A thread for students taking undergrad courses online:

I didn't realize til becoming a TA of these courses how much data about your behaviour on your learning platform is surveilled and available to instructors. I think it's important that you know.

Your profs and TAs can see:

- the last time you logged into the platform
- how much time you've spent on the platform
- how many "page views" you have
- how often you have participated in course activities
- which days you've been active
- your student photo
- how often you've communicated with instructors

- which assignments you've completed, including which have been submitted on time vs late
- a "star rating" of your participation and how often you've viewed pages
- what percentile you're in for grades in the class
- your major
- possibly more (or less), depending on your school

I don't think most of this info should be available to us. I think it's wrong. Even if an instructor has the best intentions and awareness of the insidiousness of online surveillance, they might not be able to help being influenced by this data. #phdchat #AcademicTwitter

So while I don't think you should stress about it, I do think you have a right to know. And I think us instructors should push back against this level of unnecessary surveillance, especially during a pandemic when students are struggling.

Caveat: This is based on what I have access to on the UBC online course platform, Canvas. The info available to instructors using other platforms will differ, so it would be helpful if other TAs and profs can add their experiences in the comments.

The only thing that should matter is students' assignments, and active participation in and completion of course requirements. Logging data on how many times they've sent messages to instructors or how long they've spent on the website is ridiculous, imo. Why should we know that?

Photos are useful for in-person courses so we can learn who is who and remember names/faces, but unnecessary and potentially a very bad idea for online courses when we know implicit bias exists. It's nice because it humanizes the names, but also... racism is a thing