Minimal student data - help

Minimal student data - help

by Rik Hall -
Number of replies: 7
Hi all

I also posted this in the Social aspects of Moodle because it also applies there.

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Hi all.

Some faculty members at the university got very upset that their is student data on Moodle. They felt that it was an invasion of privacy etc. I just got this email from teh Director of IT:

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The Dean of Faculty just came by to chat with me. He was just back from a Chairs meeting where the issue of the Moodle Profile was the topic du jour.

My sense is that they would like all profile information eliminated - I explained that in that case there is no way for the system to distinguish between two people so that it would be impossible to separate people into classes etc. He acknowledged that name and email were probably acceptable. But beyond that he was pretty adamant that we should not be storing any additional information... Including information like hometown and photos that some professors have indicated they feel is very handy.

So - the upshot of this is we are going to have to try and make some changes to moodle. You may want to hit Moodle.org to see if there is any guidance on the safest ways to approach these changes, I'll try and specify them at a "business" level - you can figure out the correct technical approach to implement them. We should probably do this on the test server.
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Comments?? Suggestions??

Many thanks

Rik

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In reply to Rik Hall

Re: Minimal student data - help

by Jon Witts -
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We flood fill the fields such as location on our AD LDAP server with the location of the school; we then lock the field to prevent editing by students. That way the home town information is not that of the student, but that of the school... Could you use a similar method to placate your Dean of Faculty?

You can disable the ability to upload user pictures if you like (but our students have always liked that part of it...) in the admin settings...

What other fields do they not want? You can lock most of the fields if you want so that students can not edit them...

Jon
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In reply to Jon Witts

Re: Minimal student data - help

by Mary Cooch -
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Just wanted to agree with Jon.. (we ban students uploading their own photos though as they have official school ones but you could stick with the yellow cake I guess..)
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In reply to Rik Hall

Re: Minimal student data - help

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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Considering the type of data the kids upload to social networks, isn't it ironical that school administrators worry so much about members of their school seeing a photo of a pupil!

BTW, I would like to know whether we are discussing a situation where Moodle works as documented or about a hacked computer, i.e. unauthorized persons gaining access?
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Minimal student data - help

by Rik Hall -
We are talking about a university population, not small children, we are talking about a Moodle in a normal situation where access is only available to those with university ID and I think we are talking about a group of complaining professors with too much time on their hands.

I agree with you!

Rik
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Minimal student data - help

by Tim Hunt -
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They key difference is that social networks are opt-in.

Members of the school are told to use a certain tool in order to complete their course.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Minimal student data - help

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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Tim,

Point taken.

Now, has anybody played with the idea of "minimal student data"? Say each student gets a random user name from the administration which is kept secret for all the other users. Assume that the initial password and the mail address are somehow safely exchanged. Moodle is changed so that the profiles are viewable only by the owner.

Is this thinkable, or absurd?
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Minimal student data - help

by Tim Hunt -
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Not absurd at all. There as a whole bunch of work done around the Moodle 1.9.7 time to make sure that Moodle could comply with the US FERPA legislation about student privacy. Have a read back through the 1.9.x branch release notes to find out the details. You can now get a lot of privacy just by changing admin settings.
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