Interaction Between Standardisation and Research: A Case Study

Abstract

Standards-making is a design practice that relies on input from research and end-users, involving experts that represent diverse stakeholders spread all over the globe. However, the standards-setting culture and formal rules are sometimes at odds with the culture and practice of research. Based on previous research identifying the lack of openness and transparency, and a suboptimal interaction with academic research as issues that could explain a lack of success in a European setting, this article studies how an ongoing international standards project on privacy and data protection policies for learning analytics has interacted with an international academic research community. The results of this study show that establishing feedback loops between standardisation, research, and development is essential in order to produce results. However, the study also shows that in individual projects, internal processes and culture in the standard setting group could be of crucial importance for the outcome.