Arlington, Va. — Holding class discussions online raises privacy issues that colleges are still struggling to work through, said David Escalante, director of computer policy and security at Boston College, during a session today at Educause’s annual conference for campus-security officials, held just outside of Washington, D.C.
If online discussions had been around when today’s presidential candidates were in college, he suggested, their words might be dredged up and used against them now by political enemies. “Can you make a statement in an online forum and not worry that someone’s going to whack you with it later?” asked Mr. Escalante.
He said that many class discussions take place using course-management systems, and that the discussions are usually archived — and sometimes even made public online. Making discussions public that have traditionally happened behind closed classroom doors could hamper freewheeling debate, he said.
He suggested that colleges make sure that online discussions can only be seen by students taking the course. Or that if discussions are made public, that students be allowed to remain anonymous (except to the professor). Even so, however, there’s nothing stopping students in a course from saving all class discussion to their own drives and making it public later.
“Somebody’s going to get badly burned by this,” he said, “because people aren’t thinking about this.” —Jeffrey R. Young
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