I have been exploring this idea of privacy in relation to immersive virtual reality (IVR) in K-12 environments and during this time I have flip-flopped back and forth on whether I think it actually matters. Educational IVR, where a headset completely immerses a student in the VR experience, is still reasonably expensive and current usage appears to focus on what are essentially virtual field trips. These experiences don’t raise much concern over student privacy and are not where the future of educational IVR is headed. The future involves high-end hardware that allows for mixed reality experiences where a student can interact with virtual elements in the world around them (Lynch, 2020; Lynn, 2019; Quaintance, 2019). And when I dug into how companies see the future of educational IVR I was a little more concerned.
Companies like Veative Labs (2019), a developer of educational IVR platforms, see a future where learning analytics are central to IVR in the classroom. And why not? High-end IVR equipment offers an immense amount of data that can be used to uncover insights on users. If the hardware includes eye and body tracking it can help diagnose autism, reveal sexual orientation, uncover emotional states, and much more (Dick, 2021; Hosfelt & Shadowen, 2020; Miller et al., 2020; Pfeuffer et al., 2019). It isn’t the private companies behind the hardware I’m concerned about, it’s the schools who will be acting on this data.
Consider a future where a student in grade 2 uses IVR to complete a learning assessment. The school has gathered data from previous IVR sessions and is noticing a trend that leads to the realization that this student likely has undiagnosed ADHD. Would this diagnosis help improve their learning potential? Possibly, but is it the school’s role to uncover that information through a learning assessment? My daughter, who is quite young, is a big fan of VR. I asked her recently if she would like to use VR at school and she excitedly said she would. I then asked her if she would still want to use it if it meant the school would be able to find out things about her health or emotional state. She looked at me like I was crazy and said “no, I wouldn’t.” I completely agree with her, but I worry that schools won’t.
References
Dick, E. (2021). Balancing User Privacy and Innovation in Augmented and Virtual Reality. Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. https://itif.org/publications/2021/03/04/balancing-user-privacy-and-innovation-augmented-and-virtual-reality
Hosfelt, D., & Shadowen, N. (2020). Privacy Implications of Eye Tracking in Mixed Reality. ArXiv E-Prints, 2007, 6.
Lynch, M. (2020, November 23). What Will We See From Augmented Reality in the Future? The Tech Edvocate. https://www.thetechedvocate.org/what-will-we-see-from-augmented-reality-in-the-future/
Lynn, A. (2019, May 1). What is the future of VR in education? Electronic Specifier. https://www.electronicspecifier.com/products/vr-ar/opportunity-for-virtual-reality-in-any-subject-area
Miller, M. R., Herrera, F., Jun, H., Landay, J. A., & Bailenson, J. N. (2020). Personal identifiability of user tracking data during observation of 360-degree VR video. Scientific Reports, 10, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-74486-y
Pfeuffer, K., Geiger, M. J., Prange, S., Mecke, L., Buschek, D., & Alt, F. (2019). Behavioural Biometrics in VR: Identifying People from Body Motion and Relations in Virtual Reality. Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300340
Quaintance, Z. (2019, April 24). Students Work to Guide Future of VR Learning in High Schools. Government Technology. https://www.govtech.com/education/k-12/Students-Work-to-Guide-Future-of-VR-Learning-in-High-Schools.html
Veative Labs. (2019, October 16). The Future of Education and VR. Veative Labs. https://www.veative.com/blog/future-education-vr/
Interesting point, David. While I have not looked into this to the degree you have, I have “relatively” a lot of experience using VR in a K – 12 setting. I even help educate children (and adults) on how companies use data. I find it odd that you worry more about how schools use data rather than private companies that willingly admit to its exploitation. I noticed you quote the idea of using hardware to diagnose autism, emotional states, etc., worrying; however, I think you fail to see this is already happening in classrooms (and there is an outrageous cost schools must pay to get official documentation). Teachers do not need hardware to view this as there are a set of cues that lead them to these conclusions based on real-world interactions. In fact, this touches on something education called the hidden curriculum, in which it is viewed as the school’s job to help socialize and emotionally stabilize students. I cannot count how many times I have, and many other educators, have argued for a “Maslow before Bloom” approach. For the uninitiated, it simply means as teachers, we must address the students’ physical, social, and emotional needs (known as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) before we can ever hope to achieve some form of learning (through Bloom’s Taxonomy). I think we forget how much individual interactions give away much of this information, and while it could be used to the detriment of the student, in most cases, it is used explicitly to create an environment more conducive to the student’s natural state. Yet, it is rarely discussed due to the social awkwardness of the sensitive topics.
