As at 4 July 2024

1. Technical Specifications

Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is an open-source software package used to support teaching. Moodle is a category of learning platform.
Moodle is used to deliver module- or course-based learning environments. A self-contained Moodle installation is referred to below as a Moodle instance.

FernUniversität courses are hosted on the Moodle instance https://moodle.fernuni-hagen.de. Exams for all faculties are provided via https://moodle-pruefungen.fernuni-hagen.de/.

Each of these Moodle instances is operated in a secure technical environment on servers belonging to the FernUniversität in Hagen, located in the ZDI server room on campus.

The system environment contains databases containing the learning environments and user data that are set up specifically for the Moodle instances and also specially programmed web servers on which the files uploaded by users are stored in addition to the Moodle program code. Access to this IT base is provided only to the system administrators at the Center for Digitalization and IT (ZDI). Users of Moodle instances who do not have administration rights only have access to web-based data via the functions in Moodle. The interface to the LDAP directory for authentication during login is configured by system administrators in the ZDI.

2. Access/Login

To access to the respective Moodle instance, you must have a FernUniversität account and be included in the central user directory (LDAP).

Students are automatically issued this required account upon enrollment. It expires 90 days after de-registration from the university.

Employees are assigned an account when their employment starts or upon request. The account will be deleted when their employment ends.

Guests can request a temporary account that remains valid for a limited period. To do so, they must submit an application to the ZDI, accompanied by an explanation of why they need the account (https://wiki.fernuni-hagen.de/helpdesk/index.php/Gastzugang). A guest account is valid only for the period specified in the application. Access to the Moodle instance is not permitted to outsiders without an account.

This account only provides basic access to the Moodle instance. Access rights to the individual Moodle learning environments are granted to participants either automatically or manually. Access rights are automatically granted upon enrollment in the corresponding course on the Virtual Student Environment (https://vu.fernuni-hagen.de/) or upon registration for specific exams on the Exam Portal (https://pos.fernuni-hagen.de/). Administrators can also add users manually or grant access through open or password-protected self-enrollment. This also applies to guests with the guest accounts mentioned above. The respective Moodle instance shows which access options are available for a Moodle learning environment. Supervisors also have access only to the learning environments in which they have been assigned that role.

3. Use of Data and Data Protection

The FernUniversität in Hagen processes data in accordance with the GDPR, the Federal Data Protection Act (DSG), and the North Rhine-Westphalia Data Protection Act (DSG NRW). For more details about this data usage and the legal basis thereof, please see the Privacy Policy.

3.1 Personal Data in User Profiles

When you log in, data is automatically entered and saved in the user profile of the respective Moodle instance: The last name, first name, and email address are retrieved from the LDAP database during registration and added to the profile along with the corresponding user name. Students can only update this information via the Virtual Student Environment. All other information provided for the user profile, such as contact information, is voluntary and will also be stored if provided. Optional profile data and settings are not synchronized across different Moodle instances.

3.2 Other Personal Data

All posts, task solutions, or actions made or performed while using the Moodle instance in forums or in other activities are stored in such a way that it is possible to trace who made these posts, entered these task solutions or performed these actions. Actions are classed as all activities that lead to a result, such as writing a forum post, voting in a poll, or answering questions in an online test. In addition, log data from the last 180 days is stored. These include the IP address of the computer used to submit or perform posts, assignment solutions, or other actions; the user’s name; and the time at which the action was performed.

3.3 Visibility of Personal Data

Depending on their assigned role, users can access other users’ profiles in various places, such as by clicking on the name of the author of a forum post. The first and last names, as well as the role, are visible. You can control the visibility of your email address in your personal profile. By default, the email address is not visible. All optional information in the profile (e.g., country and city or town, photo, short description) is visible.

Students can set their profile to determine whether their name should be visible to other students (or users with the “Participant” role) on the attendance lists that are available in Moodle learning environments and the “Online Activities” block that instructors may optionally provide in these environments. Users with the “Moderator” role always see the complete lists.

Contributions that are made via participation in activities within learning environments (such as forums, wikis, glossaries, database entries and polls) are generally publicly viewable within a Moodle learning environment; in other words, they are visible to all users enrolled in the learning environment (participants and tutors). Supervisors also have access to all answers, documents and texts submitted, for example, as part of assignments or tests, as well as all other activities relevant to assessment.

Administrators can view log data from the last 180 days. Furthermore, in the event of misuse or technical problems, administrators can trace which users posted specific contributions or carried out specific activities by accessing the database directly.

