Abstract

This paper discusses surveillance and privacy historically pertaining to tools of pedagogy that include the Internet. This paper analyses students’ sense of privacy when taking online classes using Blackboard. Since the beginning of technologies of self, people have both embraced surveillance technologies for personal benefit and detested its reach when they felt victimized. However, with the Edward Snowden’s revelations of massive US government snooping, it becomes imperative to revisit surveillance studies to include data collection not only by corporations and democratic governments, but by institutions of higher learning as well. Higher education is a democratic practice, where students select classes to take based on their majors. When they use Blackboard, they are exposed to data collection by several parties such as (internally) the school IT administrators and the professors; and (externally) through WiFi hotspots, shared computers in libraries, telecommunications companies and of course the government. Given the myriad of opportunities for discovery, students were asked and observed to analyze their awareness about surveillance and privacy. Most feel the amount of surveillance is necessary for the conduct of education.