Signal Beyond Compliance: A Proposed Framework for Ethical Governance of Student Data in Learning Analytics

Summary

Sahana Varadaraju and Bharathwaj Vijayakumar published a paper addressing the growth of learning analytics in higher education, which has expanded institutions' capacity to monitor engagement, predict academic difficulty and target support using student data. The authors argue that governance of this data has often remained compliance-first, centered on meeting baseline legal requirements such as FERPA and GDPR, and that legal compliance alone does not resolve questions of fairness, student agency, accountability or educational purpose. They therefore propose the LEAGUE framework, a six-pillar model covering lawfulness, equity, agency, governance, utility and ethics by design, developed through a conceptual synthesis of scholarship in learning analytics, educational data mining, data ethics, educational policy, value-sensitive design and capability-oriented approaches to educational justice. The paper demonstrates how the framework could be applied through an illustrative early-alert case study. Through this it aims to show that institutions can review learning analytics practices in a more transparent and educationally meaningful way.