Advancing privacy in learning analytics using differential privacy
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: This paper addresses the challenge of balancing learner data privacy with the use of data in learning analytics (LA) by proposing a novel framework by applying Differential Privacy (DP). The need for more robust privacy protection keeps increasing, driven by evolving legal regulations and heightened privacy concerns, as well as traditional anonymization methods being insufficient for the complexities of educational data. To address this, we introduce the first DP framework specifically designed for LA and provide practical guidance for its implementation. We demonstrate the use of this framework through a LA usage scenario and validate DP in safeguarding data privacy against potential attacks through an experiment on a well-known LA dataset. Additionally, we explore the trade-offs between data privacy and utility across various DP settings. Our work contributes to the field of LA by offering a practical DP framework that can support researchers and practitioners in adopting DP in their works.
Institutions: University of Bergen, University of Belgrade
Language: English
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4406093375