reflections regarding how structural racism manifests in LA and datasets (Buckingham Shum, 2020). Both research and societal issues concerning data-driven practices in education underscore the seriousness and scope of ethical considerations in the LA community.

While the LA research community has long been interested in the ethics of data-driven practices (e.g., Slade & Prinsloo, 2013; Pardo & Siemens, 2014; Swenson, 2014; Tsai et al., 2019; Drachsler & Greller, 2016; Sclater, 2016; Ferguson, 2019), most of this work has been conducted in conceptual terms (Arnold & Sclater, 2017).

Research on applied ethics has not become pervasive in LA practice, potentially leading to "LA principles and codes of practice being crafted in a theoretical vacuum, far from the practicalities of implementation" (Arnold et al., 2020, p. 2). On this line of reasoning, Kitto & Knight (2019) also stressed the need to engage with concrete cases of the ethics of LA systems "to nurture practical reasoning across the community" (p. 2864).