Week 5 Reflection

This week’s readings helped me think more critically about intellectual property, privacy, and ethics in Web 2.0 and social media learning environments. In previous weeks, I focused on how social media tools can support learning, communities, professional learning networks, tags, algorithms, and crowdsourcing. This week pushed me to think about the responsibilities that come with using those tools. Online learning is not only about participation and connection. It also involves questions about who owns digital work, who can access learner data, how long information remains visible, and whether students can participate safely.

One important idea from this week is that student-created digital artifacts are not just assignments. They can include words, images, sounds, clicks, posts, comments, videos, and other traces of learning. Dennen (2016) raises important questions about who can access and use these digital course artifacts. This made me reflect on my own participation in blogs, discussion boards, and online communities. When I write a blog post for class, it is part of my learning and also part of my digital identity. It may remain searchable or visible beyond the class. This means educators should be transparent about how student work will be used, who can see it, and whether students have choices about privacy.

In online learning spaces, students often share more data than they realize. They may share names, photos, locations, identities, opinions, learning behaviors, clicks, and social connections. Dennen (2015) discusses how technology transience changes privacy in online learning. Tools may disappear, change ownership, update policies, or store learner data in ways students did not expect. This is especially important when educators ask students to use external platforms rather than institutionally supported tools.

This week also made me think about privacy literacy. Kumar and Byrne (2022) describe privacy literacy as something that should be taught rather than assumed. I think this is important because many students know how to use social media casually, but that does not mean they understand how to manage privacy, audiences, data collection, or digital footprints. 

This connects strongly to my interest in higher education and international students. International students may face additional privacy concerns when participating online. They may worry about visa status, immigration rules, political expression, cultural expectations, future employment, or being misunderstood in a second language. For these students, being required to participate publicly on social media may not feel like a neutral assignment. Educators should recognize that students have different levels of comfort and risk when making their learning visible online.

Reference

Dennen, V. P. (2015). Technology transience and learner data: Shifting notions of privacy in online learning. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 16(2), 45-60.

Dennen, V. P. (2016). Ownership of digital course artifacts: Who can access and use your words, images, sounds, and clicksLinks to an external site.? Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 17(4), 5-19.

Kumar, P. C., & Byrne, V. L. (2022). The 5Ds of privacy literacy: a framework for privacy educationLinks to an external site.. Information and Learning Sciences, 123(7-8), 445-461.