Teaching Quality Assessment: How Anonymity Will Be Provided

In 2015, a pilot mechanism for teaching quality assessment by students was introduced at HSE. Students can grade the courses and lecturers in the LMS system. In relation to this, many people have raised the question of how anonymity will be assured, since this might affect the honesty of the grades. Andrey Shevtsov, Senior Director for IT, commented on the problem.

— The LMS system, where the assessment procedure is implemented, is developed and maintained by the HSE IT Office, so the mechanisms to make sure the assessment is anonymous have been built into the program code. I’m not going to reveal these mechanisms in detail, I can only say that students’ IDs attached to the assessments are not recorded in the database at all (the database records only the grade and an encrypted value (hash function) instead of the student ID). In addition to that, in order to prevent the system revealing specific students’ assessments by indirect indicators, such as time and date of the vote, all HSE departments’ queries for grades will be wiped of such indicators and authorized by me. All IT Office staff who participate in LMS development or administration will be forbidden to disclose the details of encryption in the LMS system, by a special order. In fact, our assessment database is protected by a system of measures that is in line with the most recent requirements of global payment systems (such as Visa or MasterCard) to large bank databases.

October 15, 2015