Role- and relationship-based identity management for private yet accountable e-learning

Abstract

In every communicative context, each participant assumes some kind of role and negotiates some type of relationship with their counterparts. In the e-learning domain, the roles (e.g. instructor, learner, marker, administrator, etc.) for participants are well structured and relationships (e.g. one-to-one, one-to-many, hierarchical, etc.) among roles are relatively predictable. This paper proposes rolebased and relationship-based identity management in the e-learning domain to enable participants to enjoy a desired amount of privacy and to hold participants accountable for their actions. In this approach, a role-based identity hides an actor in the crowd of actors with same roles, and a relationship-based identity allows an actor to disclose information appropriate for a respective relationship. Moreover, public roles (e.g. instructor in a course, disciplinary committee in a department, etc.) are assigned guarantor privileges to sanction foul acting and to facilitate usage control over disclosed information. © 2008 International Federation for Information Processing.