May 5, 2008
Officials Discuss the Importance of Privacy in Online Class Discussions
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
Posted on Monday May 5, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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I think this in an important and interesting problem. Yet, I don’t think we should eliminate public online discussions. These assignments allow students to interact with the world beyond the classroom and give instructors the opportunity to discuss issues of online reputation, privacy, and responsible online behavior… all of which are areas that we should be discussing with our students.
— lauren May 5, 08:41 PM #
I am so tired of this kind of fear-mongering. We need to teach our students to manage their online profiles responsibly, while at the same time encouraging them to participate broadly and fully in online conversations. Such conversations are an emerging form of civic engagement.
Anything we say might be recorded and poached—regardless of whether we say it online, while speaking casually to friends in the public square, or in classrooms that automatically record, as audio or video, everything that happens during a class session.
Instead of screaming “Big Brother is watching!” why not say, “This is your opportunity to speak your mind to Big Brother”?
— Leslie May 6, 12:33 AM #
It is one thing for professed bloggers and those who find comfort in the medium to air their thoughts and ideas to the world. It is quite another for many who are less public, less assured of their communications, still sorting through their ideas.
Onliners put it out there, they are virtual extroverts. But if you are conducting a course and want to stimulate honest conversation, there needs to be trust….trust that students can speak their questions, their issues, without fear of seeing their words used against them or posted to the larger world.
If learning and growing is to occur, there needs to be trust and safety to express views in the classroom, online or in person.
— Dwight May 6, 07:47 AM #
“…there needs to be trust….trust that students can speak their questions, their issues, without fear of seeing their words used against them or posted to the larger world.”
The world of intellectual debate is one in which you will be guarenteed to have what you say used against you, it is the very nature of a debate.
“If learning and growing is to occur, there needs to be trust and safety to express views in the classroom, online or in person.”
Of course there needs to be trust and safety, but you need to take responsibility for what has been said. People need to realize that they are putting their throughts out there. If they want to be understood, they need to learn how put their throughts into words effectively and clearly.
I agree that teachers need to do everything they can to create a safe and comfortable learning environment, but people need to realize that we live in a world where nothing is lost to history. We live in a world of crowdsourcing where history is not just written by the winners anymore, but instead by anyone with a blog.
— Eliot May 6, 10:47 AM #
The process of ‘learning’ entails taking risks. If we want students to explore new ideas they have to be able to ‘trust’ that the classroom enviornment, at least [and that includes Course Management System -CMS-Discussion Boards] is a safe place to experiment with expressing new ideas. The privacy of on-line discussions within these CMS is critical. In face-to-face classrooms students and faculty can agree to create a sense of privacy … In courses supported through on-line discussion in CMS, those agreements extend to that context as well. Typically only enrolled students with passwords have access to those sites and the privacy must be protected.
— Ada Demb May 6, 12:23 PM #
Imagine saying “Goddamn America” on a college discussion board and have it show up in your presidential campaign!!! Or will the first woman president also be the first president known for her naked limbo video on the Internet? Brave And Silly New World.
— first marci May 6, 06:30 PM #
<a href=“http://google.com”> Google</a>
— ann May 16, 11:38 PM #