The more conversations that I have with school districts, the more this subject comes up. Everyone is dealing with Cyber Security related issues. They are having to write policies if they don’t have them and implement them once they do. This primarily involves staff and forcing two-factor authentication (2FA) for everything that may contain sensitive information.
I understand from a practical standpoint that there are benefits to being able to login as a particular student to troubleshoot a reported problem with that student’s account. I think that the value of this is trumped by the negatives that come from this practice.
There are two different ways to improve this situation. Each of them has its benefits and some drawbacks. We will dig more deeply into each of these:
This can teach better passwords.
Staff can still know the password if needed for troubleshooting.
It may reduce the opportunity for abuse from other students, but if it is based on a pattern of data, this can still be figured out.
Random words can be used or even multiple random words to make a much better password. (this creates a different logistical problem that we have solved very elegantly)
If this is based on a pattern, students will eventually figure out each other’s passwords.
It doesn’t teach the student that this is personal and that they are the only ones that should know their password.
This can be used as a tool to teach better passwords.
Nobody knows a student’s password unless they share it themselves.
This teaches personal accountability.
You can have more confidence that if something inappropriate was done with the account, it was the student that did it themselves.
Students will forget their password.
Teachers need a way to address forgotten passwords in a way that is not disruptive to the classroom, but also allows the student to have the issue resolved quickly so that they can participate in the scheduled activity.
Students can abuse this by changing their password and then claiming that they don’t know it.
If these challenges resonate with you and you want to explore a solution that addresses all of them, please reach out and find out how we make this simple and easy for you, teachers and students.