Privacy Awareness of Students and Its Impact on Online Learning Participation – A Case Study

Abstract : This paper is based on a survey that addresses two main hypotheses - that there is a positive correlation between students’ level of participation and their privacy awareness, and students with high levels of privacy awareness need to be assured that their open learning activities are protected from potential threats in order to achieve positive results. Results show that in fact there is a correlation between students’ awareness of privacy and their predisposition to share and to participate in open leaning contexts. This is especially evident when students share their school assignments, grading results and teacher’s feedback or even their comments with others.