EDUCAUSE | Identity

Tune In April 18 for a Free Web Seminar on Identity Management at Duke University

pkurkowski — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:04:50 -0500

The EDUCAUSE Live! Spotlight on Identity Management series is a six-month series that will feature one or two speakers from a campus that have analyzed or solved a problem in a way that many people will find instructive.

The meaning of "student" is evolving at Duke University in response to many institutional and faculty outreach efforts. This trend is mirrored at many of Duke's peer institutions. In this free seminar on April 18, The Evolving Definition of “Student”: Identity Management at Duke University, presenters Klara Jelinkova, Director, Computing Systems, and Lynne O’Brien, Director, Academic Technology and Instructional Services, Duke University, will discuss the issues, concepts, and solutions surrounding identity management proposed and implemented at Duke University.

The event is free, but registration is required and virtual seating is limited. Register now.

Poke 1.0 afterthoughts

catherine — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 08:45:38 -0600

On 15 November 2007, Matt Riddle and I attended the “Poke 1.0” symposium at London Knowledge Lab organised by Neil Selwyn. Some brief thoughts and notes on the day here: overall, it was a really exciting and energising event, and I felt there was a strong sense of a nascent research community starting to coalesce. Here are parallel reviews by Lewis Goodings and Juliet Eve.

“Poke 1.0” sought to bring together UK-based social science researchers with an interest in Facebook, as an example of an innovative “social networking” application that is currently used by the majority of students in UK higher education. The audience heard a range of research papers, from media consultancy Human Capital's “macro” view, involving web metrics from Nielsen NetRatings, to Sonia Livingstone's “micro”-level qualitative study of UK teenagers’ use of social networking sites. Our paper represented a “mid-point” between these two extremes, presenting a single-institution case study and focusing on Facebook’s impact on staff/student relations at Cambridge. We also demoed a Facebook mashup widget developed by CARET developers Nicolaas Matthijs and Nick Desmet. The widget allows Facebook users to expose personal Sakai VLE resources on their profile (only the owner can see / access their personal resources). So, we've proved it's possible to do it, the real question now is do students want it, and is it desirable, both educationally and in terms of privacy?

The best came at the end of the day, with a really lively discussion on research ethics and methodologies. The problematic bits are always the most interesting... The consensus in the group seemed to be that many of us are finding that many "gold-standard" research ethics guidelines (e.g. BERA, BSA, Assoc. of Internet Researchers) are not adequate to cover this new research terrain. Is it possible, or desirable, to do "covert" observational research in a "semi-public" environment, for example? (There seemed to be some general agreement among the group that social networking sites are effectively "semi-public" environments, despite their privacy settings and access / searchability constraints.) It's early days yet of course and this sense of newness generated a certain collective enthusiasm, alongside the feeling that, to some extent, we're re-inventing the rules as we go along.

Spock's Risky Take on Trust, Privacy, and Identity Management Online

catherine — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 07:38:34 -0600

This post sort of follows on from my musings on Pownce, and the relative (in)utility of the current glut of social networking "services".

Received any Spock trust invitations lately?

Spock, a self-described “people search application that allows you to see what your friends and colleagues are doing on the web”, could potentially tell us something about the future of metasearch engines—those clunky crawlers that tried, and mostly failed, to bridge the gap between structured web directories like Dmoz, and the chaotic openness of Google’s PageRank™ technology. Although its interface design, a web-2.0-ified “Google Classic Home”, is so trendy that I’m afraid it’s already terribly dated.

The Spock team have got one thing right: web search is now the primary vehicle for information discovery, and the sudden realisation of this (by the media, at least) has created all sorts of headaches for identity management and privacy online.

We, i.e. the affluent, educated, Western audience that remains the dominant internet consumer group, have made search engines, and the companies that run them, immensely powerful because we have enabled them effectively to constitute our interface to the world. Consequently, we have endowed search engines -- and their enabler, internet connectivity -- with powerful social meanings. “Searchability” means potential, openness, connectedness, currency, agency—qualities that are socially desirable in early 21st century cultures; or at least, the “globalised” cultures of the developed world.

Spock’s positive appeal to consumers is to tap directly into these powerful social meanings. Its negative appeal to consumers consists of using the language of risk to talk about identity management on the web:

“The first step towards managing your online identity is putting the information you want seen about you online. That allows you to control what is being said about you. The second step is staying up to date on new information about you as it appears.” (Spock blog)

Both aspects of Spock’s appeal, positive and negative, come at absolutely the right time for the consumer market: in education, careers advisors are trying to convince students of the need to “clean up their profile”, while teachers, counsellors and youth workers grapple with issues around cyberbullying; in the media and political spheres, the risks posed by ID theft loom large.

