Classes & Analytics
TeachFORGE.ai
Classes & Analytics / Student identity
Student identity: what is stored and what never is
Four layers of identity, none of which is a name.
A student is never required to identify themselves to learn.
What a class never holds
No names. No email addresses. No dates of birth. Not optionally, not in a field somebody forgot about — a class has nowhere for them to go.
A board is different in one way: a learner may be shown there under a display name they type, and the board keeps it.
This is a design decision rather than a setting, and it shapes everything else in this section. It is why you hand out handles, why analytics is labelled rather than named, and why a printed slip is the bridge between the platform and the child.
It also means the link between a handle and a learner exists only where you put it. Keep that list somewhere you control and somewhere you will still have in June.
Four layers
| Layer | What it is | Who sees it |
|---|---|---|
| Handle | The visible student ID. Up to 40 characters, unique within your organisation or your own account. | You, and the learner on their slip |
| Alias | Your own private label — a seat number, a colour card. | You only |
| Internal reference | An opaque secret the platform uses. Never sent to a browser. | You, behind Reveal |
| Password | What the learner knows. | Nobody |
The class page states the point of the alias directly: set one, such as a seat number or colour card, to link analytics without storing any identifiable data. That is the mechanism for knowing who a row is about without the platform knowing.
Why there is a password at all
The first three layers are things a learner holds, and anyone holding them is indistinguishable from the learner. A link can be forwarded; a slip can be picked up off the floor.
The password is the thing they know. It belongs to the person rather than to the enrolment, so a learner in two of your classes has one password across both.
It is what makes an attributed record mean something. Without it, analytics says this handle answered; with it, the platform can say the person who knows that password answered. See How a student joins.
Learners with no identity at all
Anyone with a plain link can play, and many will. Those attempts are counted in the totals and shown as Anonymous link plays, described as counted in totals, never listed as a person.
That is the honest treatment: the work happened, so it counts; nobody knows whose it was, so nobody is listed. If you need the work attributed, hand out personal links instead of the general one.
When a learning platform is involved
A class linked to an LMS is the one case where names can appear on your screen, and they are still not stored. The toggle reads Show names from {{lms}} and carries the notice that names are fetched from the platform each time and are never stored or exported.
TeachForge keeps the platform's own ID for each person and, when the platform sends a student ID that fits your organisation's pattern, that student ID, which becomes the learner's handle. See Classes linked to an LMS.