Protected users: A moodle plugin to improve confidentiality and privacy support through user aliases

Daniel Amo; Marc Alier; Francisco José García-Peñalvo; David Fonseca; María José Casañ

doi:10.3390/su12062548

Protected users: A moodle plugin to improve confidentiality and privacy support through user aliases

Daniel Amo, Marc Alier, Francisco José García-Peñalvo, David Fonseca, María José Casañ

Research output: Indexed journal article › Article › peer-review

31 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The privacy policies, terms, and conditions of use in any Learning Management System (LMS) are one-way contracts. The institution imposes clauses that the student can accept or decline. Students, once they accept conditions, should be able to exercise the rights granted by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However, students cannot object to data processing and public profiling because it would be conceived as an impediment to teachers to execute their work with normality. Nonetheless, regarding GDPR and consulted legal advisors, a student could claim identity anonymization in the LMS, if adequate personal justifications are provided. Per contra, the current LMSs do not have any functionality that enables identity anonymization. This is a big problem that generates undesired situations which urgently requires a definitive solution. In this work, we surveyed students and teachers to validate the feasibility and acceptance of using aliases to anonymize their identity in LMSs as a sustainable solution to the problem. Considering the positive results, we developed a user-friendly plugin for Moodle that enables students' identity anonymization by the use of aliases. This plugin, presented in this work and named Protected users, is publicly available online at GitHub and published under GNU General Public License.

Original language	English
Article number	2548
Journal	Sustainability (Switzerland)
Volume	12
Issue number	6
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.3390/su12062548
Publication status	Published - 1 Mar 2020

Keywords

Alias
Confidentiality
Data privacy
Digital identity
GDPR
LMS
Moodle
Plugin
Sustainability

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access to Document

10.3390/su12062548

Cite this

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title = "Protected users: A moodle plugin to improve confidentiality and privacy support through user aliases",

abstract = "The privacy policies, terms, and conditions of use in any Learning Management System (LMS) are one-way contracts. The institution imposes clauses that the student can accept or decline. Students, once they accept conditions, should be able to exercise the rights granted by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However, students cannot object to data processing and public profiling because it would be conceived as an impediment to teachers to execute their work with normality. Nonetheless, regarding GDPR and consulted legal advisors, a student could claim identity anonymization in the LMS, if adequate personal justifications are provided. Per contra, the current LMSs do not have any functionality that enables identity anonymization. This is a big problem that generates undesired situations which urgently requires a definitive solution. In this work, we surveyed students and teachers to validate the feasibility and acceptance of using aliases to anonymize their identity in LMSs as a sustainable solution to the problem. Considering the positive results, we developed a user-friendly plugin for Moodle that enables students' identity anonymization by the use of aliases. This plugin, presented in this work and named Protected users, is publicly available online at GitHub and published under GNU General Public License.",

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note = "Funding Information: Funding: This work has been partially funded by the Spanish Government Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness throughout the DEFINES project (Ref. TIN2016-80172-R), with the support of the Secretaria d{\textquoteright}Universitats I Recerca of the Department of Business and Knowledge of the Generalitat de Catalunya with the help of 2017 SGR 934. Funding Information: This work has been partially funded by the Spanish Government Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness throughout the DEFINES project (Ref. TIN2016-80172-R), with the support of the Secretaria d'Universitats I Recerca of the Department of Business and Knowledge of the Generalitat de Catalunya with the help of 2017 SGR 934. This work is carried out in the Doctorate Programme Formaci?n en la Sociedad del Conocimiento de la Universidad de Salamanca [26-28]. The program is regulated by the Real Decreto 99/2011 [29]. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.",

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AU - Casañ, María José

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ER -

Protected users: A moodle plugin to improve confidentiality and privacy support through user aliases

Abstract

Keywords

UN SDGs

Access to Document

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