On Mon, Nov 03, 2003 at 03:43:13PM -0700, Andrew Jorgensen wrote: > Michael Halcrow wrote: > >Okay, so as far as I can tell, that letter about the UUG never found > >its way into the Daily Universe, but I did notice another letter of > >mine made it in: > > > >http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/46374 > > I, too, was disturbed by the Online ratings so I asked what the deal was > (and how my privacy was protected). Here are the replies I got from Trav > Johnson and Merrill Bateman. Take it for what it's worth. It certainly > wouldn't be hard to record only whether or not a student had submitted > feedback (and not attach it to the actual feedback) but it's unlikely > that they would actually do that. Timestamps on one or both types of > records would have to be removed too.
Until their feedback box gets compromised and someone adds a line in
the PHP script to forward the comments, along with the students'
identities, to a @yahoo.com address. Or until someone in the
administration five years down the road decides to rewrite the code to
keep the student identity in there for whatever reason seems good at
the time.
My point is, if you have to reveal your identity and associate it with
your feedback, you must trust the other side to be able to keep that
confidential. But under the current system, you are certainly not
anonymous. Computers aren't perfect, most code isn't perfect, and
people certainly aren't perfect. Therefore, nothing short of pure
anonymity is good enough for me.
> Thanks for your feedback. The current online system is set up so that
> there is NEVER any reporting of data that is connected to students'
> identity. We guard this very carefully.
Like major web sites guard their credit card accounts and social
security numbers?
> In addition, only group data are
> reported. Even the open-ended student comments are reported as a group
> and not linked to other responses on the form. This is more anonymous
> than the paper forms where instructors receive each paper rating form
> with comments and ratings from each student on each form. As far as
> students seeing results, this is an issue that I'm sure will be part of
> the discussion on student ratings in the future. I don't know where
> these discussions will lead. We'll see what happens. We are analyzing
> all comments from students, which includes requests about access to the
> results, in reports on the online rating process and how to improve the
> process in the future.
Looks like I've just given them one more comment to analyze. ;-)
Mike
.___________________________________________________________________.
Michael A. Halcrow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Security Software Engineer, IBM Linux Technology Center
GnuPG Fingerprint: 05B5 08A8 713A 64C1 D35D 2371 2D3C FDDA 3EB6 601D
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
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