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Hello world! Welcome to my first blog entry on the CoreProducts blog. My name is Mark Phipps. I’m the lead developer of our continuing education management product called ContinuED®. I have a background of over 10 years in software development and systems administration.
As part of the process of implementing ContinuED®, I had heard many of the same questions over and over again. One question that every client asks is:
How can I verify who is using ContinuED®?
There are two scenarios in ContinuED® where student accounts can be created. The first scenario has student accounts created based upon information in a student information or directory system. Generally, these student accounts are assigned the same credentials as the existing system. It is assumed that the person logging in with these credentials is the person who is assigned the credentials. Potentially, a student could share the credentials with another, but in the end, everything will revolve back to the account holder. This is a fairly safe way of verifying known students.
Students from outside the board comprise the other scenario. ContinuED® has preferences built into it to allow for general public registration. When enabled, a member of the general public is allowed to create their own student account. With this functionality, there are many restrictions – specifically, what fields must be required when a new student account is created or can a student account have the same email address with another? All of these options are user configurable via ContinuED® preferences. The problem comes when you need to verify the information that the student has entered. Does it match what you expect? Is this a real person?
One approach that some clients use to fix this issue is to add a marginal class cost to each of the available classes. This forces the student to verify themselves to a known financial network (PayPal™ for example). Further, it provides a deterrent to fraudsters as they will be identified if they make an online payment through the financial system.
A second approach is to look at the student account after it is created. When the student creates an account, a notification email is sent out to various people. Upon receiving the email, look at the created information and search for possible duplicates. If one is found, use the student consolidation tool (edit student profile -> consolidate student accounts) to consolidate the accounts into one.
Even though there is not a 100% guaranteed way of verifying who is actually using ContinuED®, using the approaches above will help verify who is using ContinuED®.
- Mark Phipps
