An architecture of identity management and thirdparty integration for online teaching in a university

Online teaching is a reality and a necessity especially since the appearance of the COVID-19 outbreak. In order to facilitate the proper conduct of this process, several steps are required: to have in place a secure infrastructure to store data and to handle the data flow, to manage the student and teacher information, and to facilitate the teacher-student communication so students have access to courses and teachers can properly evaluate the students. This paper presents a distributed architecture for identity management of university students and teachers, while considering aspects pertaining to user privacy and security. Also, a solution is proposed for easy integration with third-party solutions that facilitate online teaching and learning, i.e., Microsoft Office 365, Google G Suite and the Moodle educational platform, and access to the university's Wi-Fi network with the same credentials. The implementation of the solution at the "Gheorghe Asachi" Technical University of Iasi, Romania allowed classes to be carried out online and students to be evaluated also online.