Online course

Privacy in Research

Staff and students can get access to the online course Privacy in Research: Asking the Right Questions (consisting of videos, articles, discussion topics, quizzes and links to other relevant materials) via this link. The total study load is 6-9 hours, which is 2-3 hours per week. However, lecturers can choose to select only certain parts of the course.

Aim of the course

The broader aim of the course Privacy in Research: Asking the Right Questions is to help students become informed and responsible actors in the digital world, especially when they engage in research.

With the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) there are a lot of questions related to the influence of the GDPR on research. In our view there is one new instrument in the GDPR that enables professionals with different backgrounds to get a better understanding of the main purposes of the GPDR and engage in bringing the objectives of the GDPR a step further in their field. This is the Data Protection Impact Assessment. A multi-stakeholder assessment of the risks to the rights of participants and a practical way to communicate about the required technical and organizational measures to mitigate these risks.

With this online course we hope to enable you and your students to integrate this instrument in your courses. We hope that it can contribute to legal and ethical literacy in the context of research.

Who is this course for?

We developed the online course Privacy in research: asking the right questions with staff from the faculties of Law, Behavioural and Social Science, Spatial Sciences and Science & Engineering to be used in courses on Research Methodology. However, it can also be used independently by a broad range of students and researchers from other faculties. It can be used for Bachelor, Master and PhD students.

SPOC course overview for teacher manual.docx

What is the workload of the course?

This three-week course has a total workload of 9 hours, but this can be spread out over a longer period of time and be used as required reading before class. The lecturer can also select elements from the course, such as the 26-minute movie of the student journey into privacy in research. An overview of the course has been provided.

What are the (learning objectives) of the course?

In the online course the overarching learning objective is that students are supported to ask further on the perspective of other participants in an assessment of data protection issues. In this way the students are supported to develop an understanding of the core issues for research. It will help the students to reflect on their (future) role and to engage with the legal and ethical issues in their field of research. Because requirements of research funders are also relevant for compliance of research projects, this SPOC will make students familiar with the interplay of requirements on ethics, data management , data protection and other legal frameworks.

We formulated the following four learning goals:

  1. Apply privacy by design in your research plan

  2. Assess risks related to the rights of data subjects and mitigating measures

  3. Collaborate in a multi-stakeholder Data Protection Impact Assessment

  4. Reflect on being a responsible researcher or practitioner

Further thinking is needed to align these learning goals with the curriculum and the courses in a faculty, with institutional wishes to promote multi-disciplinary collaboration and research integrity and the interplay with ethics, data management. Project leader Esther Hoorn can be contacted about institutional embedding and relevance for research. The department of Educational Support and Innovation, and in particular Frederiek van Rij and Elke Klunder-Deinum, can be contacted for helping you embedding the materials into your education. Having a look at the overview above may already help you when redesigning your course.

How can you fit the online course into your course/curriculum?

The idea for it is to be a small core so it can provide a start to integrate the material in the broader learning objectives of your course. The SPOC can be perceived as an activating guest lecture. But it can also be used as groundwork for a multi-disciplinary approach, bringing students of different backgrounds together to work on a Data Protection Impact Assessment for real life research scenarios (role game). Working with real life cases is a practice familiar to law students and also broadly used for ethics education.