For the Educause Learning Initiative’s annual meeting, I’ve been preparing a workshop about various legal issues to keep in mind when designing assignments for a course. Specifically we’ll look at copyright, Creative Commons, and FERPA.

Most people look at me funny when I mention FERPA. Working at different institutions of higher education, it is always mandated that I know something about FERPA. Usually it’s just that student educational records are private, that they shouldn’t be shared, and that directory information can be shared unless a student opts out. Normally FERPA is seen as the concern of administrative offices that hold what have been traditionally seen as student records (grades, registration dates, etc).

But FERPA actually covers a bit more than that, and it comes down to how ‘educational record’ is defined. According to the Department of Education, “Education records are currently defined as records that are directly related to a ‘student‘ and maintained by an ’educational agency or institution‘ or by a party acting for the agency or institution.”

This goes beyond grades and dates of attendance. It can include anything submitted by the student to an agent acting on behalf of the institution in the course of their academic endeavors. So yes, this would include an assignment submitted to a faculty member for a course.

Now, I know most faculty members wouldn’t go about giving access to student submissions to anyone who asked, but there tends to be a gray area that can straddle the line of allowable or not.

Scenario: you want to use some Web 2.0 technology in your course, so you have each student create a blog on Blogger to have them chronicle their work and thoughts through the term. As an instructor, you visit these sites and leave comments on the blog. In order for you to keep track of which student has which blog, you ask them to have their names on the front page of their blog and for them to e-mail you the URL so that you can go through them all, moving from one blog to the next. No grades are shared via the blog, and your final evaluation for the student comes in feedback that you provide within the Gradebook area of Blackboard.

Is this a violation of FERPA?

Please discuss. I have my own interpretation and viewpoint on this—I want to know yours.