To play the podcast, click on the “headphone” in the upper left of the screen.

The purpose of the Learning Privacy podcast is to explore privacy issues for our learners. While we have made great progress in educational technology interoperability, we have done so without enough concern for the protection of learners' private data.

Motivation

If we go back to 2002, there were no useful standards around moving software or content between commercial learning management systems. Every system had their own “plugin” and “backup/restore” format.

With the rise of open source LMS alternatives in the early 2000’s like Sakai and Moodle, commercial LMS vendors were forced to participate in buiulding interoperability standards. After over a decade of effort, standards like IMS Learning Tools Interoperability and IMS Common Cartridge addressed the important need for data portability and software interoperability.

Almost two decades later with the release of the IMS LTI Advantage suite of specifications, learning software interopability is in very good shape but concern for protecting learner’s private dats in educational institutions is at a very low ebb.

To address this significant problem we have to look at the past (when and how we made privacy mistakes in the rush to interoperability), present (how the headlong rush to the ‘cloud’ led us to ignore privacy issues), and future (how we can unwind these mistakes when so many of our cloud vendors see our private data as their asset).

It is a long and interesting story and will take a while to tell. I look forward to hearring from all of you along the way to a future where learner privacy matters.

Access to the Podcast

Please visit the Podcast URLs Page to find the urls where you can subscrbe to this podcast.

The source code for this site/blog is on github at https://github.com/LearnerPrivacy/hugo-site - if you find a mistake or want to update a page, feel free to send a pull request.

– Dr. Chuck