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Blackboard Privacy

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Privacy and Blackboard: Every Good Service Has a Price
Thanks to new technology, Blackboard has become a powerful eLearning tool, but, for such effectiveness, students must pay a price, privacy. Blackboard has an all-seeing system that records data from all students which can be accessed by professors. However, professors tracking students’ academic activities hinder the educational process due to Blackboard’s high level of supervision, therefore, professors should not have access to all databases. Primarily, the excessive monitoring contains information that is needless for the professors. Besides, such data creates prejudice against those who follow the program differently. Moreover, students who are aware of this supervision experience a …show more content…
Nevertheless, only administrators should have access to most of this information. Like any other login website, Blackboard collects data that includes; actions taken, pages visited, communications between users, etc. to provide a better customer service and support ("Blackboard Privacy Policy" sec. 1-2). To illustrate, records contain information such as time of login and logout, sections visited, links opened, time spent, clicks made and other session information. It is understandable why logon information is collected, still it should only be shared for such purposes.
In other words, professors do not need access to such logs since they neither provide support nor customer service for the platform. According to Niall Sclater, a senior consultant of the Effective Learning Analytics Program at Jisc, the main purpose of the data is to determine how engaged a student is with the course. However, for such purpose the data needed is a general log of login time and results of activities, as in a traditional class where professors have only an attendance sheet and a grading list. Still, login information is collected to count online class-time and compare it to regular …show more content…
In fact, PBSC online classes syllabi state that students must login at least twice a week to be consider active (Murcia 6, Myslivcecek 5, Maclachlan “Principles” 4, Maclachlan “Introduction” 6). However, to prove the equivalency class-time, specific details about when students were studying and for how long are not necessary. Furthermore, similar to a roll call in traditional classes, it only needs a general schedule log where is stated the time students are required to spend on their online course and if such time was completed. Nevertheless, the purpose of data collected goes beyond scheduling matters. In the modern system, professors use the login data to analyze deeply their students’ behavior, hence they have specific details of their student’s flaws. “‘This data provides a fine-grained understanding of student behavior,’ Whitmer said.” (Kaufman). XXXX. At any rate, said usage reports can create a preconception of the students due to the way they study.
Besides, such data creates prejudice against those who follow the program

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