Allow students to "opt-out" of data collection

Allow students to "opt-out" of data collection

by John Andre -
Number of replies: 5
First, I am both an active user (university lecturer) of Moodle and an active researcher in the area of learning analytics. However, I am just now getting into use Moodle's learning analytics features.

I see that Moodle stores user interaction with the LMS in its log table. If we wanted to allow students to fully opt-out of having their data harvested, is it possible to flag their user account in some way and have the LMS simply not record their activity in the log?

If this feature is not currently available, has there been any discussion about potentially adding it?

All thoughts are welcome.
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In reply to John Andre

Re: Allow students to "opt-out" of data collection

by Tim Hunt -
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This is not currently available.

It would probably be not too hard to implement. Every log event has a clear userid field, so you really just need to compare that to a list of userids or something before doing the DB insert.

However, Moodle logs are other uses that data harvesting. Most IT systems have logs, and when something breaks they are essential to diagnose and fix the problem. (Or to detect when students are telling fibs like "I answered all the questions in this quiz, and then Moodle lost most of my work". No, I can see that you logged in at 5 minutes to minutes to minute, and only had time to answer Q1 before time ran out.)

So, I think it is right for Moodle to log everything, and the time to enforce user preferences and policies is when you decide what to do with the data.
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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Allow students to "opt-out" of data collection

by John Andre -

Hi Tim. Thanks for your insights.

I am not sure I see the clear line that you see, though. When much LA work being done by Moodle itself, it already starts to become blurry.

I would hope that we could get an administrative setting whether to allow opt-out at the user level with the understanding that if a user opted out, that comes with certain costs (e.g., trouble shooting). Perhaps they could implement a "scrubber bot" which would purge data after x-days for students who opt-out.

Either way, I guess the next step is for me to add an item to the tracker to see if anyone else cares about this idea.
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In reply to John Andre

Re: Allow students to "opt-out" of data collection

by AL Rachels -
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I think that many sites go about this in the wrong way. Personally, I think maybe students need to be told up front that if they want to enroll and use the educational materials on my site, they have to be aware that it comes with a cost of having various items of data logged. If they unenroll and request their data be removed, I will be happy to do so as soon as my data retention requirements expire. If a student wants to "fully opt out" they do so by NOT enrolling in the first place. They also need to be aware that when data retention rules expire, and their data is deleted, they will not be able to come back later for proof that they achieved a certain educational level of expertise.

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In reply to AL Rachels

Re: Allow students to "opt-out" of data collection

by John Andre -

I do understand your point. However, I would argue that we could do it in a different way. That is, we could allow students access to the resources without logging that access. True, without the log we could not verify what they did, but we could separate achievements from use logs.

Think of voting in the US. Someone shows their ID to enter the voting booth but then what happens in the booth stays in the booth. We can have their ballot without knowing each and everything they did.

Perhaps a better solution than a simple opt-out would be something more granular.

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In reply to John Andre

Re: Allow students to "opt-out" of data collection

by AL Rachels -
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Sorry, I have had too many internal and external attempts to change things on my Moodle sites, to want to give up one of the few ways I have of keeping some track of who was doing what, when. Even though I stressed it from the first day of school each year, that Moodle and my server logged everything throughout the school year, I always had foolish attempts by students, who always protested their innocence until confronted by by proof of their misdeeds.

By the same token, I had more than one time where the student benefited when the logs showed they actually had made the attempt to do something, but an assignment did not show as complete, like it should have. Without the logs, I would NOT have been inclined to give them a second chance.

As for voting, in my location, I am given a serial numbered ballot logged to me by name, so what happens in the booth, can be tracked, checked, and investigated, if need be. Which, come to think of it, has happened in multiple elections all over the US.

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