Ethical Issues

Privacy

There are a few ethical concerns that can be raised due to our project requiring and utilizing students’ educational information. While making our web app, we need to make certain that we do not break any FERPA, GDPR, or general governmental laws that handle the protection of personal data. This includes setting expectations with the user, ensuring they are aware that the students’ data will be used and stored, and allowing them to opt in or out on any data sharing. In order to protect personal information and ensure that it does not get into the wrong hands, strong data encryption and access controls need to be implemented, which will take place within our software.

Discrimination

We do not envision our software resulting in any racial, gender, or religious discrimination, as our program does not perform or behave any differently when working with different demographic information. To guarantee this, we can include students of all genders, religions, and ethnicities in our testing process to locate any discriminatory activity and make adjustments as needed.

Malicious Use of our Software

Similarly, we do not see our software being used to cause harm to others or the public, as our web app does not include communication with other users or public posts. Therefore, a user should be unable to create any sort of anguish or damage on the platform. However, in order to prevent users from negatively interacting with others, we can censor words/languages using moderation tools that review any content that users may find disturbing or hateful and provide clear terms of service to outline what is expected of our users. Additionally, our software cannot be used to manipulate stored grades, assignment information, or personal information, as our software will not post to Blackboard's servers at any point.