Analyzing Learners' Privacy in MOOC and Online Learning Platform

COVID-19 has affected human life since its advent. And to counteract its spread, humankind adopts social distancing, which encourages remote working for employees, and online learning for students. Many universities and schools quickly adopted e-learning solutions without much consideration of security, while it is important to consider users' privacy. Unfortunately, digital learning spaces face security vulnerabilities, risks and threats and are not spared from cyber-attacks. To ensure the security and privacy of e-learning solutions used by universities and schools, we analyzed how MOOCs and Organizations offering online courses long before COVID-19 deal with their users' privacy and personal data. In this study, we considered some popular platforms from The United States (Coursera, EdX, Udemy), Europe and the United Kingdom (FutureLearn, FUN MOOC, EduOpen), and Asia (XuetangX, SWAYAM, and K-MOOC). We discussed the personal data collected by these platforms, the purposes for which these data are collected, the different legislation for processing and storing data, and how the platforms ensure user privacy. © 2022 IEEE.

A Comparison of Data-Driven and Data-Centric Architectures using E-Learning Solutions

To minimize the pace of transmission of the novel Covid-19 virus, institutions have shifted to e-learning to substitute lectures and assessments in the classroom without being fully ready and technologically equipped. As a result, institutions must identify and employ the most suitable data architecture for their universities. For this purpose, this study first identifies 109 e-learning solution use cases, collects their 983 user reviews from the e-learning industry, and categorizes them according to their data architectures for appropriate comparison using the developed conceptual framework. The finding shows that data-driven and data-centric were the only architectures used by e-learning solutions, it further recommends data-centric as the best suited for e-learning. © 2022 IEEE.

Preventive Measures for Digital Learning Spaces' Security Issues

The COVID-19 pandemic affected humanity and changed impacted people's habits worldwide. The necessity for social distancing has led to increasing remote working and online learning. As a result, many schools, institutions, and universities quickly adopted online learning to ensure the continuity of their training. Unfortunately, security was not a significant factor during the migration to digital learning. Consequently, security risks increased significantly with the advent of COVID-19 and cyberattacks do not spare education systems. This paper highlights security issues of digital learning spaces from the perspective of the Learning Management System and video conferencing tools. Also, we propose preventive measures to overcome each vulnerability. In addition, beyond the prevention measures, digital learning stakeholders need to be aware of the security principles and best practices to adopt before, during and after the sessions. © 2022 IEEE.

Security Issues in Digital Learning Spaces

Since the advent of COVID-19, most schools and universities have adopted online courses to reduce the spread of the virus. However, they failed to address security issues adequately in a rush to embrace digital learning platforms. Unfortunately, the platforms used for online courses collect and generate data that attracts hackers. Also, cyberattacks have been increasing since the advent of COVID-19. Therefore, it is essential to outline digital learning spaces' security issues to find solutions to ensure learners' and teachers' safety. This paper discusses vulnerabilities and cyberattacks and their impacts on digital learning spaces. We used the classification of the most common web application vulnerabilities presented by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) and Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE). In addition to the technical risks, this paper also highlights management and user operational risks caused by human errors and ignorance. Furthermore, we performed a comparative study on the vulnerabilities of the most used Learning management Systems (LMS) and video conferencing tools. The study revealed that Moodle is the most vulnerable to attacks, Blackboard is the most secure among LMSs, and Zoom is the most secure among video conferencing tool. © 2021 IEEE.