Privacy provision in e-learning standardized systems: status and improvements

Privacy is understood as a freedom from intrusion into the private life or affairs of an individual when that intrusion results from undue or illegal gathering and use of data about that individual. Appropriate use of technologies may provide privacy and data protection; however, these technologies require relevant attributes in the databases containing information that need protection. These are not obvious in the existing e-learning standard schemes. This paper discusses first the current e-learning standards regarding the schemes used for defining, storing and managing user profiles in e-learning standardized systems. Later, it gives an overview of the requirements for privacy provision and discusses the elements required in such systems. Comments and assessments of the existing solutions are given. An enhanced solution being developed within the ELENA project from the European IST 5th Framework Programme is described. The new solution is built up on the existing standards, but it introduces new features enabling better protection of sensitive data and more efficient management, enabling the users to decide about the relevant protection. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.