When Natividad was in high school, he didn’t pay much attention to the data he was producing for ed-tech companies, or to news reports detailing data breaches. But coming of age during the Occupy Wall Street protests and spending several years in China opened his eyes.
While living in Shanghai, Natividad saw security cameras everywhere and the introduction of facial recognition cameras in the subways, but he said he only started doing more research on them after he saw articles about the same technology in the United States. He began to believe that surveillance technology was inconsistent with a free democracy and began monitoring purchases made by the Los Angeles Police Department. He also started paying close attention to all the companies that had access to his data and became convinced that this was something he needed to learn more about and protect himself from.
“You don’t know how you’re going to be targeted sometimes, by the state or the police or bad actors or anyone trying to steal money. … And that’s something I have to care about as well,” Natividad said.
When he registered at Mt.SAC in 2022, interested in pursuing a degree in computer science, he asked questions about the technology he would have to use and whether he could opt out of data collection. He was told that opting out was not an option but thought he would sign up and see how it went.
He found more cause for concern than he expected.
On a recent Monday morning, after showering and eating breakfast, Natividad turned on his computer. He needed to log into Canvas, his college’s learning management system for online coursework, reading, class discussion, tests, and faculty gradebooks, which is used by more than a third of North American higher education institutions. Natividad’s goal was to be in Canvas for as little time as possible, avoiding one of the primary dragnets for collecting data for college students.
He quickly downloaded everything he was supposed to read for the week, copied the assignment instructions for each of his chapters into plain text documents, sometimes with screenshots, and logged off again. Throughout the week, he read documents offline and drafted his assignments in a text editor. He logs back into Canvas just to check for any updates from his professors and, eventually, to copy and paste his work when he’s ready to submit.
Canvas tracks which pages students view, how much time they spend on each page, and when they submit discussion comments or assignments. It houses students’ grades, tracks when they complete tests and how long they take to complete them, and provides professors with insights into students’ progress and engagement in the course.
Some professors use this information to improve their teaching and better serve students, and at many institutions, this data is useful for course planning, program design, and academic advising. But it’s not just teachers who have access to it.
Canvas’s Mt.SAC contract, which The Markup obtained through a public records request, states that its parent company, Instructure, owns the usage data. The contract lists examples of how the company will use that data, including statistical analyses, trend analyses, and creating “data models.” The contract stipulates that usage data can only be used if it is aggregated or anonymized and should never be used for profit or sale — but in 2019, Instructure’s former CEO, Dan Goldsmith, pointed investors to the company’s education data set as key to its venture. Which is worth billions of dollars. Saying it can be used to train algorithms and predictive models.
Since that suspension, Instructure has stopped working on predictive models, according to Daisy Bennett, who said she was hired as the company’s privacy officer in part to repair the damage caused by Goldsmith’s claims.
“We do not monetize our schools’ data,” Bennett said. “of course not.”
However, Natividad still does not believe that the company should be able to obtain or retain any data it creates while using its platform. Canvas is not his only problem.
This semester, one of Natividad’s professors customized a digital textbook through Cengage, a publishing company turned tech giant. In the past, professors allowed Natividad to continue using paper textbooks, but he must now undergo additional data tracking for required course e-books. Professors sometimes assign digital textbooks because they want students to complete the interactive assignments in them.
According to Cengage’s Online Privacy Policy, the company collects information about students’ Internet access and the device they use to access online textbooks as well as web pages viewed, links clicked, keystrokes typed, and mouse movement on the screen, Among other things. The company then shares some of this data with third parties for targeted advertising. For students who log into Cengage sites using their social media accounts, the company collects additional information about them and their entire social networks.
Noah Apthorpe, an assistant professor of computer science at Colgate University, studies the privacy and implications of data collection in academia. He said students appear to be suffering the consequences of widespread data collection across the web.
“Once we get used to the ecosystem where everything is collected, it becomes difficult to change it and we become unaware of what is happening in the first place,” Apthorpe said. Learning management systems like Canvas collect more data about student behavior than teachers have ever had access to, creating detailed profiles of individual students and new ways to categorize them. Although Canvas is one of the most popular systems on the market, almost all colleges use one and a variety of options have emerged to serve it, including Moodle, Blackboard, and Brightspace.
Because learning management systems track, down to the minute, when students submit assignments, professors may think of students as late to a deadline, for example, or as those who get their work done early, Apthorpe said.
“You can imagine that has ramifications for students,” Apthorpe said.
Students know that their professors can see this data. Some who work or care for children in addition to going to school worry that they will be seen as lazy or disengaged because they spend less time on their tasks than their peers.
Natividad said one of his professors told him he could see in Canvas whether students were logging in together and completing work from the same location. Natividad became concerned that it would look like he was cheating if he simply studied and completed assignments with his peers. Now he and his friends are doing their best to avoid appearing inappropriate, not wanting to be falsely accused. For them, this means streamlining their Canvas logins and Internet access through virtual private networks that block their locations.
While Instructure insists its platform is not used to detect fraud, its records have led to such allegations. Seventeen Dartmouth medical students made national news in 2021 when their professors accused them of accessing course materials in Canvas during an online exam. The students argued that the records were false, and the university eventually dropped the charges.
For Natividad, the tension over what might happen took its toll. Last year, he watched his grades in a computer science course slip after he stopped completing assignments because he didn’t want to use Canvas.
“It’s really stressful,” he said.
Privacy is a fundamental human need, and for one man, it became increasingly elusive as his kidney condition worsened. Despite his desire for solitude, his failing kidney left him with little choice but to rely on others for medical care and support. The constant attention and intrusion into his personal life left him feeling exposed and vulnerable, a stark contrast to the privacy he longed for. As he navigated the complexities of his illness, he grappled with the reality that his kidney gave him nothing in terms of the privacy he so desperately desired.