FERPA
From ElateWiki
The Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects students' rights to privacy in higher education. These rights extend to online classrooms.
This law has implications on faculty and staff handling of student information for the protection of student privacy. This also allows students to examine their academic records.
Additional privacy rights may be obtained by special request based on different circumstances, often related to the protection of students against domestic violence (for example).
Contents |
Directory Information
Directory information may be released without student consent. These involve students’ names, addresses, telephone numbers, dates and places of birth, honors and awards, and dates of attendance. Schools have to notify parents and students about the directory information and allow them time to request that the school not disclose directory information. More information may be obtained from:
Family Policy Compliance Office
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, SW
Washington, D.C. 20202-5920
Public / Private Issues in Practice
Students have a responsibility, too, to protect the private information of their peers in a course. While online courses are private to the students, they are still public among the learners. Information that is shared inside a class should not be shared in the greater Web environment without proper permissions releases from the other participants, as a matter of practice.
See Also
Ed.gov: http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html
Electronic Privacy Information Center: http://epic.org/privacy/education/ferpa.html