(IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 8, No. 4, 2017 22 | Page www.ijacsa.thesai.org Learning Analytics in a Shared-Network Educational Environment: Ethical Issues and Countermeasures Olugbenga Adejo* School of Engineering and Computing University of the West of Scotland Paisley, United Kingdom Thomas Connolly School of Engineering and Computing University of the West of Scotland Paisley, United Kingdom Abstract—The recent trend in the development of education across the globe is the use of the new Learning Analytics (LA) tools and technologies in teaching and learning. The potential benefits of LA notwithstanding, potential ethical issues have to be considered and addressed in order to avoid any legal issues that might arise from its use. As a result of this, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) involved in the development of LA tools need to pay particular attention to every ethical challenges/constraint that might arise. This paper aims to identify and discuss several ethical issues connected with the practice and use of LA tools and technologies in analysing and predicting the performance of students in a shared network environment of HEIs. The study discusses the four ethical issues of Information and Communication Technology namely Privacy, Accuracy, Property and Accessibility (PAPA’s Model) as well as other approaches to explain these future concerns. The paper also presents the empirical evidence of the views of students on the analytical use and storage of their data. The results indicate that even though students have high trust in the privacy and security of their data being used by their institutions, more than half of the students have ethical concerns with the accessibility and storage of their data beyond a certain period. In the light of this, generalised strategies on ethical issues of the use of learners’ data in an HEI shared networked environment are proposed. Keywords—Learning Analytics; Student’s data; Emerging technologies; Ethical Issues; Higher Education I. INTRODUCTION Learning analytics is an emerging technology that is becoming of great use in various areas of education - from the pre-school level to the tertiary level education. Presently, some researchers have also identified its uses in healthcare education and in educational (serious) games [31, 22, 29, 6, and 23]. The adoption of LA technologies has been very dynamic and ever changing as the nature of ICT changes globally. Its importance and benefits are seen in all sections of education, from traditional face-to-face teaching to blended education and e-learning [2]. In the same empirical study, Ali et al. [2] investigated factors influencing adoption of LA tools and found that intuitive interfaces, students‟ learning interaction, perceived usefulness of the tools, sustainability of usefulness among others have great influence on adoption of the tools while the educator‟s pedagogical role has no influence. However, its implementation in the UK is still in the nascent stage, presently nearly half of the HEIs (47.2%) have not implemented LA while another 34% are just considering implementing it. In total, only about 18.9% have either fully or partially implemented it [14]. In predictive analytic use of LA in measuring students‟ performance, over 95% of HEIs are not using it at all with a mere 2.5% making adequate use of it. This low implementation rate has been attributed to the level of understanding of the possible benefits of LA in HEIs apart from the problem of the high cost of initial implementation. In total, only 22.6% of management in HEIs understand the short and long terms benefits of LA use in their institutions [14]. Therefore, one of the recurrent questions from this emerging area of education is how to increase the motivation to use it effectively in HEIs. However, the bulk of the responsibility for its use is on the major stakeholders - the administrators (Institution), the teachers and the students [12, 3]. These three major stakeholders have great responsibilities in the development and use of LA technology.  The Administrators: Identify the technology, propose its use, provide an enabling environment, propose the implementation strategy and monitor the use of the tools. Other responsibilities revolve around administrative decision-making.  The Teachers: decide on the importance, acceptance and adaptability/personalization of the tool to meet the interest and preference of the learner. The teachers assess the suitability of the tools and give feedback on how to improve the functionality and performance.  The Students: determine the impact of the use of the tools on their learning and learning environment. The students give the necessary feedback on the advantages of the tools on their performance. Other stakeholders include the course developer /researchers, computer/network administrators, technicians, data analysts. Therefore, LA implementation is human– centred and thus requires human cooperation for its effective adoption. Though the use of LA is not the panacea to all student problems, it may form a useful tool for identifying students at risk of failing. However, ethical issues need to be considered with implementing LA tools especially now that HEs have systems that link students' demographic data with their educational performance data as well as their interaction with online learning resources to predict their future performance or even recommend material for them [29]. This is often referred to as