“More and more universities around the world offer so-called Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). With top Munich universities using the online education provider Coursera, doubts grow over security and the selling of customer data.”
Johannes Boie and Hannes Grassegger report:
….The Bavarians are relying on the Californian start-up Coursera for the dissemination of their course contents. Along with the start-up UDacity, owned by the German Sebastian Thrun, and valued at over $1 billion, Coursera leads the growing industry in online learning.
…. And yet, when you digitalize learning, it also means that an awful lot of information is generated. But it is not only the students that can access outside information. Companies such as Coursera, which make the course materials available online and look after the students, also get access to a lot of information about their users.
[…]
Is the data stored safely? An American professor who offered a course on Coursera managed to obtain large quantities of user data without too much difficulty. Coursera said that they improved their security and afterwards assured that the data leak had been solved. But is that truly the case?
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