In Oncourse CL, what is my privacy status, and how do I change it?

For privacy reasons, you may want to hide your name from other participants in your course or project site. Also, you may not want them to be able to contact you through the site.

Note: At Indiana University Bloomington, the registrars have elected to hide students from each other by default. IUB instructors are also hidden by default.

When you enter a site for the first time, the system will prompt you to choose a privacy status. You also have the option to bypass the prompt and choose later; if you choose this option, the system will prompt you again to select a privacy status next time you enter the site.

You can change your privacy status at any time (for a particular site or for all sites at once) from your My Workspace tab:

1. Choose the My Workspace tab.
   
   
2. From the menubar, click Preferences.
   
   
3. Near the top, click Privacy Status.
   
   
4. To change your privacy status for a particular site, next to "Choose a site", use the drop-down list to select the appropriate site. Use the radio buttons to select either Remain hidden in this site or Make me visible in this site, and then click Update.
   
   
5. To change your privacy status for all your sites at once, click either Show Me in All Sites or Hide Me in All Sites.

Things to consider

Before changing your privacy status, consider the following:

• Students who are hidden will remain visible to instructors, project owners, and assistants. In the Roster tool, each participant's privacy status is indicated by an icon next to his or her name.
  
  
• Students who are hidden will not be visible to other participants in the Roster tool or the "Users Present" area.
  
  
• Students who are hidden will not appear in the recipients list for messages in the Messages tool.
  
  
• Group visibility is not affected by an individual's privacy status.

  Note: For example, if you are a student with privacy status set to hidden, you won't appear on the recipients list in the Messages tool, and other students won't be able to send messages directly to you as an individual. However, if your instructor has added you to a group (see Managing groups), you will still receive messages sent to that group.

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