EdCheck Yourself Before You EdTech Yourself Part 2: [Power in User Permissions]

As you assess your EdTech Ecosystem, ACCESS becomes a critical perspective to consider, especially since we already know that educators value data and that they want meaningful information at meaningful times as long as it comes from the right people, for the right reasons. An ecosystem setup with clean and clear access permissions is going to optimize for efficiency, protect privacy, and reduce data overload.

A number of products on the market today force a single view on users, dictated by the product’s design and not by the user’s needs. The inflexibility of this access creates confusion as users struggle to find the specific information they need amongst the overload of information they are confronted with. Worse yet, they don’t limit access to information — leading to the jeopardization of student, staff, and school privacy.

There is enough on the educator’s plate; they shouldn’t have to now carry the burden of building in protections that software should provide. In our new Education Intelligence Platform, we’ve taken what we’ve learned from our own implementation over the years and from the inadequacies of other solutions and designed protections and permissions that are easy to implement and put the organization’s interests first.

See Only What You Need To See:

1. Protected by Permissions — We heard from one school (we’ve heard it from many, really) that access to information for those working with students with special needs is particularly difficult. Due to privacy restrictions, FERPA, HIPAA, and other precautions, it’s extremely important that data pertaining to these students, in particular, is accessible only to those people working directly with them. To help this school, we added specialized Learning Support roles to limit who has access to the complete student profile and then on top of that created a unique dashboard that gives Case Managers insights into what is happening with their caseload in real-time so that they can monitor the information that is most important to them. They’ve never before had this kind of access with this kind of security and the balance between the two.
2. Customized Views and Streamlined Process — One of our partners has very specific roles, case managers for example, with varying needs. Keeping track of the customized pieces for each case manager can be difficult without the proper permissions and roles assigned in technology products. We work with our partners to understand specific roles and use cases and build customized solutions around it. If you are a case manager for a dynamic (read: changing weekly) group of students with changing variables based on current and live data, having a fluid, dynamic product is paramount. Restricted access to these pieces of the technology is of the utmost importance for student privacy. No two schools are exactly the same, setting up scoped roles in your products saves time, provides better more individualized data to its users, and protects student privacy at the highest level.
3. Short-Term Staff + Short-Term Access — One of the most frustrating permissions issues to overcome for one of our clients was navigating short-term staff — do you ask the company to give them their own accounts? Do you share passwords? What access do you give them? Yet again, schools shouldn’t be spending time-fighting these battles. We’ve implemented a fluid and dynamic system to add/remove staff and assign them permissions that are eliminated once they leave the role. Long-term substitutes no longer have to take on passwords from the teacher they are replacing and security and privacy remain at the forefront while access to information that can help student achievement isn’t blocked from the people currently serving them.

Take the weight off your shoulders again and focus your time and effort on the work you want to be doing not the work you have to do because your EdTech falls short. To support this work, we’re ready to work with 5 schools for free to help them audit their EdTech Ecosystem user access and permissions. Reach out to us now for help.

Rickie Yudin

Chief Academic Officer
rickie@learnmetrics.com