So, no argument on my side that managing online identity is important, and becoming increasingly more so. But if you already have an online identity, and if you proactively manage your online identity by publishing indexable information that allows others to locate you, then I don’t see value in the “service” Spock provides. Instead, I see considerable risk.

If you read through Spock’s Terms of Service, it becomes immediately apparent that the Spock folks are terribly worried about two things: the currency of the information on Spock, and the potential for individuals to create profiles that do not belong to them.

Like many, if not most, social networking services (e.g. StumbleUpon, Flickr), Spock is largely reliant on its user community to create value. The first cause of anxiety for Spock, of course, is that if Spock user profiles become out-of-date, then Spock is a useless “non-service” and people will just go back to Google. So, Spock talks tough, threatening to terminate your service if you do not maintain your information.

The second worry for Spock is that a user profile might not “authentically” represent an individual. Again, Spock is totally reliant on users to co-operate in this way to create a community of trust, because Spock itself cannot guarantee identity, and if users do not trust the identities they find on Spock then Spock again is exposed as a useless “non-service.” Doing a couple of sample searches on Spock for people that you already know have a well-established web presence reveals an intrinsic problem for Spock: Spock can and often does generate multiple search results for a single individual, just as happens on the “open” web via a traditional search engine.

Spock tries to solve this problem by encouraging users to consolidate these results into a single profile, by “claiming” them. In this way, Spock is asking users to help conserve its overall aim of having one Spock profile represent a single individual.

But why would you choose to help Spock by doing this? One of the things about the web in general is that information has a short life, and that is exactly what enables people to retain some control over their privacy. What if I change my personal or career goals, leave an organization or group of which I was a member, or move to a different city? Life happens, and people reinvent themselves all the time. But that might not necessarily mean that I want to reject or withdraw “obsolete” information about me – at times, it’s best to just let it alone, and let new information take its place.

It’s not especially useful, and it could even be dangerous, for a company to try and create a public expectation that “identity management” equates to an individual actively “controlling” all the personal information that is available about him/her on the web. And I can’t help thinking that it’s naïve at best, stupid at worst to think that an individual can solve the problem of managing his or her online identity (which consists of a complex mish-mash of information, some generated by the individual, some created by others) by creating Yet Another Profile on this type of system. At this stage, Spock’s goal of a single profile per user looks fundamentally incompatible with the way people—and the web in general—works.

Spock is behaving a bit like the banks that try and stop consumers from sharing their PIN numbers, even with immediate family members. Its attempt to make one profile represent “one authentic user” already looks redundant. Try asking kids using Bebo or Xanga not to share passwords, or create new profiles for their friends -- an interesting theme of the recent symposium on Facebook research.

With my academic hat on, I’d say we’ve already got other, better mechanisms to do the things that Spock says it’s offering users. Mechanisms that allow people to selectively share their information with services and with other individuals, and that don’t rely on submitting personal information to a commercial third party provider. I recognise that my bias towards sharing information, and towards open systems and standards, isn't necessarily shared by tech firms or the general public. But if people are prepared to share information with a system like Spock, surely it's worth looking again at OpenID, ClaimID and FOAF for trust and authentication; or Explode as a way to display distributed networks of people. Somebody like Scott Wilson can probably explain this much better than I can; check out FeedForward, his alpha tool for personalized information discovery.

2007 Policy Conference: Identity Crisis

Carie417 — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 16:56:34 -0500

The opening keynote speech at the 2007 Educause Policy Conference was delivered by Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. Through public policy debate, forums, and publications, the Cato Institute strives to broaden public access to government policy with particular emphasis on the role of limited government, individual liberty, and free markets. This speech, entitled "Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood", uses the REAL ID Act as a springboard for discussion about the need for competitive, responsive identification that protects individual privacy and civil liberties. This podcast has a runtime of approximately 40 minutes.

Mirror, Mirror: Refining the Element in the IMS e-Portfolio Specification

catherine — Wed, 24 May 2006 06:23:34 -0500

The e-portfolio community would agree that reflection is a key part of learning, and by association, a key activity for owners of e-portfolios. The IMS e-portfolio specification includes a special <reflexion> element, designed to highlight this and separate it from other e-portfolio elements. But the distinction between reflexion and other e-portfolio elements in the IMS spec (notably, <assertion>) remains unclear, and this has the potential to affect the way that we understand and interpret identity, ownership, and activity in relation to e-portfolios. Pondering this, Scott Wilson asks:

At what level of description is the distinction between reflexion (aka self-asserted statements) and assertion (aka reputation or other-asserted statements) useful?

Good question. The relevant bit of the IMS ePortfolio Best Practice Guide seems to be 3.1.7: Using Core Data Structures: Assertion / Reflexion. To the authors' credit, they've had a stab at defining reflection, but I find their definition insufficient because it raises questions similar to Scott's. The wording in 3.1.7 seems to me to mirror some slightly fuzzy thinking about the nature and role of reflection in e-portfolios. And the actual example of reflexion (XML format) given is alarmingly simplistic:

<lip:description>
<lip:short>My Thoughts on the essay</lip:short>
-
<lip:long>
Could be improved with discussion of relationship with Norse Culture
</lip:long>
</lip:description>

Am I the only one who finds this funny -- kind of?

