Students deleting the contents of their own home drive

[Benmorgan86uk]

Hi All,

 

Wondering if anyone has any innovative ideas for the following scenario:

 

A student has a home drive containing all of their work, and they either a) delete their entire home drive and claim the system lost it to get out of the fact that they haven't done their assignments etc. or b) they print their work, and while they are at their printer, the student next to them decides to open their home drive, select all, and delete for a laugh.

 

Unfortunately this happens entirely too often whereby a student doesn't report this until after our backup retention period has expired (making me think it might be option a) I was wondering if there are any ideas for removing students rights to delete from their own home drive or generated emails for bulk deletions to notify of potential issues.

 

Any ideas would be greatly received and well aware that user training is best, I just know that students (if being done maliciously) will not bat an eyelid.

[elsiegee40]

Volume Shadow Copy? These assignments are rarely set over less than a few days. You can show the development of work over a period of time.... or its complete absence.

 

With a little training the teachers can view the audit trail themselves looking for previous versions.

Edited November 19, 2014 by elsiegee40

[dhicks]

Any ideas would be greatly received

 

We have a backup file server, accesible to all users but read-only, that presents snapshots of their user areas and common shared drives. Snapshots are taken every three hours or so, although admitedly performance has proven to be a bit variable - I'm re-writing the software at the moment, I'll see if the new version is better. File permissions are copied from the original file, so users can only access the files they should be able to, and backups go back at least a couple of months.

[andyrite]

the student next to them decides to open their home drive, select all, and delete for a laugh.

 

 

Surely the student should be disciplined for this? Wouldn't be such a laugh then.

 

Volume shadow copy gets my vote.

[pete]

Volume shadow copy and (assuming Windows server) set a file screen that just logs what happens in that home directory?

[TechMonkey]

What age group? One view could be that they are in charge of their work and their account. If it disappears and they do nothing then it is their issue and they need to work double hard to recreate that work. Losing the work does not mean they they get a pass.

Obviously for little ones this probably isn't a good tack but by senior age they should be being drilled that they take responsibility.

At a previous school we initiated a system that if a student hadn't been to see us about an issue and we either hadn't given them a note or spoken to the teacher then the student is pulling a fast one and should be treated as if they hadn't done it. Cut down on whining very quickly and we could identify real issues and filter "USB ate my homework".

 

The 'friend' deleting the work is a classroom management issue and needs a good talking to, preferably with some short sharp OWs emanating from him.

[Joanne]

give them read write and modify access to home drives but not delete?

[Arreks]

give them read write and modify access to home drives but not delete?

 

Then they'd probably create 1000 blank text documents and complain they can't delete them.. kids these days.

[penfold]

Going back a few years I had exactly the same problem and I made the kids come in and clean the keyboards for me telling them they wasted my time (restoring the work) so I was going to waste theirs. They never did it again

[foofighterjim]

I would view it as a classroom control issue that doesn't necessarily warrant a technical solution. As long as your backup retention is deemed suitable for users to find you and get the work back the onus should be on the students and teachers to stop this from occurring in the first place.

[forkies]

This is down to class room management and punishment. If a student has lost work it is obviously deleted and they should be punished, if they say it was someone else then that person should be punished etc until it stops happening. This is down to the teacher of that lesson.

 

We have a continuous backup running so we can restore any items that were ever in the users folder from the start of the academic year. We also have impero running so we can see when items have been deleted and from there prove when and where it was deleted.

 

Your system doesn't just loose stuff, if staff believe that then this is bad PR and makes you look bad, I would recommend talking to your line manager about clearing this up if it is the case. Staff should always be trusted over a student in these cases otherwise it is undermining you and your department.

[mulderite]

Your system doesn't just loose stuff, if staff believe that then this is bad PR and makes you look bad, I would recommend talking to your line manager about clearing this up if it is the case. Staff should always be trusted over a student in these cases otherwise it is undermining you and your department.

 

I agree with this ENTIRELY. I am fed up with students coming in saying "The computer has deleted my work" as if there's some kind of vendetta going on with the machines. USERS delete files, not the machines. It's those kind of comments that get fed back to the teachers and it makes our IT network look poor - especially if they start thinking the system is unreliable in keeping their files safe.

[synaesthesia]

Impero is awesome for this!

 

"The computer deleted my work!"

"It didn't save even though I pressed the button!"

 

"Well, Impero says otherwise - look here's you, deleting your work!"

Thankfully it's not much of an issue these days, typically they've accidentally moved a folder elsewhere and a quick search comes up trumps.

[Gibson335]

Staff are catching up with this gradually, but we get mails from the same teachers who start by saying "Student X's files have been lost from the system..." And even though we routinely say in our response that we'll restore if possible but that the system doesn't delete these files, that either the student did or someone else gained access to their area, the same teachers say exactly the same thing again, time after time. It's as if they simply refuse to believe that a student would lie to them, or that it's just easier to blame the 'system' than it is to debate the matter with a student. It's tiresome, but they are in the minority here these days. Our students believe we have a 3 week rotation, whereas actually it's double that and we use VSC, so it's rare that we can't restore their files.

[StevieM]

I'd also add that there should be an explicit reference in the school's AUP to the seriousness of accessing another user's data and the consequences of such actions. (Although I know that's not your responsibility.)