4. Roles and Rights

Moodle has a highly sophisticated system of roles and permissions. For each role, it is possible to specify whether a permission is granted or not by choosing from a catalog of more than 900 permissions. Roles take effect depending on the context: across the entire Moodle instance, within a Moodle learning environment, or even just for a single activity. If a person holds multiple context-dependent roles – e.g., the role of “Authenticated User” across the entire Moodle instance (after logging in) plus the role of “Participant” within a learning environment – their permissions are calculated according to a defined algorithm. Further information on individual roles can be found on the Helpdesk Wiki.

4.1 User Roles and Their Rights in Moodle

Users can have one of the following six basic roles in the FernUniversität’s Moodle. The individual roles, in order of increasing scope of authority:

1. Participant
2. Moderator without editing privileges
3. Moderator
4. HelpDesk
5. Manager
6. Administrator (System Role)

There are also further roles that enable or restrict specific functions for individual users.
The roles listed above have varying levels of access to personal data on Moodle. Access to data may only be granted for the specified purpose, and to the extent necessary for the performance of the relevant tasks. The principle of data minimization also applies. A detailed list of the data and who can view it can be found in the table below:

Further explanations and details regarding the individual roles can be found in the appendix to this document.

5. Course Content and Responsibility

The respective Moodle instance, including all services and files accessible via it, may only be used for teaching, learning and research purposes, as well as for examination purposes expressly specified in the examination regulations, and may not be used for any financial, private, religious or political interests or purposes. Any unauthorized provision of data (including links) that contravenes legal principles is prohibited. This applies in particular to content that is racist, pornographic, national socialist, inhumane, abusive, glorifies violence, or otherwise contravenes applicable law. The use of the Moodle instance for the unlawful provision, exchange or linking of copyright-protected material is prohibited.

Copyrighted content published in the Moodle instance may not be shared, published elsewhere, or used in any other way without the express permission of the respective copyright holders. Course materials published in the Moodle instance – especially lecture notes, exams, solution outlines, and assignments – may only be used by enrolled students for personal study purposes. The use of these course materials to create commercial offers is expressly prohibited, as is the unauthorized distribution of said materials to third parties. In order to avoid any potential legal breaches, you should, in your own interests, check the relevant terms of use, paying particular attention to what the cloud provider is permitted to do with the uploaded data, before uploading data to cloud systems. Personal data and information that can be linked to individual users may not be used outside the relevant learning environment without the express consent of said users. Should the FernUniversität become aware of any copyright infringements, it will use both civil and criminal law remedies to enforce its rights.

Supervisors of a Moodle learning environment are responsible for the courses offered there. They exercise oversight in the learning environment. In order to carry out their supervisory duties, supervisors are granted (virtual) authority within their learning environment. In order to exercise this right to manage the learning environment, they may set out Guidelines and Terms of Use which govern the principles of behavior expected within it. These require participants to comply with the above-mentioned rules and provide for sanctions where necessary. Supervisors are the first point of contact for reporting content infringements. In the event of repeated violations, active participation in the Moodle instance may be restricted, or access to the Moodle instance may even be completely denied.

5.1 Liability of the FernUniversität

As a service provider, the FernUniversität is responsible for the information it makes available for use. However, we assume no responsibility for information posted by students, for content provided by other providers, or for content accessed via hyperlinks. Section 7(1) of the Digital Services Act (DDG), with reference to Articles 4–8 of the EU Digital Services Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065).

5.2 Retention Periods

Forum posts can be edited by their authors after submission for a period of time indicated by the system. During this period, authors may also delete their own posts. After that, the post may still be edited for good cause – usually, because of a violation of the rules of use – by individuals with the role of moderator and access rights to the relevant forum. Deleting posts destroys the forum thread and is not recommended. Instead, the text of the post in question can be edited. If deletion of a post is necessary for legal reasons, please contact the administrators or the ZDI/ZLI Help Desk (helpdesk@fernuni-hagen.de) by email.

In accordance with the University Board decision of 30 June 2020, complete learning environments will remain in place for five semesters. The learning environments will not be archived after this.

Students who have left the university and former employees are removed from the user lists of the Moodle instances twice a year on fixed dates. These are currently 90 days after the start of each semester. Students who are not de-registered at the end of the semester but at an earlier date during the semester can contact the Help Desk to request that their Moodle account be deleted earlier.

The deactivation and deletion of accounts are performed by administrators (ZDI staff). Once a user is removed from the user lists of Moodle instances, all of the data in the user’s profile is deleted. User posts and activities are not deleted immediately. For the sake of database integrity, they are replaced with an anonymous post wherever the authors’ names are displayed. Any personal data stored under the user ID is anonymized. The user ID is retained for database integrity reasons and will not be deleted.

