Future of Privacy Forum Joins SafeInsights Education Research Project

• By Rhea Kelly
• 05/16/24

The Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) is partnering with OpenStax, the Rice University-based publisher of free, open educational resources, as part of the National Science Foundation-funded SafeInsights project.

Announced in April 2024, SafeInsights will bring together researchers, education institutions, and digital learning platforms to create a large-scale education research hub that will enable long-term research on the predictors of effective learning while protecting student privacy, OpenStax shared in a news announcement.

"By design, SafeInsights stringently protects student privacy through an innovative architecture that makes large-scale information about learning available for research without revealing that protected information to researchers," explained J.P. Slavinsky, technical director at OpenStax and executive director of SafeInsights.

The Future of Privacy Forum will collaborate with SafeInsights partners to enable privacy-preserving research studies to better understand student learning, the organization said. 

"Through this project, we're excited to lend the Future of Privacy Forum's expertise to help inform how researchers access rich learning data without compromising student privacy," said John Verdi, FPF's senior vice president for policy, in a statement. "Since its founding, FPF's work has been driven by a belief that fair and ethical use of technology can improve people's lives while safeguarding our privacy. SafeInsights' model and directive will be critical to advancing the next generation of education research."

Other SafeInsights partners and participating institutions include:

• R&D partners with expertise in learning and education research, open science, technology, student data privacy, community engagement, and project management, such as AEM Corporation, Arizona State University (ASU), Center for Open Science, Digital Promise, Georgia Institute of Technology, Morehouse College, National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships, Tapia Center for Excellence and Equity in Education, TERC, The University of Chicago, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Pennsylvania, Washington University in St. Louis, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute; 
• Digital learning platforms ASSISTments, EdPlus at ASU, CourseKata, Infinite Campus, iSTART, Quill.org, TERC's Data Arcade, UPenn's Massive Online Open Courses, and The WritingPal;
• And additional thought partners and collaborators.

"Better research leads to better learning. SafeInsights will enable a community of researchers to safely study large, diverse groups of students over time as they use different learning platforms," commented Richard Baraniuk, Rice professor, OpenStax founder, and project lead. "Researchers will be able to explore new ways to understand learning for students at all levels of education, which can lead to unprecedented discoveries and next-level innovations."

For more information on SafeInsights, visit safeinsights.org.