A Secure Score Report Implemented in a Spreadsheet without Privacy Concerns

Students’ educational records such as exam score and academic achievement should be considered as sensitive information. According to the federal student privacy law, individual scores should not be posted publicly. If a secure online management system is well-equipped in the school, then it is easy to distribute individual data in a privacy preserving way. However, in general, such a centralized system costs high and is not flexible enough to be used for instant score report after each exam. In this paper, we propose a practical way for an instructor to post students’ individual exam scores online in a single file. By implementing a cryptographic hash function together with score data in an MS Excel file, we demonstrate a score report from which allows each student to retrieve his/her score with his/her own password. Based on our worksheet as a template, it is easy for instructors to write their own score reports without relying on any heavy management systems. Since our score report is implemented in MS Excel worksheets, students find out their scores with Excel program or viewers even in their mobile phones without installing any other programs or apps. Also, it is cryptographically as secure as underlying hash function SHA-256.