The ideal learner profiles would allow the following types of information to be captured from learners by default:
Data | Purpose | Default Visibility | |
Username | Anonymised user identification | Essential | Public |
Login, communication | Essential | Course Staff | |
First Name | Certificates, identification | Essential | Connected Learner |
Last Name | Certificates, identification | Essential | Course Staff |
Age | Research & learner personas | Demographic | Course Staff |
Location (City, Country) | Research & learner personas | Demographic | Course Staff |
Gender Identity | Research & learner personas | Demographic | Course Staff |
Religious Identity | Research & learner personas | Demographic | Course Staff |
Ethnic Identity | Research & learner personas | Demographic | Course Staff |
Qualifications | Research & learner personas | Demographic | Course Staff |
Timezone | Research, learner personas, and planning | Demographic | Connected Learner |
Learning goals | Help staff to connect with learners | Personality | Course Staff |
Areas of interest | Allow learners to connect over shared interest, help staff connect with learners | Personality | Connected Learner |
Preferred Name | Allows learners to provide a name they would rather staff and other learners use to refer to them by | Personality | Connected Learner |
Learning challenges | Help staff understand barriers to learning such as accessibility needs or personal challenges | Personality | Course Staff |
Bio | Allow learners to introduce themselves to profile viewers in their own words | Personality | Connected Learner |
Preferred Pronouns | Allow learners to specify their preferred pronouns to prevent misidentification | Personality | Connected Learner |
Courses enrolled | Display which courses a learner is currently enrolled in | Activity | Admin |
Courses started | Display which courses a learner is enrolled in, and has recorded progress | Activity | Admin |
Courses active | Display which courses a learner is currently active in (requires a definition of “active” such as progress changing in the last two weeks) | Activity | Admin |
Certificates earned | Display which certificates a learner has earned on the site | Activity | Public |
Badges earned | Display which badges a learner has earned on the site | Activity | Public |
Activity log | Display a record of all actions performed by the user | Activity | Admin |
Course-specific activity log | Display a record of all actions performed by a user within a specific course | Activity | Course Staff |
Course progress | Current progress levels for enrolled courses | Activity | Course Staff |
Course grade | Current grades for enrolled courses | Activity | Course Staff |
Average grade | Average grade across all enrolled courses marked complete | Activity | Admin |
Social media profiles | Connection of accounts on social media platforms | Connective | Public |
Website URLs | Connection to other personal websites and custom URLs | Connective | Public |
Most importantly, however, the ideal learner profile would allow a site administrator to customise which of the non-essential fields are mandatory, optional or hidden, as well as providing the ability to add custom data fields to user accounts as dropdown options or free-text. The data should be gatherable via user account settings, or at the point of registration.
Where allowed by administrators, learners should also be able to control the visibility of their public profiles, such as switching their bio from being public to all viewers to only visible to learners who share a connection, or hiding aspects of their name from other learners. This should be configurable between options, for example allowing learners to display their interests publicly, or to other learners, without being able to remove viewing permissions from staff.
As these settings are typically tied heavily to the platform’s context (such as not allowing K-12 learners to share their data publicly, compared to a MOOC platform where the assumed access level is higher), it would make considerable sense for all these settings to include some form of preset starting point for specific known use cases.
Also crucially, some demographic and personality data such as gender identity and pronouns are extremely sensitive in nature, and should be handled with sensitivity built into the system’s design. The ideal way to handle this is simply by providing a free-text entry field rather than selecting from a list of options. Some good research on the collection and handling of this type of sensitive data can be found in the following articles:
Good Practices: Demographic Data Collection | LGBTQ+ Equity Center
MRS Best Practice Guide on Collecting Data on Sex and Gender
MRS Best Practice Guide on Research Participant Vulnerability
Which data a learner’s profile page displays is essentially dependent on the context, with member of course staff needing different information to a fellow learner who is viewing a user’s profile to get to know them better, or a training manager viewing a learner’s profile to review their progress across the courses purchased for a member of staff. This means that the data visible on a user’s profile page needs to be contextualised to either the viewer’s role, or the page context in which the learner profile data is displayed.
This may make it necessary to have multiple versions of profile pages depending on context, at the very least an overall site profile vs. an in-course learner profile, potentially more depending on the desired user experience, but these should all draw from the same centralised user profile data.