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Visibility is an important determinant of harm to
privacy. Meanwhile, one of the essential social
software features, the social translucence, includes
visibility of participants and their activities to one
another. (Erickson, 2000) It is advised for systems
supporting communication and collaboration among
large groups of people.
In the context of IS design, we must admit, that a
certain level of privacy can be traded for a gain in
another IS quality or aspect, being it any desired IS
feature or functionality, e.g. mediation of
interpersonal communication or better user comfort.
Designers are expected to have a good reason for the
tradeoff, however. They should clearly present and
explain it to the user, in the case of both default and
the user maintained privacy settings.
Basic system usage should be possible without
involving users in the privacy setting, for those who
don't care sufficiently, while the highest possible
level of privacy is preserved by default. For
advanced users, who value control over information,
we have good experience with optional settings,
which can lower one's own privacy when desired.
Individuals are willing to trade off privacy
concerns for economic benefits (Hann, 2002) and we
can confirm such behavior with non-economic and
even indirect benefits.
2.1 User Privacy within an Educational
Information System
For the purpose of this study, the goals of an
Educational Information System (EIS) can be
defined as improving the management of education
and providing the digital learning environment.
Even though it is invaluable for the academic
departments, the major EIS use involve students.
Employes usually get proper instructions how to
treat student information privacy and deal with it
accordingly. (Earp 2001) It is inevitable to balance
students' privacy concerns while increasing their
engagement in computer mediated learning at the
same time. (Siemens 2013) Privacy concerned
students have interest in avoiding or selectively
limiting their exposure.
The largest group of users are applicants, in the
case of EIS administering an online admission
procedure.
2.2 Masaryk University Information
System
Being developed since 1999, Web-based
Information System of Masaryk University (IS MU)
hosts numerous applications utilized for managing
study-related records, e-learning tools and those
facilitating communication inside the University. It
is used by more than 30,000 users (of the total of
44,000 students and staff members) a day. It is also
outsourced to another higher education institutions.
As a basic feature, every user has a customizable
personal profile page, by default visible to logged in
users. Students have access to the private list of
enrolled courses. The IS serves as an educational
environment, e.g. stores study materials, collects
homework, includes discussion forums or runs and
evaluates examination tests.
Admissionçprocedures are a part of IS MU.
About 70,000 students apply each year.
Students' and applicants' privacy is considered to
be important of course. Default high privacy settings
can be changed at the user will. We will examine
three of these opt-in settings and their impact on
users' performance in the following chapters.
2.2.1 Opt-in Visibility among Classmates
As IS MU developers, we value student privacy a
lot, indeed, and therefore we do not provide
complete list of classmates. Since we also want to
encourage communication and collaboration among
students, someones presence has to be disclosed in
the specific situations during learning process, such
as the contribution to the discussion forum or a
shared assignment. Eventually, students would
become acquainted anyway in the corresponding
situations during the in-person education form of the
full-time study. A part of students expect to be
visible to classmates and asking our user support
personnel for navigation to the list of students.
On top of that, since Spring 2011, students are
provided with the choice to reveal one's own course
enrollment, but only to classmates which apply for
the same option. Second and slightly weaker form of
disclosure is to reveal of one's registration for a
shared examination date. Opt-in enrollment/
registration disclosure option is provided for every
single course/exam or globally for all courses/exams
ever attended.
2.2.2 Opt-in Visibility among Applicants
In the case of the admission procedure, applicants
are provided with the choice to reveal their county of
residence, but only to applicants which apply for the
same option and for the same field of study as well.
DoDesperateStudentsTradeTheirPrivacyforaHope?-AnEvidenceofthePrivacySettingsInfluenceontheUser
Performance
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