Non-Pseudonymous Student Blogging: Ethical and Legal Concerns
Posted September 14, 2006As I was figuring out all the logistics for my courses this fall, both of which include a blogging component for the students, I spoke with a few other instructors that I knew had used blogging in their classroom. I was surprised to learn that many of them did not give their students the option to blog using a pseudonym. I found this concerning for a number of reasons. My primary concern was ethical: was it appropriate for me to force my students to make their work public? Although I wouldn’t be asking them to blog about anything remotely related to sensitive issues like sexuality or religion, my writing prompts do ask students to give their opinion on current topics related to the focus of the class (social impacts of new media). Did I want students to have to own these writing assignments forever, thanks to the caching affordances of Google?
I see an undergraduate education to be a time in which students are exposed to new ideas for the first time. If the university is doing its job, students should feel comfortable trying on new philosophical approaches and should encounter new ideas, some of which might make them feel uncomfortable. This does not seem to be a situation in which students should be forced to own their words forevermore in the eyes of potential employers and others.Perhaps more important, Eszter points out that non–pseudonymous student blogging may have legal implications. These practices may violate FERPA, a Federal law that protects the privacy of students’ educational records.On the other hand, I can understand why instructors might ask their students to use their real names. Perhaps they feel that the benefits of blogging accrue more rapidly when authorship is claimed. Perhaps part of being part of a global conversation about ideas is about owning your ideas. Perhaps it’s just easier to grade.How have you handled this issue? I’m interested in hearing arguments on either side of the debate.
Comments
[…] Nicole Elison’s post on Non-Pseudonymous Student Blogging: Ethical and Legal Concerns The advantage of BAM is that students public blogs can be anonymous. The identification of which student owns which blog is only visible to CQU staff. Of course, in the absence of any specific advice students have tended to name their blogs using their student identifier. […]
G’day,rnrnThe approach we’ve used is to implement a University aggregator with which students must register their blogs. This system is integrated with other University administrative and e-learning systems.rnrnIt allows students to create their blog in a public forum using a pseudonym and still potentially gain benefit from being public.rnrnAt the same time, the system provides teaching staff a simple approach to marking and managing student posts by identifying which student owns which blog. Only the teaching staff can perform this identification.rnrnIn our first offering, we were surprised by how many students used their University student number or their name in either their blog url or in posts.rnrnIn the second offering, just underway, we included specific advice to students that they could use pseudonyms.rnrnDavid.rn