From Politico: Massive open online courses, first envisioned as a way to democratize
higher education, have made their way into high schools, but Washington
is powerless to stop the flood of personal data about teenage students
from flowing to private companies, thanks to loopholes in federal
privacy laws. Universities and private companies this fall
unveiled a slew of free, open-access online courses to high school
students, marketing them as a way for kids to supplement their Advanced
Placement coursework or earn a certificate of completion for a
college-level class. But when middle and high school students participate in classes with
names like “Mars: The Next Frontier” or “The Road to Selective College
Admissions,” they may be unwittingly transmitting into private hands a
torrent of data about their academic strengths and weaknesses, their
learning styles and thought processes — even the way they approach
challenges. They may also be handing over birth dates, addresses and
even drivers license information. Their IP addresses, attendance and
participation in public forums are all logged as well by the providers
of the courses, commonly called MOOCs. With little guidance from
federal privacy law, key decisions on how to handle students’ data —
including how widely to share it and whether to mine it for commercial
gain — are left up to the company hosting the MOOC or its business
partners...
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