GDPR for Rebels: An empowering approach to using external technologies [326] Home : ALT Online Winter Conference 2019

Public Group Active 2 years, 5 months ago

Wed, Dec 11 2019, 10:00am – 10:45am

Description

The arrival of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018, created concerns and confusion for university professionals across the UK and beyond. The potential financial and reputational penalties for getting it wrong led to an understandable tightening of policies and practices in many departments and businesses. However, most of the data protection advice and training used to inform those policies is targeted at administrative and marketing practices, not teaching and learning. Even before GDPR, there has been very little official guidance to address the complexity of data protection in digital pedagogy. Confusion arising from wanting to innovate, while adhering to policies that aren’t fit for pedagogical purposes, has led to educators having to choose between being safe, being bold, or pleading ignorance. None of these responses can guarantee meaningful, long-term benefit, from a pedagogical or personal data perspective. But there is another way.

In this session, Liz Hudson will present an alternative approach to using external technologies in compliance with GDPR, which she initially researched and developed while working as a learning technologist at Coventry University (2016-18). Having moved to northern Scotland in 2018, she is now introducing and building on the model at the University of the Highlands and Islands, which is heavily dependent on a range of technologies to connect its distributed learning community.

The session will reframe data protection regulation for a HE learning and teaching context. The focus will be on how external digital tools, like social media and cloud applications, may be used in day-to-day teaching and learning activities in a compliant way. Liz will present a critical and empowering strategy, which delivers and employs information literacy as a risk reduction mechanism. She will argue that this approach may be more sustainable than most risk management strategies, as it strengthens digital compliance through the development and harnessing of organisational digital literacy.

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