If you would like the user list to be updated immediately after a user has withdrawn or left the university, simply send an email to helpdesk@fernuni-hagen.de.

6. More Information

In many cases, additional instructions from the respective instructors on how to use Moodle in specific scenarios can be found in the individual Moodle learning environments.

A general introduction to Moodle can be found on the Moodle teaching instance in the learning environment “Getting Started with Moodle.”

Technical assistance is available from the ZDI Help Desk, by phone at 02331-987 4444 or by email at helpdesk@fernuni-hagen.de.

Appendix – Explanations of the Various Roles That Users Can Have in Moodle:

1. Participant

The role of “Participant” is assigned to individuals who have enrolled in a course via the Virtual Campus or who have otherwise been granted the right to participate in a course. You will be enrolled in the corresponding learning environments in Moodle either automatically or manually by the instructors, or you can do so yourself through self-enrollment. Depending on the teaching scenario, users with this role can view the following data:

• First name, last name, email address: Each user can decide for themselves whether they want to be visible to others on the participant lists for the learning environments in which they are enrolled. If a user chooses to be visible here, they can also choose whether to display their email address. However, even if the email address is visible, it will not appear on participant lists for everyone; it is only visible in the profile.
• Group announcements: When moderators enable group messages in a group's settings, users can see the names of the other group members and send them messages. This is designed to make it easier to get in touch with others in groups set up for group work.
• Content data: Contributions from all roles in the learning activities on offer, including uploaded files. The visibility of the data depends partly on the settings selected by the instructors for the learning activity. By default, the visibility settings for data to other participants are configured so that as little data as possible is visible. Users who have been assigned the role “Participant” see only their own grades.

2. Moderator/Moderator Without Editing Privileges

The “Moderator without editing privileges” role can teach in learning environments (i.e., post in forums and other learning activities) and grade participants, but they cannot modify the layout of the learning environment. They may not assign roles. This role is assigned to tutors and individuals with equivalent responsibilities. The roles “Moderator” and “Moderator without editing privileges” can be assigned by managers or other moderators. They are responsible for delegating tasks to the moderators and for the respective access to personal data, in particular that of students. Depending on the teaching scenario, users with these roles can view the following data:

• First name, surname, role, email address, group, status: This information is visible to users with the “Moderator” role. Users with the role “Moderators without editing privileges” can only see first and last names, role, and group.
• Content data: Contributions from all roles in the activities on offer, including uploaded files. The visibility of the data depends partly on the settings selected by the moderators. As both roles are used specifically for correcting and manually grading assignments, both roles have access to the students’ grading data.

3. Manager

The “Manager” role is assigned to specific individuals in the central departments of the faculties or of the FernUniversität, either at system level or at the course level. Only administrators can assign this role.
Depending on the teaching scenario, users with this role can view the following data:

• First name, last name, email address, role, status, group: This data is always visible to everyone in the learning environments that fall under the person’s administrative scope.
• Student ID number: Managers cannot see the student ID numbers of participants within a learning space. However, they can export data from certain areas and activities in Moodle, such as the participant list, assessments, or polls, and save it in a file. These exports include the first name, last name, student ID number, and email address – for the purpose of clearly identifying each participant. The data may be exported and further processed solely for the purposes of the respective course. The person exporting the data must ensure that no third party can access this personal data and that the data is completely deleted as soon as its purpose has been fulfilled.
• Content data: Managers can view and edit content in all learning environments within the scope of the permissions they have been granted.

4. HelpDesk

The “HelpDesk” role is assigned exclusively to employees of the help desk at the FernUniversität in Hagen who are granted read access to learning environments. They cannot make changes to the layout of the learning environment. They may view student submissions and participant lists. This role can be assigned system-wide by administrators. Individuals assigned to this role are bound by a duty of confidentiality.

5. Administrator

The “Administrator” role is assigned exclusively to employees of the Center for Learning and Innovation and the Center for Digitalization and IT who are responsible for administering Moodle at the FernUniversität. In general, users with this role can view all personal data, including usage data and web server log data. Using the “Log in as” feature – which may be used in exceptional cases – users with administrative privileges can also read messages sent via the messaging system. If you do not want this to happen, please use your own email system to write messages to other users. This access is granted solely for the purposes of official duties and is only used when absolutely necessary. Individuals assigned to this role are bound by a duty of confidentiality.