Online Learning and Students’ Safety

Using online educational tools has become very popular in the last couple of years since its use in the classroom has many benefits on students’ engagement and their learning experience. However, when choosing online educational tools, the priority should be if these tools are safe and are not a threat on students’ online safety and privacy.

Where and how can I find the right educational tool for my class and students? 

Looking through the internet search results gives you an idea and a list of a bunch of tools, where some of them are useful while others are useless or do not meet your educational needs. They might even be harmful to you and the students. 

Therefore, having a crosscheck list between the tools you and your students are familiar with when in regular classes and their online alternatives is very essential. The development and digital workplace companies have developed plenty of interactive tools that can replace and fulfill your online class requirement to better deliver and interact with your students. Having said that, the list of tools can start by having alternatives to books that should be managed by the academic institution through the implementation of a Learning Management System using one of the leading applications such as "Microsoft Teams", while in Qatar there were some initiatives, where educators have started to tackle and respond to the COVID pandemic crisis and have developed a platform "Mzeed" to be used by Qataris as e-learning platform for students from Pre-K-2 to Grade 12.

Moreover, educators should be familiar with online communication and collaboration tools, and other interactive tools used to have some teamwork and brainstorming activities such as digital whiteboard, in addition to activity-related applications.At the same time, educators should seek support from their IT human resources and capacities available at the institution due their day to day engagement and knowledge in such tools.  

How should I know if the tool I use with my students does not cause any threat to their privacy? 

Being online, by itself, puts you and your students at digital risks, hence being able to evaluate the impact and being aware of how to manage, control, and limit such risks is a high priority and should be treated responsibly.  

Accordingly, all educational tools you and your academies institution are looking to implement and give your students access to should be assessed and evaluated for: 

• Privacy terms and conditions: each application has its own privacy terms and conditions which should be evaluated by the academic institution’s legal advisor, while looking at how this application deals with and manages the subscribers' personal information, as well to look at the recommended age allowed to use this application, in addition to other legal acts required to know about, such if the application developer shares personal information with a third party and when. In addition, you have to ensure compliance of these applications with your academic policies, internal policies, and Qatari data privacy and protection law.  
• Copyrights and Data protection: You and your students are developing and creating new content on a daily basis. Therefore, data protection and copyrights applied by the application developers on their clients’ data should be assessed, as some of them take ownership of what you store on their servers, especially when you have a free subscription, which in all cases should be avoided. Besides that, you should look at how they store data on their servers, is it encrypted? Who from their team is allowed to access this data and when? 
• Collaboration and sharing features: since the applications are supposed to be online, hence students should be able to connect, collaborate, and share content with their peers and educators. Such activities are very sensitive as they can be misused. Such tools create through one to one conversation, opportunities for some students to harass, abuse, create peer pressures, and cyberbully others. Therefore, the application should be assessed for the control it provides to the users from being able to add/remove/block/report a contact as well to accept/decline a call or invitation to certain shared content.  
•  Visuals and abusive content: The last point you should look at while selecting an application is its visual design and content. Whereas in some applications developers tend to add a section for ads or to share news which by clicking on them connects you to external links where sometimes they show inappropriate and abusive content. Besides that, the applications should be assessed for the images and visuals the developer is using and ensure they are not abusive for the students and align with your culture. 

How can I limit the exposure of my students to harmful content and abusive situations when connected to social media and online educational communities? 

Most of the current education is taking place online where a funny, appropriate, and amusing engagement is needed to keep up the educational enthusiasm and build a connection between the students and educators. Both tend to look at each other’s social media profile trying to get an idea of others' history and interest, where sometimes this can be considered as part of a privacy breach or harassment in case misused.  

Therefore, and to limit putting yourself and your students in such situation: 

• Educators should first abide by their academic institution’s policy and if it allows such engagement with the students and how. 
• Educators should be role models; hence it is required to build a new, clean, professional social media profile for such purpose while ensuring not to connect with the students using any different account. 
• Educators should create a new online closed community page that will be shared with the students to share educational materials only. 
• Educators should be aware that most social media platforms are available for students from a certain age of 13 years, hence they should not encourage students under that age to connect, or at least to connect without the need to create an account. 
• Educators should set housekeeping rules and provide awareness to their students on how to engage on social media and the dos and don’ts. 

What can I do when my students' privacy is breached? 

With all given awareness guidance and implemented precaution, a data breach is still a subject to deal with, either for misuse of application credentials or for being phished by an email or by a harmful website while searching the internet for content to be used for academic research. 

For that reason, educators should be aware, trained, and have the knowledge on how to immediately respond to students’ reported cases, as having students’ personal information leaked is very critical and to be dealt with as high priority and confidentiality. 

Having such information in the wrong hands or in the hands of a predator might put the student under the risk of abuse, harassment, cyberbullying, where sometimes if not well managed can even lead to physical harm and death.  

Hence, in response to such incidents, educators should be able to advise and support students on the technical level and guide them to change their accounts password, and to identify the type of data subject to that breach, and seek support from experts such as IT, legal, in addition to student counselor to support and accompany the student to overcome this incident with the least mental and psychological harm especially if they were a  subject of an abusive act. 

As per what we have discussed, increasing your and your students’ time online and activities, either by connecting through well assessed and controlled platforms, still requires continued awareness and training on how to identify and deal with internet threats, in addition to applying best practices on data protection and storage. 

Together, all these measures will ensure the reduction of your exposure to online and digital risks to minimal as such risk cannot be totally eliminated.