Teacher Education for EFL
Moodle and Personal
Data Protection
By creating a user account and using this website you accept the following.
Registration
To register as a user, the only personal data that Moodle needs are:
1. full name
2. email address
3. city
4. country
Profile data
The information (including the information above) in the user’s personal
profile is visible to other users but each student user can specify how much
information is public. For example, you can choose to have your email public
for all users, or just users on the same course as you, or block your email
address for all other users (except your course teacher and the administrator)
These settings can be changed by the user at any time.
Course set-up
In general, the Administrator can see everything that everyone does within the
system.
A normal student user can only see what other users have written in public spaces
(such as discussion forums). They cannot see other users’ work in general.
Course teachers can see all student users’ work within the courses they
teach but not work from outside their own courses. The same is true for tests
and all gradable results.
Protocol
Moodle records information about user traffic. This is important to allow teachers
to be able to check student participation and progress. Basically, Moodle records
who has been where and did what, and when.
The administrator can see all of this data.
Teachers can see whether users in their courses have done homework, contributed
to forums, completed tests etc.
Student users can see what they have done but can’t see anyone else’s
work record.
Cookies
Cookies are small text files which a website stores on your computer to help
the website recognise you during log-in and during your user session. Cookies
must be enabled in your browser for you to use Moodle properly. You can set
your browser to delete these cookies when you close your browser.
De-registering from the system
A student user can unenrol themselves from courses; if they want to be completely
removed from the system they can request that the administrator does this by
email.
After such a request, all core data and content data will be deleted. The only
exception is contributions to public areas such as discussion forums, which
are permanent.
Delivery of data to third parties
Teachereducation.org.uk will not pass on your personal data or information to third parties. For
obvious reasons, your teachers and the system administrator have access to the
records of work that you have done (otherwise they could not help you learn!)
Discussion forums
Contributions in this area are permanent and remain after a user has been removed
from the system. After posting a contribution to a discussion forum, you have
30 minutes within which to edit or delete the post.
Messenger
If a user is online messages appear in a pop-up within Moodle; if they are offline
Moodle sends the message as an email. Email addresses are not revealed if they
are secret in a user profile. Administrators can see these messages so if it
is really private a direct email outside Moodle is wiser.
Search engines
The site is configured to allow searches by Google. Guests can only access courses which allow guest access
Intellectual property
The content of anything posted by a user within Moodle remains their intellectual
property; its physical existence online is not. This means that if system error
or other causes lead to a contribution being lost, the user cannot claim for
damages or loss. It is the responsibility of the writer to secure a copy of
any contribution considered valuable.
Users are personally responsible for ensuring that any contributions they make
within Moodle do not impinge on or harm the rights of third parties.