ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the challenges of learning analytics that are primarily ethical in nature. Ethical decision making is based on people's worldviews, their individual positions on methodology, the academic and political environment and the assumptions of individual disciplines. Jisc, an educational charity responsible for many aspects of the IT infrastructure for universities and colleges in the UK, was tasked by its stakeholders with providing guidance on the legal and ethical issues of learning analytics, seen as a major barrier to its uptake. The biggest technical challenge for learning analytics may be poor-quality or insufficient data. There is little in the growing literature around learning analytics that refers to philosophy and ethical theory. A growing body of literature is emerging that outlines the questions being raised in institutions as they embark on analytics programmes. Johnson discusses course-recommender systems where students are encouraged to do what people 'like them' have done before.
