The Law
Student data at the University of Minnesota is governed by FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act). Among other things, this law enables students to suppress some or all of their directory information, such as their internet IDs and e-mail addresses. Students who do so present a unique challenge to teachers who make use of digital technology in their courses. For example, WebVista allows a variety of interactions that may reveal student names and internet IDs. In threaded discussions, chats, and other interactive functions in WebVista, student participation may reveal possibly suppressed information. We offer the following recommendations to insure FERPA compliance:
- Familiarize yourself with the law (PDF).
- Please include a statement on your syllabus such as the following:
"In this class, our use of technology will sometimes make students' names and U of M Internet IDs visible within the course website, but only to other students in the same class. Since we are using a secure, password-protected course website, this will not increase the risk of identity theft or spamming for anyone in the class. If you have concerns about the visibility of your Internet ID, please contact me for further information."
Our Policy
For student privacy and FERPA reasons, we must be able to verify course instructors in the class schedule before associating student data with a course site. Verification will fail if there is no instructor of record or you are not the listed instructor of record. Our policy is as follows:
- If no instructor of record is identified in Peoplesoft, we will create the site so you can begin to work on it, but we will not fetch the classlist of registered students. You will need to ask your department administrator to make sure you are listed in Peoplesoft as the instructor of record. Once this is done, please let us know, and we will fetch the classlist of registered students into your site. Note that it will take overnight from the time your department updates the instructor until we can see that update in the online class schedule.
- If you are not the listed instructor of record, we will not create the course site until we receive permission from the instructor of record to create the site. Once permission is received, the course site will be created and the classlist of registered students will be fetched into the site.