Acceptable Use and Intrinsic Motivation

I've been reading some Acceptable Use Policies this week, particularly looking at how they can help protect students' privacy and promote online safety. The design of the policy, the language used, and where responsibility is placed all play a part in how effective these policies are at protecting the safety and privacy of students while using school technology resources and beyond.

AUPs are often written with a specific audience in mind, and how the policy is designed is informed by this intended audience. For example, this Digital Citizen Agreement from Illinois SD62 is intended to educate and inform students of varying ages, and so their policy employs graphics and avoids jargon so it's accessible to students and parents with different reading levels. 

Policy language can appeal to values, seen in this AUP from Mahomet-Seymour Community Schools that uses the template of "We value [blank], therefore, I will [blank]/I will not [blank]" to encourage responsible technology use from their students by directly connecting behavior with school-wide values. Consistent use of these values can unify school policies while contextualizing the rules and regulations that students are expected to follow. 

Whose Use is it Anyway?

Source: My Private Professor

According to Self-Determination Theory people are more likely to do something if they are intrinsically motivated as opposed to being extrinsically motivated. By including compelling reasons to protect one's privacy/safety online, students may be more likely to participate in or avoid an activity or behavior. Nobody is born knowing how to be safe online, not even digital natives. An intentionally written AUP can be the first step to helping students become digitally competent. 

A good second step can be to emphasize responsibility over restriction. As a former teenager, I remember that a reaction to certain restrictions was an almost immediate disregarding of the rule. At least some of my reaction was drawn from feeling like the reason for the restrictions wasn't explained to me, with the perceived implication for the lack of explanation being that I couldn't handle it or wasn't able to understand. Whether this was true or not, that perception of being seen as incapable led to a quick backlash. Personally, I think a bit of anti-authoritarianism is healthy for a democratic society, so I'm not looking to challenge this teenaged instinct -- I want to work with it to cultivate personal investment in online safety. 

"Get Out of My Digital Room, Dad!"

Source: "Aren't teenagers pleasant?" by emmacraig1 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Middle school/high school is when young people start to realize their own autonomy, and desire more control over and privacy in their personal life. Incorporating students' input into their school's AUP can give them a sense of control and autonomy over their digital life. In addition, including input from students is one sign of a high quality Use Policy. Enabling students to have a hand in the design of an AUP can deepen their understanding of the privacy and safety concerns they may encounter online.  

Experiential learning can help students further build a personal connection with privacy and safety lessons. Common Sense has provided 30 hands-on lessons and activities to help students practice staying safe online. This article separates the lessons by grade level, from Kindergarten to twelfth grade. 

An Acceptable Use Policy in Higher Education

This research made me wonder what the AUP for my university looks like. Dominican University's AUP meets the basic requirements for a good AUP as set out in this article by Kajeet on the subject, but it also has some omissions. Their most recent AUP (last updated 2/22/2023) does not mention AI at all, which was especially surprising considering the emphasis put on responsible AI use by many of my professors. It doesn't mention social media, nor does it appear to have incorporated input from outside of the president's cabinet. 

It includes a broad statement of acceptable use ("legitimate educational and business purposes [and] limited personal use") and a list of specific violations of the use policy. This policy is applicable to university community members, guests, vendors, and contractors. There are no separate use considerations for the university library, which was also surprising to me. I had expected some level of separation between academic learning technological use and technology in the library. The policy specifies that Dominican doesn't "routinely monitor individual usage" of its resources, though with the caveat that this can change at its discretion.

This policy was scheduled for review 2/22/2026, so I'll be interested to see what is changed and updated to meet the rapidly evolving technological environment we find ourselves in. In addition to the omissions I mentioned above, I think a big improvement would be to connect responsible technology use with broader principles, such as responsibility to self and others, respect for self and others, value of privacy, value of intellectual property, etc. 

AUPs for the Future

Acceptable Use Policies are meant to provide guidance on how technology should and should not be used by students, while still providing access to digital resources that support learning. When writing an AUP, the audience should be kept in mind and, ideally, their input should be included in the design. For students in middle school and high school especially, this may lead to higher personal engagement with the underlying goals and increased intrinsic motivation to follow the rules in the policy. 

A good AUP is designed to keep students safe while online. As online technology use increases and evolves, AUPs should be revisited regularly to ensure they are appropriate for the current technological landscape. AI use and social media safety should be discussed explicitly. Direct connection to broader values or principles can contextualize seemingly arbitrary rules. Most importantly, the privacy and safety of the students should come before all other considerations.