How to Protect your Personal Data and Privacy in Online Learning

UNESCO INRULED and UNESCO IITE launched the new handbook “Personal Data and Privacy Protection in Online Learning: Guidance for Students, Teachers and Parents” during the international webinar held on June 18, 2020.

As online learning is expanding, teachers, students and parents increasingly generate personal data; therefore, its protection is becoming more and more important. At least basic skills in data protection are now critical. In this context, to better protect privacy of all stakeholders using to the Internet for educational purposes, the researchers have prepared the Handbook to suggest specific strategies for personal information protection from three aspects: before, during and after learning.

Personal data security in education has been a long-standing issue with the development of online learning. However, it has never been so critical as today, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and UNESCO prioritized it among the top challenges we are confronting.

Tao Zhan, Director of UNESCO IITE

The Handbook is based on the “Personal Data Security Technical Guide for Online Education Platforms”, which was launched by the UNESCO IITE and Tsinghua University earlier. Both the Handbook and Technical Guide complement each other to promote personal data and privacy protection for teachers, students and parents in online learning.

The webinar, which has become the platform to launch the Handbook, has gathered international experts who discussed the topics of data security, personal data and privacy in online learning during COVID-19 pandemic:

  • Tao Zhan, Director, UNESCO IITE
  • Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills, and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General at the OECD
  • Xiaoyun Wang, Academician of Chinese Academy of Science; Professor, Institute of Advanced Study at Tsinghua University, China
  • Dejian Liu, Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University, China
  • Lixin Zhu, Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University, China
  • Denis Kapelyushnik, Programme Specialist, UNESCO IITE
  • Joseph South, Chief Learning Officer of the ISTE, USA
  • Yu Yu, Professor of Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Shanghai JiaoTong University, China
  • Sergey Bezzateev, Professor of Department of Technologies of Information Security, St. Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation, Russia
  • Robert Oboko, School of Computing and Informatics, University of Nairobi, Kenya
  • Weiping Sun, President of Blackboard, China
  • Shan Shan Pa, Senior Security Expert at Alibaba Cloud, China
  • Tietao Guo, Data Security Architect at Tencent, China

Download “Personal Data and Privacy Protection in Online Learning: Guidance for Students, Teachers and Parents” here or visit our Publications page to read other materials.