I noticed a FERPA question circulating on my twitter feed this morning. For non US readers, FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) is the US national law covering how higher education institutions must conduct themselves with regards to student records. There’s a dizzying list of rules and exceptions as to what the institution may and may not disclose without a student’s written permission. It applies to records maintained by the institution.
This got me to thinking. When a student deploys a personal cyberinfrastructure, they maintain the data repositories. How does this affect FERPA compliance in that the institution is not maintaining the records of the students actual work (as opposed to documents stored in an institutional LMS, for example). Has anyone gathered resources on the legal implications of this model?
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19 January, 2011 at 4:04 pm
Noise Professor
IANAL, but our district lawyer (California community college) is of the opinion that “student work” constitutes “student record,” and is thus subject to FERPA. If this is truly the case, it basically wrecks everything cool. According to his interpretation, everything must be housed inside the institution, or else external service providers must have systems in place to ensure compliance.
19 January, 2011 at 8:10 pm
Brad
I have heard lawyers at various conferences state that FERPA does not prohibit students from participating in public online for courses. I am not a lawyer, so that statement probably means about zero. But it seems to me that students could have been required to publish work or perform in public before the internet. Of course, the internet changes things legally. I generally advise that if a student has a reasonable objection to not going public that an alternative method of participation should be worked out.