Anonymous Credentials for Privacy-Preserving E-learning

Abstract

E-learning systems have made considerable progress within the last few years. Nonetheless, the issue of learner privacy has been practically ignored. Existing E-learning standards offer some provisions for privacy and the security of E-learning systems offers some privacy protection, but remains unsatisfactory on several levels. On the other hand, privacy preserving solutions that are appropriate and used in E-commerce environments are inadequate and unsuitable to the context of E-learning. Indeed, while in most E-commerce applications different transactions between the client and the system are pretty much independent, in E-learning the interactions between the learner and system are intertwined into a developing process that depends heavily on the path the leaner is following. In this paper, we introduce the anonymous credentials for E- learning systems (ACES), a set of protocols to preserve learner's privacy in E-learning environments. In particular, the ACES allows learners to provide anonymous credentials throughout the learning process, such as when they need to prove that they possess the necessary requirements to register for a course, and/or to prove that they are the legitimate owners of an anonymous transcript or an anonymous degree. Although the concept of anonymous credentials is not novel, ACES takes into account the specificities of E-learning. Moreover, in order to prevent the misuse of privacy, ACES prevents the possibility of sharing credentials between learners.