School leaders around the world navigate a learning environment where most students have (or soon will have) ubiquitous access to an Internet-connected device. As a result, districts have implemented ...acceptable use policies (AUPs) to address the ways that students are using those technologies. In this study, we analyzed the AUPs of 75 one-to-one computing school districts in one Midwestern state in the United States. We examined and coded each AUP and identified three major themes. Based on the findings from that analysis, a roadmap for creating a responsive and empowering responsible use policy (RUP) is proposed.
Increasingly users are seen as the weak link in the chain, when it comes to the security of corporate information. Should the users of computer systems act in any inappropriate or insecure manner, ...then they may put their employers in danger of financial losses, information degradation or litigation, and themselves in danger of dismissal or prosecution. This is a particularly important concern for knowledge-intensive organisations, such as universities, as the effective conduct of their core teaching and research activities is becoming ever more reliant on the availability, integrity and accuracy of computer-based information resources. One increasingly important mechanism for reducing the occurrence of inappropriate behaviours, and in so doing, protecting corporate information, is through the formulation and application of a formal ‘acceptable use policy (AUP). Whilst the AUP has attracted some academic interest, it has tended to be prescriptive and overly focussed on the role of the Internet, and there is relatively little empirical material that explicitly addresses the purpose, positioning or content of real acceptable use policies. The broad aim of the study, reported in this paper, is to fill this gap in the literature by critically examining the structure and composition of a sample of authentic policies – taken from the higher education sector – rather than simply making general prescriptions about what they ought to contain. There are two important conclusions to be drawn from this study: (1) the primary role of the AUP appears to be as a mechanism for dealing with unacceptable behaviour, rather than proactively promoting desirable and effective security behaviours, and (2) the wide variation found in the coverage and positioning of the reviewed policies is unlikely to be fostering a coherent approach to security management, across the higher education sector.
For research on pervasive computing technologies and youth to be truly significant, we must ask why mobile devices and social media applications are much less pervasive in the classroom than in other ...parts of youth life. Mobile devices and social media have considerable potential for learning, from both the individual-skills and socialization perspectives. However, acceptable-use policies have limited the use of mobile devices on school campuses as a response to the risks schools face in dealing with disruptive or harmful speech. Certain perceived risks and observed problems with regard to youth online underlie educators' attitudes toward pervasive technologies in formal learning settings. Educators, researchers, and designers must work together to increase understanding of the youth experience with pervasive computing technologies and provide greater access to these systems and applications in the formal schooling context.
While there is extensive literature on the positive effects of institutionalising ethics in organisational culture, our extensive research in information security culture has found no evidence of ...organisations encouraging ethical decision making in situations where information security might be at risk. Security policies, in particular acceptable use policies, have traditionally been written with a strategy of deterrence in mind, but in practice they rely mostly on deontological ethics, i.e. employees doing the right thing, to work. As far back as 1990, evidence has been reported of a widening socio-technical gap, where employees no longer always act according to expected social norms in an organisation. This change in moral behaviour is reducing the effectiveness of acceptable use policies in an organisation. In this paper, an alternative approach to the development of security policies is proposed to encourage ethical decision making based on consequential ethics. Acceptable use policies will need to distinguish between guidelines, standards and procedures, and guidelines will need to be written in such a way that the policy continuously acknowledges that employees are no longer expected to blindly follow these guidelines. And, as acceptable use policies can no longer cover all the possible risks related to an employee’s behaviour, the policy will need to emphasise both explicitly an implicitly that employees are expected to make an ethical judgement on all their actions that may possibly endanger the organisation’s security. This will in turn have positive effects on the usability and suitability of the acceptable use policy to the organisation.