Michael, you’re not supposed to comment on my blog posts! You’re supposed to comment on topics you know less about. But in all seriousness, I really appreciate your comment. I started out looking at the private companies but, as you’ve said, they willingly admit to its exploitation. Oculus (aka. FB) made things pretty obvious when they required a Facebook login. I would argue that many people (not all, but many) understand what they’re sacrificing when they use hardware from Facebook or HTC. But then these companies are, debatably, able to fail. People can choose to not use them, other companies might emerge that are better, or the government steps in and says their behaviour is unacceptable. Schools are different. While we know private companies just want to monetize our data, people don’t really know what schools want to do. It’s difficult to opt out of a school (though not impossible considering I was homeschooled) and schools are assumed to act in the best interests of students. I have nothing against schools, but it wouldn’t take much to justify gathering sensitive data to help students, even if it doesn’t. Consider how the BC government has temporarily dropped the FIPPA requirement to get signed consent if student data is stored outside Canada because of COVID-19 (order M085). You mentioned that teachers don’t need hardware for these assessments of behaviour, emotion, health diagnoses, but imagine a school had the ability to take that out of the hands of teachers because an MR activity the kids participate in does it more accurately? I understand the outrageous costs of official documentation and I would rather the assessments happen when the children know it is happening than during a completely unrelated activity. Your individual interactions aren’t stored on a server somewhere, but it would be in an IVR context. At the core of my concern is the potentially justifiable gathering of sensitive data because it will help students. It’s a bit of the idea that technology can go against your wishes or rights because it is “helping” you. I don’t think we’ll get there, but it was interesting to delve into the idea that it could.
Hi David,
In regards to
” I completely agree with her, but I worry that schools won’t”
I speak from experience when I say they already don’t. I work with parents who struggle to manage their children’s challenging behaviours.
This is one way how they get referred. Someone from school (usually a teacher) notices that a child struggles with emotional regulation or demonstrates challenging behaviours. This is reported to a school counsellor or a social worker. And often to parents of course.
You mentioned in the beginning that you’re an adult and your children do not have the same luxuries of choice. Well, in many cases, children are not asked for consent. They are mandated to see a counsellor or speak with a social worker. Their privacy is often not considered when it comes to sharing details with a counsellor or social worker who is involved. It’s a tough dilemma though. On one hand, I understand why your daughter would not want the school to know her emotional state or the state of her mental health. On the other hand, society often feels like they need to, in order to protect children against depression, self-destructive behaviors, suicides, etc
I struggle with these two sides of the coin. It’s important that children are able to get the help they need, but I struggle with the idea that assessing their need for help could be automated by VR. I mean, I even struggle with schools getting too involved because part of me sees it as another step in the outsourcing of parenting. I know that, for many people, the school has children for more time than their parents so who else is going to see if their child is depressed or suffers from a learning disorder? I don’t even have a problem with schools checking on those things, but I don’t want a piece of technology to do it while the kid thinks they are exploring in VR as a learning activity. Children definitely need support, but the feeling that the technology they use is constantly monitoring and assessing them probably won’t do much to help those emotional states. If students are at least made aware that they are being assessed within these activities then at least they are being respected enough to be made aware of what is going on.
Hi David,
This is a very interesting topic and does overlap with a lot of my research I have completed, privacy has always been a concern within our new world of technology. I often wonder how the level of privacy is determined dependent upon the technology used.
I look at when my son plays, X-box with his friends online, he uses an online gaming name that I created however, my own personal information is attached to his account. I wonder how much of this information is sold to research companies, or the analytic results of his game playing.
In regards to VR being used for Anxiety research shown that it is a very supportive treatment method currently being used, they are also currently using it for pain management as well as some autism spectrum disorders. It is so fascinating how far technology has come even over the last two years.
I personally believe that maybe VR being used to aid in anxiety or to diagnose ADHD may be a great benefit especially with the children today. From my own personal experience with my daughter, I believe that in some cases the schools systems are failing. My daughter went from a high honors student to failing her classes at the beginning of this year. In her case her high school teachers are not the same and they do not pay much attention to previous academic achievements. They did not have any information on her background or how well or poorly she did academically. I also did not realize how much her marks had been impacted to be honest being a fulltime single mom, working full time and school my self I did not pay attention until it was too late. I wonder now if the schools did implement VR technology into the classrooms perhaps a social class, If it would have collected enough data to predict or flag that she had some mental/ anxiety issues? This past year has been very difficult for everyone and mental health issues have drastically increased. I am interested to see where technology will take us in the next few years and how it will help those suffering with mental health issues.
You bring up some really good points, Cheryl. There are definitely some amazing ways that VR is being used for researching, supporting, and treating a whole range of things. I agree that VR could be a fantastic tool for assessing and supporting students with anxiety, ADHD, and many other emotional and health impacts to their learning, though I dislike the idea of it being done with a technology that isn’t asking for student consent and has the potential to be stored and shared. Your daughter may have benefited from a tool like this, but imagine a student who has anxiety because of COVID-19 and learning from home, yet the data follows them indefinitely. I think it could be a fantastic way to help people, and I’ve gone back and forth on this topic many times. At times I love its ability to assess these areas that would be a huge benefit to students, but then I fear it being done without student knowledge, the data it would generate (shareable, hackable, uncaring data), and that it would only tell a small part of the student’s story. I think most people would agree that, if we have to see ads, we’d rather see more relevant ads… but we don’t like the intrusion into our privacy that leads to this result. Similarly (if anything is similar to targeted ads), we want students to succeed and for those who are struggling to not be left behind… but do we want that to be done by a privately-owned educational VR platform that doesn’t actually care about the student? Maybe. In some cases it might be great, but in others it might be incredibly damaging.