Data breach prevention is a battle, rarely plain and never simple. For higher education institutions, the Sisyphean aspects of the task are more complex than for industry and business. Two-year colleges have payrolls and vendor contracts like those enterprises. They also have public record and student confidentiality requirements. Colleges must…

Privacy and confidentiality are often of great concern to respondents answering sensitive questions posed by interviewers. Using the 1993-2010 General Social Survey, we examined trends in the provision of social security numbers (SSNs) and correlates of those responses. Results indicate that the rate of SSN provision has declined over the past…

In this article, the author states that school librarians can contribute to an atmosphere that supports intellectual freedom by drawing attention to the subtle messages about community values--messages that are communicated by virtue of what is included or excluded from curricular and co-curricular offerings. The author address issues with…

Increasingly, university and college administrators are contracting out their institutions' operational information technology (IT) needs. Specifically, this means moving from an IT system with a server based at the institution with an in house IT support staff to a cloud based system outside the institution where most of the staff resources are…

The evolution of the resident assistant position and its history are important to understanding its increasing complexities. In this article we examine how court cases and federal legislation, along with changes in popular culture, have altered and shaped the role of the resident assistant. Our premise is that this role, originally relatively…

Background/Context: As states and districts have begun adopting texts inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people, debates about how LGBTQ issues should be represented in the curricular canon have emerged. While existing research investigates curricular questions that are arising as a result of LGBTQ curricular…

Introduction: The analysis of detailed interaction records is fundamental to development of user-centred systems. Researchers seeking such data must recruit volunteers willing to allow tracking of their interactions. This study examines privacy and trust attitudes in the intent to volunteer for research requiring installation of tracking software.…

There is a dearth of research that examines legal literacy among pre-service teachers in Canada. Pre-service teachers' legal literacy refers to the knowledge level that teacher candidates in teacher education programs have with respect to educational law and policy and how it affects their preparation for entering the teaching profession. This…

This issue of "Policy and Practice" offers counselors and student affairs professionals strategies to effectively support the mental health needs of today's students. Students require transparent, connected, and flexible systems that meet the full range of mental health needs. To achieve such systems, institutions must have a robust…

Conventional wisdom in sales management encourages public delivery of positive feedback, and private delivery of negative feedback. In stark contrast, U.S. educators typically provide all performance feedback in relative (if not strict) privacy to comply with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). To investigate this discrepancy,…

Ethical and legal issues are dealt with daily by school counselors (Bodenhorn, 2006; Moyer, Sullivan & Growcock, 2012). Despite the prevalence of these issues, few resources exist to assist these professionals when making ethical and legal decisions. In addition, a lack of supervision for school counselors and managing complexities inherent…

The banking industry is being challenged by shareholders and consumers to provide its products in the most efficient manner, provide good customer service, and earn a fair profit. Although the infrastructure is in place to serve most customers through Internet banking, the number of customers using this channel is less than expected. The purpose…

The growth of mobile phone use has paralleled increased reports of identity theft. Identity theft can result in financial loss and threats to a victim's personal safety. Although trends in identity theft are well-known, less is known about individual cell phone users' attitudes toward identity theft and the extent to which they connect it to cell…

The January 2014 edition of the ECAR Update subscriber newsletter included an informal poll on information privacy practices. The poll was intended to collect a quick snapshot of the higher education community's thoughts on this important topic during Data Privacy Month. Results of the poll will be used to inform EDUCAUSE research, programs,…

Schools use data for different purposes, which have different degrees of impact on a student's educational experience: administrative, instructional, assessment and measurement, and optional/noneducational. To the extent feasible, parental choice policies should be structured according to the use of the data in question. Parents should have more…