Thanks Malcolm; this sounds like an excellent idea. So, just to clarify, our suggestions are currently as follows:

1) Only add a user’s profile to the Blackboard cloud when they have explicitly agreed for their details to be transferred, perhaps with an Agree button when a user first clicks on the Edit My Blackboard Profile button.

2) Constrain the sharing/visibility of profiles by Institutional Role, to enable different roles to either have no access to cloud profiles at all, only Hidden or Private, just My School, or full visibility (All Blackboard Users)

3) Add the ability to exclude certain courses and organisations from the cloud, including the exclusion of all organisations, excluding specific courses and organisations, or only including courses and organisations with a course ID which matches a certain pattern, to ensure that profiles are only see by ‘true’ classmates.

And then, depending on the response from my question about deleting profiles:

4) Ensure that cloud profiles are only stored on the Blackboard server for an agree period of time after their matching Learn profile is deleted, or after an agree period of inactivity, to ensure compliance with Principle 5 of the Data Protection Act 1998

Does this sound OK? So far we have the following institutions signing this:

University of Durham

University of Swansea

City College Norwich

Would anyone else like to add their institution to the list? Feel free to email me directly ([log in to unmask]) if you’d like to ‘sign’ these requests and I’ll be happy to compile them and send them to Jess. And as Malcolm says, if we all add these as enhancement requests too (http://www.blackboard.com/contact-us/feedback/suggest-product-enhancements/for-learn.aspx) hopefully we’ll be able to influence some future changes with Blackboard.

Regards

Chris

From: Blackboard/Courseinfo userslist [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of MURRAY M.R.
Sent: 14 May 2013 10:49
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Cloud profiles and spaces - anyone gone live yet?

Chris,

Clive, thanks for your work on this.

I think you’ve covered the main points. In regard to option 2 in the list, as I have already posted elsewhere, I’d like to be able to constrain the sharing/visibility of profiles by institutional role. Thus if we have (hypothetically) under-8’s on our server we could block this entirely, if we had students under 16 we might want to only offer them the lowest visibility option, whilst we would be happy to let older students and staff make their profiles public.

If there is a an existing ticket reference we can cite in enhancement requests, please let me know.

Otherwise I suggest that we all just submit Clives three points plus your comment about deletions as individual enhancement requests, plus a common request signed by as many UK clients as we can to someone like Jess Finnefrock who has a history of listening to and acting on group submissions!

Malcolm.

From: Blackboard/Courseinfo userslist [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Boon, Chris
Sent: 14 May 2013 10:44
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Cloud profiles and spaces - anyone gone live yet?

And of course pressing the Send button makes you remember the point you should have added to the previous email…

One other concern I’m currently looking into is when is data deleted from the cloud. The Cloud FAQs explain that disabling the cloud profiles and spaces in your system doesn’t delete them from the cloud, so that if you enable them again later the information will still be there. It also explains that if you terminate your contract with Blackboard you may request that all data pertaining to your institution can be requested to be deleted from the cloud. But what about the more likely situation of a student studying with us for two years, and then leaving – when will their cloud profile be deleted? Blackboard explains that the profiles remain so that a student can go on to study at another Blackboard institution and then continue with their old profile. That’s fine, but what about those that don’t – are the profiles held indefinitely? This could be a real sticking point as Principle 5 of the Data Protection Act says:

“Personal data processed for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes.”

I’ve asked Blackboard for guidance on this; I’ll report back when I get an answer.

Regards

Chris

From: Richards C.R. [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 09 May 2013 14:28
To: Boon, Chris; Blackboard/Courseinfo userslist ([log in to unmask])
Subject: RE: Cloud profiles and spaces - anyone gone live yet?

I am about to embark on this process so it would make sense to collect a UK wide perspective. One thing that concerns me is the lack of control at a local level

And the inability (once you activate the building block) to have a specific users details removed from the system. From our point of view there are some simple administrative controls which Blackboard could give us which could alleviate many of the issues.

1) A point during the process where an individual user assents to having their student ID, Name and course/organisation enrolments, stored on Blackboards servers in the US – ONLY when this has been agreed to should the users details be extracted by Blackboard from our system. Users do have to give permission for their name to be visible to other users, which is fine, but there is no option not to have the details in the Bb database – either all or none are sent automatically depending on whether you enable the building block

2) Institutionally we would like to be able to hide the “all blackboard users” option, as we wish to keep this within the institution. As far as I can tell, because within the institution is the default, the only thing needed here is the ability to HIDE that option altogether

3) Lastly we need the ability to exclude certain courses and organisation sites from the process. We have a handful on which ALL students are enrolled which are not courses as such but which are run as information sites for student services and the library. If these are included then then the “Private option”! is misleading because these informational sites would result in all 12,000 students being able to view your profile name and picture when the intention is that only your classmates is what you are expecting.

I suspect other institutions will have other requirements but these three fairly simple changes would make the system more acceptable for most I suspect.

Blackboard’s initial response in respect of item 2 is that this is working as intended because all students enrolled on one site are classmates – but this only applies to their concept of usage and makes no allowance for what institutions do. The second part of their response was in my view dismissive in suggesting that we don’t have to install the building block or activate it. Not an easy route when they have made a sales presentation about this to senior management!

I feel that enough of us make similar views available, to anyone in Blackboard that will listen, we might still have some chance of getting these relatively minor number of additional controls implemented in time for the summer upgrade. I rejected their “solution” on this basis but have had no further response

Clive Richards

From: Boon, Chris [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 08 May 2013 12:47
Subject: Cloud profiles and spaces - anyone gone live yet?

Dear Blackboarders,

As part of our plans towards our usual summer upgrade I’m currently evaluating whether to enable the cloud profiles and spaces; has anyone in the UK launched these in production yet, or have plans to do so in the summer?

We’re currently running Learn 9.1 SP9 with content and community and I plan to upgrade to (probably) SP12 in mid July. Given that the cloud tools are hosted, and therefore different to previous Blackboard tools, I’m working with our Records and Risk Coordinator on a Privacy Impact Assessment, looking at the Data Protection Act, privacy implications and security of these tools. I am hoping that we can make these available, in particular the cloud profiles as I really like the ‘contact cards’ which are used throughout the system making it much easier to identify users, if they have added details to their profile. Hopefully the other tools, such as the Spaces, will also be useful.

I’d be interested to know if anyone else in the UK has already completed a Privacy Impact Assessment or similar process, and is either running the cloud tools in production now, or intends to from the next academic year. We’ve been looking at aspects such as the Safe Harbour Agreement as the service is hosted in the US, and the lifecycle of user data – when is data deleted from the cloud? There’s been a lot of discussion about this on the BbAdmin list, but since data protection legislation is different in each country I’d be interested to know the UK perspective on this, and would be happy to share with anyone else who is working on a similar project. Please feel free to contact me off-list if you’d prefer not to discuss this publically.

Many thanks,

Chris Boon
Senior ILT Support Analyst
City College Norwich
Ipswich Road, Norwich NR2 2LJ

Tel +44 (0)1603 773659
[log in to unmask]
http://www.ccn.ac.uk
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