Unit3/Activity4-Brainstorming on transparency

Hi everyone,

Due to other commitments only today i was able to write few words about the discussions and leave here my contribute.

This week I had a meeting about computers in school and one of the subjects that were discussed was LMS Moodle.

One of the intervenients was saying to us that the platform Moodle is a closed system and that the information is only available to whom we want.

What was initially proposed and was said about these LMS was that it was a system that you can use to share information with your students, colleagues and other people. But as we all know, not all the information is available; the teacher can choose whether someone can have access to some discipline or not.

Well about online forums, I am shore that I would like to have access to some forum’s, specially if i´m interested in the subjects that are debated inside. For the teacher it will be more difficult to manage the forum due to the growing number of students. The excess of information can distract students that loose too much time reading the posts, so this is a disadvantage.

As a result we can consider that the Moodle system is a closed system and that the learning that involves this kind of resources is not that transparent.

First of all we may want to think about transparency involving the institution, the teachers and the students. The institutions should consider being the most transparent as possible to increase the number of students rolling for a degree. The teachers should choose the amount and type of information that each one should provide and it depends on the level of transparency that he considers to be enough and appropriate.

The availability of information from each online course depends on the criteria of each institution and teacher.

What about the students? Should they provide all types of information? What about personal information: should they keep it in a secret? Well, exists a check list that helps students on this issues and it exists a form that can be written in order to publish and make transparent students information. Students can be categorized according to the amount of information available about them. UA should think about this.

In my opinion we don’t need to share much personal information in order to get a work partner. But the confidence level depends on how much information each student share. Data like Name and birthday, sex, number of forum contributions can be shared, but , social security number, addresses, telephone numbers, grades, course enrolments, previous education, exams, payments, log in frequencies can be shared only if the student allows the Institution to do so. Some data must be considered anonymous in order to keep some personal privacy. Does this consists in an advantage to students?

For transparency to happen people should be as much transparent as possible regarding their privacy.


Best regards,

Telma Jesus