Covid, colleges, and classes

Privacy and security concerns with passively collected location data for digital contact tracing among U.S. college students

“…From this research, we conclude that privacy is among one of the biggest concerns regarding collection of location data for contact tracing purposes, in line with what other studies have found [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. Therefore, any digital contact tracing program utilizing smartphone location data should use the latest privacy-protection measures when implementing such programs.…”

“…Last, our regression results show that students at a public college or university are more likely to share location data when compared to students at a private institution. Public and private college institutions can differ in terms of tuition costs, state versus out-of-state enrollment, and financial incentives, which may impact likelihood of reopening for in-person classes during the COVID-19 pandemic [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. Previous research finds that there is some evidence that public universities, compared to private ones, were more likely to resume classes online rather than in-person during the year of 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic started [21].…”

“…Additionally, college students have been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic as their educational experience has been disrupted by the transition to remote learning and the lack of campus experience. Contact tracing is being widely used as a measure to re-open campuses 'safely' throughout the country while offering in-person classes [5,6].…”

Student-Initiated Research, Consequences, Peer Mentors, and Finding the Hope Inside for MilleniGenZ Students during the COVID-19 Years

“…There were assertions in the scholarly and popular press that institutions of higher education would return to a pre-COVID-19 normal or the Zooming-virtual classroom had become a new standard for higher education. Some scholars asserted that post-COVID was a new normal (Dennis, 2021;Klinenberg & Startz, 2023). Others suggested that technology and the digital age were now a permanent fixture in higher education, but once incorporated into an institution's mission and objectives, higher education would return to a relatively normal state (Ainsworth & McKenzie, 2020;Ipperciel, 2022;State Council of Higher Education for VA, 2021).…”