Comments on: Online Course Management-Nfomedia

By: Rajesh

Rajesh — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:55:10 +0000

Seems to me, the matter of privacy for students is a moot point. More precisely the debate here is about who controls and stores the information. If you trust only Administration and large institutions for being able to house information securely then of course you will go with Blackboard and institutional protocols. But if you believe that professors should be empowered, like students, to find their own solutions to organizational matters, then you with one of the free applications. Their are risks either way. Blackboard starts charging students for access to their files/portfolio material and assignments a year after leaving the institution. This is not to mention the $$ the institutions themselves are probably passing on to their students for Blackboard.

So let me see here, high costs and locked up information. Fear of the free systems are more paranoia than anything else. There is nothing whimsical about how nfoMedia proceeds, nor Moodle, nor GoogleDocs for that matter. There are choices along every step of the way to keep documents and groups protected.

These applications don’t have to be that complicated.

By: Raymond Brock

Raymond Brock — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:31:57 +0000

This is interesting. The memo I refer to comes from an associate vice president at our institution who is a smart guy. It points to the same 11.1 clause which says in total:

“11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.”

It is that “…perpetual, irrevocable…” etc sentence that makes such services incompatible with student records and university business, not to mention intellectual property, a serious business at any research institution. The memo goes on to note that there is no obligation to backup or to secure the data from, for example, Google going away some day, or selling their company. Improbable? Sure. But, legal obligations have to integrate over the improbable, right?

I’m a physics professor and I am frustrated by these restrictions. But, I also understand the implications and, like I say, the level of the administration which is concerned about this is not populated by nuts, but by smart people with the welfare of the institution. They’re eager to expand capabilities, not short circuit them. Of this, I’m convinced because I know them all and have worked with them. They are frustrated too.

I don’t know how one walks away from that “perpetual” sentence, or ignores it. I also don’t know why Google seemed to think it’s necessary.

By: bellavita

bellavita — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:19:19 +0000

This comment is both on topic and slightly off topic. Re: course management software, my graduate institution has used moodle for several years. It has become almost transparent, by which i mean it does not get in the way of learning.

Slightly off topic: the matter of who owns what. I agree completely with the importance and requirement of protecting student data. So in the following, I am not suggesting in any way storing private information on third party servers.

I was surprised to read from Raymond Brock that “Google owns what you write” if you use one of the google services. The Gmail terms of use says “Your Intellectual Property Rights. Google does not claim any ownership in any of the content, including any text, data, information, images, photographs, music, sound, video, or other material, that you upload, transmit or store in your Gmail account. We will not use any of your content for any purpose except to provide you with the Service.”

re Google Docs and related services, Google has this to say at http://www.google.com/support/writely/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=82366

Privacy and Security: Understanding section 11.1 of our Terms of Service
Print
We’ve received questions over time about the meaning of section 11.1 of our Terms of Service. We realize that for those not familiar with legal agreements for services that use the Internet, these terms can look confusing, or even frightening.

The first thing to understand is that this language doesn’t give Google ownership rights to your data. You, and you alone, own your content. Whether you wish to keep your content totally private, or share it with the world, that’s your choice.

However, in order to honor this choice, Google Docs needs permission to display your content as you see fit. This is what we mean by a “license to reproduce.” We need to ensure that when you click the “Publish document” button, or use the “Invite collaborators” option, we have the license to carry out your wishes. It is this agreement, between Google Docs and you, the user, that section 11.1 of our Terms of Service reflects.
——–

One can believe google or not. One also needs to remember that docs and other data are backed up on google servers. But with respect to the ownership of data, I am not yet convinced google can claim ownership for anything other than the purposes it outlines above.

By: Raymond Brock

Raymond Brock — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:00:03 +0000

Yes, I’m sure that’s what that means also. However, I gather that folks have not come to grips with the issues here about student privacy. Hosting gradebooks is so far outside of accepted, even legal, practice, it’s astonishing that it’s even a choice. I presume that our faculty are not doing this because we have gotten, not one, but two detailed memos from the administration on this sort of thing. And, this is not just administrators being killjoys. It’s a real issue that faculty must be accountable for. Can’t even tell a parent a grade or anything about their college-age student, let alone host their grade in an uncontrolled electronic environment. I just don’t see this sort of thing discussed in educational blogs and “Web 2.0″.

Google docs is exactly the same situation, maybe worse since you literally grant to Google the content. It’s scanned and stored, god knows where and potentially available for whomever Google wants to give/sell it. So, just as a professor would not take as student research paper and pin it to a physical bulletin board, or scan it and post it to the web, he/she can’t really force kids to write their work in Google docs either. Again, why no consideration of this sort of privacy issue in any Web 2.0 educational blog?

Can’t ignore these issues. Our students deserve to have their privacy protected.

By: dave

dave — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:14:33 +0000

Raymond,
My guess is that the listing of a school is not a matter of acceptance by said school, rather it is a list of schools which have professors using Nfomedia. You can use Nfomedia without using the grade book though.
I think the issue with Google docs is different though.

David,
This is substantially different than Moodle, as Moodle requires you have a place to host it (your school for example to install it). Nfomedia requires none of this. I think Moodle is a good option over Blackboard or Angel, but I don’t think any of these three is as good as many of the Web 2.0 (free) alternatives.

By: Raymond Brock

Raymond Brock — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:26:28 +0000

Enjoy your blog. I have trouble with Nfomedia. I see my university listed, but there is no way in the world that a public institution, or, I’ll bet a private one, would allow student records like grades to be hosted on a third-party server. So, I’m quite confident that the listing of my big 10 school is not true, or it means that someone at our place has broken serious rules by signing up and using it.

This is real, actually. It’s also a reason why “cloud computing” is a problem for higher education generally. You just cannot lose control of student records, or other university business…and not serving it from campus computers is by definition a lack of control. gmail, if you’ve read the fine print, is a big no-no for communication with students because Google owns what you write. Google docs? Nope, same thing in spades.

This is disappointing, as we’re a place that uses Angel. which is so awful looking that it makes my eyes bleed. I’d love to flow with the development wave, but just can’t do it for many things.

By: David Brake

David Brake — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:10:52 +0000

Our university (the London School of Economics) has also moved to Moodle. It seems logical to move to a free open source product rather than to a “free” but commercial product unless the latter delivers significantly better functionality. Perhaps you could compare them?

By: Mauricio Argote-Cortes

Mauricio Argote-Cortes — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 01:36:25 +0000

Have you tried Moodle (http://moodle.org/)???

Its site says:
“Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities… Moodle has a large and diverse user community with over 400,000 registered users on this site alone, speaking over 75 languages in 193 countries…”

In our university, we are all moving away from WebCT to Moodle, and we will be even hosting a Moodle conference this Summer: 2nd Canadian MoodleMoot, 2008 (Toronto, ON; see http://www.moodlemoot.ca/moodle/index.php).

Mauricio