Usernames best practice

User management in an organization is a critical subject for a range of reasons:

• Once implemented, it is difficult to change (sustainability)

• A system that is too simple is potentially unsafe and not future-proof

• A system that is too complicated is unlikely to be accepted by users and is likely to cause administrative difficulties.

There is no ideal user management scheme, as the preference in every organization is different. However, there are a number of issues that are considered best practice.

Usernames have to be unique. The simplest way to implement this is to give each user a unique number, which is never reused even after students have finished a course. However, such a number-based system will be very difficult for learners to remember, especially younger ones. It is therefore necessary to come up with a more user-friendly scheme considering the following potential issues:

• firstname.lastname causes difficulties when the same name exists twice

• class.firstname...