Back to the IMS <reflexion> element. It seems clear that reflection is both an "activity" and an "item" (or "product"). <Assertion> is linked to <reflexion> because, as part of a reflective activity, a learner may make a connection between items (between ideas, objects, or persons) -- asserting that a relationship exists between them. So, where does reflection come in? Reflection, I would suggest, is the argument that backs up the assertion -- it is semantic, as well as syntactic. A reflective "argument" can take the form of evidence supplied by the learner, or it can take the form of an interpretation, an attribution of meaning. The phenomenon of hyperlinking has meant that the distinction between semantics and syntax, reflexion and assertion, has blurred. The act of creating a hyperlink (on the Web, or in an e-portfolio) is widely intended and interpreted as a functional argument: it encompasses both the assertion of a relationship and, at the same time, the supplying of evidence.

Sometimes, as Scott suggests, assertion operates in the same space as reputation (how I perceive others, and how others perceive me). <Assertion> therefore has a social element. But not always: <assertion> may also operate as part of a private reflection -- which the learner may choose to expose to others, thereby shifting something private / personal into the arena of the public / social.

Reflective activity in e-portfolios has to mean more than filling in a form-field titled "Reflection" (this is a problem with the current iteration of OSP). Reflective activity is complex and involves several levels of thought and activity on the part of the learner. We can point to educational theoretical models like Kolb's learning cycle act as the underpinning rationale and research basis for believing the reflection is relevant and important to learning. However, Kolb et. al. -- and, significantly, the now-familiar language of "folio thinking" and the e-portfolio community in general -- seem to emphasise "right-brain" thinking (holistic, visuospatial, emotive) over "left-brain" (verbal, linear, analytic). This seems to me, at least potentially, to create a top-level pedagogical problem and, taking different learning styles into account, to neglect a major group of learners and, by extension, owners of e-portfolios.

The planned integration of VUE into Sakai seems, to my mind, to be a product of the current "left-brain bias" of folio thinking. I say this without wishing to disparage the use of visual tools or concept maps, which are particularly suitable for dyslexic students; and I am also very happy that visual tools are being gradually introduced into Sakai's very hierarchical, folder-centric information structure. My overall point is that our understandings and definitions of reflection have to address the reality of adaptability, switching, and unpredictability in learner preferences and learner behaviour. And they have to provide for future developments and refinements in neuropsychological / sociological understanding of learning, and consequent educational models.

Blog as ePortfolio-- a request to change my personal history

nils_peterson — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 17:03:06 -0500

The discussion of persistent identity started by Catherine Howell's post has taken another turn for me that she presaged in her reasons not to use blogs in education (see below).

" Persistence: the persistence of blogs (via permalinks, trackbacks etc, to say nothing of the recently-sued Wayback Machine) is at odds with the desire to create a personal repository that can be selectively shared and edited, over time. "

In replying to the thread he started, Andrew Middleton says

"I am not sure how important it is to consider blog entries as being representative of a person. When we read a blog don't we understand that the ideas are transient?"

Stephen Downes took several issues with Catherine, one of which agreed with Middleton

"Leaving aside our ability to read dates, this concern misrepresents blogs as a static information base rather than the stream it actually is."

My take on the discussion was to own up to my past selves and suggest that they are evidence of my growth to my present state

"I believe I am continuing to grow as a learner and that my responsibility to myself and to you the reader is to connect my current self to my past selves and to explain how I understand the evolution. In "The Social Life of Learning: How can Continuing Education be Reconfigured in the Future," John Seely Brown talks about a spectacular failure and what he learned from it. He connects to failure associated with his past identity."

Now this twist. Back in January 2005 I commented on David Supple's quote to the BBC regarding the role of blogs in higher education.

Supple has now written me to request that I pull my post as he has take another position and is trying to disassociate himself from that past. He is asking me to delete from my portfolio an element of my history. Leaving aside Howell's reminders about archives and the Wayback machine, (I've not tried, but) certainly the BBC story, or the EDUCAUSE email news service where I read the story, will continue to exist to remind Supple of his past.

So, David, here is what I have to offer. For better or worse, you said what you said to the BBC and I said what I said about it. Mine reflects on me. And Catherine, this is a counter-example to your concern, I've just extended my portfolio with this post to explain how I am continuing to reflect on, and deepen, my understanding and practice of blog-as-portfolio. That old post is more valuable to me now, than it was, because of this interchange. David, I'd suggest that you get a blog and start building your portfolio, and address, or not, how you have grown in your thinking since the BBC quoted you.