While freedom of speech is a defining characteristic of the United States, the First Amendment right is often regulated within certain environments. For years, schools have attempted to monitor and ...regulate student communication both within the educational environment and in student use of social media and other online communication tools. "Censorship and Student Communication in Online and Offline Settings" is a comprehensive reference source that addresses the issues surrounding student's right to free speech in on and off-campus settings. Featuring relevant coverage on the implications of digital media as well as constitutional and legal considerations, this publication is an essential resource for school administrators, educators, students, and policymakers interested in uncovering the reasons behind student censorship and the challenges associated with the regulation of students' free speech. Following a foreword by Eunice A. Grippaldi, this book contains the following chapters: (1) Background; (2) True Threat; (3) Fighting Words; (4) Defamatory Speech; (5) Obscene Speech; (6) Child Pornography; (7) Material and Substantial Disruption/Infringement of Rights; (8) Lewd, Vulgar, Plainly-Offensive, and Obscene Speech; (9) School-Sponsored Speech; (10) Advocacy of Illegal Drug Use; (11) Their Stories: Offline Off-Campus Speech; (12) Their Stories: Online Off-Campus Speech; (13) Assessing the Current Jurisprudence; (14) Acceptable Use Policies; (15) State Anti-Bullying Statutes and Student Speech; and (16) Forging the Path Forward from Censorship. A compilation of references and an index are included.
All users must access the internet through ISPs on the basis of contracts known as `terms of service' or `acceptable use policies' that are becoming de facto law for internet communications. This ...article examines contracts fr om over two dozen ISPs. Findings include a knowledge differ ential between users and ISPs regarding rules and their applications. User s have liability irrespective of intention, while ISPs do not. User s must license content to ISPs. And ISP agreements disregard constitutional standar ds regarding freedom of expr ession and privacy. Public forum analysis provides a legal foundation for seeking ter ms of service more protective of constitutionally-based civil liberties and intellectual property rights.
Acceptable use policies (AUPs) are vital tools for organizations to protect themselves and their employees from misuse of computer facilities provided. A well structured, thorough AUP is essential ...for any organization. It is impossible for an effective AUP to deal with every clause and remain readable. For this reason, some sections of an AUP carry more weight than others, denoting importance. The methodology used to develop the hierarchical analysis is a literature review, where various sources were consulted. This hierarchical approach to AUP analysis attempts to highlight important sections and clauses dealt with in an AUP. The emphasis of the hierarchal analysis is to prioritize the objectives of an AUP.
This article presents the results of a study investigating the applicability of Davis’ Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to user acceptance of a knowledge management system (KMS) in a modern ...organizational environment. The study endeavors to expand empirical research of two important and complex research questions: (1) What are the important factors, conditions, and mechanisms that affect people’s acceptance and usage of collaborative and interdependent KMS in the modern organizational environment?, and (2) How applicable is the TAM, and the substantial body of information technology (IT) research around this model, to user acceptance and usage of a KMS in a modern organizational environment where collaboration, knowledge sharing, and role based system usage is necessary for the organization to function competitively? The study provides preliminary evidence suggesting previous TAM research may serve as a foundation for research of KMS user acceptance. Relationships among primary TAM constructs found in this study are in substantive agreement with those of previous research. These findings are significant because they suggest that the considerable body of previous TAM related IT research may be usefully applied to the knowledge management (KM) domain where interdependent social processes that require knowledge creation, storage and retrieval, transfer, and application are required for effective organizational functioning.
Educators often face ethical and legal issues with the use of information and communication technology (ICT), especially when assigning digital content to their students. Institutional policies ...regarding the boundaries of acceptable ICT use can help educators deal with these issues. In this article, the authors apply neo-institutional theory to the diffusion of institutional policies on the ethics of ICT use. To evaluate this conceptual analysis, data are presented from three sources: a nationwide survey of U.S. schools, a 23-country survey of principals of upper secondary schools, and a content analysis of 46 acceptable use policies from school web sites in six countries. The predicted homogeneity among schools with regard to their ethical policies was found among web sites, within the United States, and to some extent, cross-nationally. Across countries the pattern in the adoption of ethical policies by schools was more heterogeneous and apparently idiosyncratic.
Abilock talks about plagiarism. She stresses that in the absence of a schoolwide culture of ethical behavior and agreement among teachers and students as to what constitutes plagiarism and how ...questions of wrongdoing should be handled, the school--and especially the school librarian--is subject to the fickle winds of power, pressure, and personal opinion. Furthermore, she offers solution by creating a policy developed by the entire community or institution under the guidance of a leadership team.
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