If you’ve ever clicked “I agree” on a data privacy form without reading it, you’re not alone. And according to a new study, students do the same thing when it comes to the data collected about their learning. But what happens when they actually stop and talk about it?
That’s the question behind a research paper co-authored by Mi3 assistant professor Louis Longin. It explores how students feel about sharing different kinds of personal data, like grades, written work, browsing logs, or even video recordings, with educational technologies. The short answer: context matters a lot more than we might think.
The research team, a collaborative effort with scientists from TUM and KTE, ran an experiment with over a hundred students, placing them in small groups and asking them to evaluate fictional “learning analytics” tools: software that tracks student behaviour to offer personalised feedback. At first, students rated these tools on their own. Then they discussed them as a group, and finally rated them again. This setup allowed the researchers to see not just what students think, but how their opinions shift after a bit of conversation.
The research showed that they did indeed shift. After group discussions, students generally became more cautious. They were less likely to say that sharing their data was acceptable, even though their willingness to use the tools didn’t change much. In other words, talking things through made them more sceptical, but not necessarily less practical.
The type of data being shared turned out to be a big deal. Students were relatively comfortable sharing grades and written text – things that already feel like part of school life. But when it came to more intrusive data, like activity logs (tracking clicks, time spent, etc.) or video recordings, their enthusiasm dropped sharply. After discussion, video data in particular became much less acceptable, suggesting that being “watched” hits a nerve in ways that numbers on a report card don’t.
Interestingly, who received the data, whether it was a teacher, peers, or just the student themselves, didn’t matter as much overall. But there were some nuances. For example, students grew more uneasy about sharing written text with teachers after discussing it, possibly because text can reveal deeper thoughts, opinions, or struggles in a way that feels more personal.
So what does all this mean beyond the classroom? The study argues that current data consent practices, such as those long, dense forms we all ignore, aren’t enough. They treat consent as a one-time checkbox, when in reality, people’s comfort with data sharing depends heavily on context, reflection, and even conversation with others.
The takeaway is surprisingly simple: if you want people to make informed decisions about their data, you have to actually involve them in the process. Give them space to think, discuss, and even change their minds. Because as this study shows, the moment students start talking about data privacy, they start seeing it differently, and often more critically.
Check out the original article and Louis Longin’s profile.
References: Salta, S., Briceno, D., Longin, L., Viberg, O., and Poquet, O. (2026). Learner data in context: students would share grades and text but less so logs and video data. In Proceedings of the LAK26: 16th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (LAK ’26). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 294–304. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3785022.3785066