UK Students’ Concerns About Security and Privacy of Online Higher Education Digital Technologies in the Coronavirus Pandemic

Basmah Almekhled, Basmah Almekhled, Helen Petrie

2023

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic has led to major changes in higher education around the world. Higher education institutions (HEIs) moved to completely online learning and a range of new technologies including online videoconferencing and chat tools. Research has shown that users have privacy and security concerns about such tools, but little is known about the attitudes of HEI students to these issues, apart from reluctance to use webcams during online teaching. A survey of 71 UK HEI students explored attitudes and concerns about privacy and security in online teaching in the pandemic. Participants knew little about institutional policies on these issues and few had had any training. Ratings of concern across a range of issues were generally low, however in open-ended questions, a range of concerns such as being recorded without permission, unauthorised people entering and disrupting of online sessions, not knowing where recordings are stored and who has access to them. The main concerns about online teaching situations related to being monitored in examinations. HEIs moved very rapidly to deploy online technologies for teaching in response to the pandemic, but going forward, more transparency and information to students could alleviate many of these concerns and create better informed students.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Almekhled B. and Petrie H. (2023). UK Students’ Concerns About Security and Privacy of Online Higher Education Digital Technologies in the Coronavirus Pandemic. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU, ISBN 978-989-758-641-5, SciTePress, pages 483-492. DOI: 10.5220/0011993500003470

in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu23,
author={Basmah Almekhled and Helen Petrie},
title={UK Students’ Concerns About Security and Privacy of Online Higher Education Digital Technologies in the Coronavirus Pandemic},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU,},
year={2023},
pages={483-492},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0011993500003470},
isbn={978-989-758-641-5},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU,
TI - UK Students’ Concerns About Security and Privacy of Online Higher Education Digital Technologies in the Coronavirus Pandemic
SN - 978-989-758-641-5
AU - Almekhled B.
AU - Petrie H.
PY - 2023
SP - 483
EP - 492
DO - 10.5220/0011993500003470
PB - SciTePress