Principle 7, Scenario 4
You are a program administrator and/or staff member who has been asked by your institution to start a campus-wide ePortfolio initiative as part of its Quality Enhancement Plan. There is nobody at your institution who regularly vets technologies intended for teaching and learning, and you have limited knowledge of ePortfolios and suitable platforms in general. When you gather a committee to consider different ePortfolio technologies, you make a list of priorities: students’ ability to edit and share their ePortfolios both as students and after they leave the institution, universal design practices for creators and viewers, privacy capabilities for authors, and minimal direct cost to students. However, the committee soon realizes it has thought very little about use of student data, which is a big concern.
As a committee, you develop a series of criteria related to student data and privacy and their acceptable options. These criteria will help eliminate some potential ePortfolio platforms. These questions include the following:
- Does the platform collect identifiable or de-identified personal information?
- Where is data stored, and how is this data protected?
- Does the platform sell this data to third parties?
- Is user data collected/used/shared for non-authorized purposes?
- Can the user remove their data, and what is the process by which they do that?
- How does the platform inform users of changes to their EULA?
- Are vendors held to equitable standards for privacy and data collection/storage?