Background: What’s a FERPA?
FERPA is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. It is US Federal legislation passed in 1974 to protect various forms of student data in both k-12 and higher education. It eliminated behaviors like posting exam results with student names and scores in a public place (hallway, door, etc.) It governs what data is protected and who can be given access to it among other things.
Fast Forward to 2011: Educational activities have been taking place on the web for a decade and by now there is widespread use of Web 2.0 tools across all grade levels and institution types. The implementations are numerous. There are widely recognized benefits from sharing information, learning experiences, what has been learned, etc. via Web enablement and Web 2.0 tools.
Digital Dilemma: A student complains that their material in one such Web experience (a Wiki) violates their FERPA protections.
Analysis: The educational organization (Georgia Tech.) reviews FERPA and interprets it to mean that anything that connects a student to a class indicated enrollment and hence is not permitted under FERPA.
Action: Shut down the previous decade’s worth of this activity.
YIKES! On one hand I am sympathetic to the desire and right of students for privacy in controlling a lot of information pertaining to them. On the other hand, there are enormous potential benefits to the exact groups covered by FERPA from collaborative learning, web usage in learning, and being able to interact with students outside their classroom, including previous students. Therein develops the repository of shared and accumulated learning which can be leveraged by current and future individuals inside and outside of the particular classroom.
To complicate matters, if a student places information about fellow students on the web, it is outside of FERPA and not constrained per say. I am by no means an expert here in any way, but that is my current understanding.
However, if Georgia Tech’s interpretation that anything which potentially identifies a student and links them to a particular course can not be made public with out the student’s written consent, then me thinks a lot of current behaviors are amuck. This would spill over to more than just the activities of the course instructors. How many public enrollment recruitment items contain something in them connecting a portrayed student in a particular class? What about all the University publications, such as newsletters and digital newspapers, which cite students and a class they are in somewhere in articles. Note: the class doesn’t need to be specifically cited, only that a reasonable person could figure it out. So if Dr. X only teaches 1 class this term in subject Y, then indicating something about a student in a class of Dr. X’s which relates to subject Y would cement the connection. Egads!
Clearly there needs to be some modification of current behaviors and potentially some modifications of the federal rules, i.e. FERPA. In the meantime we may see more universities and colleges taking action around this. My fear is that it will again be one of somewhat extreme curtailment to minimize a liability related to a technology-legal issue.
I am left with a number of questions. Do others, particularly the Department of Education and other educational institutions, agree with this interpretation of the FERPA constraint on linkage between students and classes? What can an instructor or educational institution do to utilize the Web and Web 2.0 technologies, including engaging the public while still complying with FERPA? Should there be modifications to FERPA on what data is protected, and if so, what modifications should be made.?
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