Submitted by suecat CIS237 Week 7

http://docs.moodle.org/en/FERPA
FERPA and MOODLE
I wanted to share this list of problems and possible solutions:

1. OPT OUT of profile info: there is no way for us to check "hide profile" for an individual student. Could we somehow add a field (that is accessible for those folks using batch enrolling techniques, from uploadusers to LDAP) that would selectively disable profile information for an individual student? Or, wouldn't it be even better to allow the STUDENT to check this box? I am checking on what roles should not have access to this information.
2. OPT OUT of name display in online users block: The on-line users block, while encouraging community, allows the display of any user on the system. If you click on the users name, you may be denied access to the profile (depends on roles settings), but the name is clearly visible. If a student opted out of directory information, then the online users block should also not display the name.
3. OPT OUT of other courses being revealed in profile: While the profile is likely accessible only by the student, the instructor, and other students in the class, it seems problematic from a privacy standpoint, to have all the courses that student is enrolled in to be displayed. Even an instructor probably doesn't "need to know" what other moodle courses a student is enrolled in. If they DO need to know this, they will likely have another method to access the information! Could we have a switch in the profile that the student can control to hide this information selectively?
4. Student submissions or sensitive instructor documents might be accessed by users who know the URL; some debate is in progress about whether or not preliminary test results were flawed owing to the possibility of loading subsequent attempts from the cache rather than the server. We do know that files uploaded into the course area can't be selectively marked "public" or "private". Work on the file repository code, due in Moodle 2.0, may solve this problem. At least in Moodle 1.6.3, I tested this. As a student, I could access a graded document returned to a student through a private forum if I knew the URL. I could do this if I was enrolled in the course. If I cleared the cache between different attempts, I found that I could not do this if I was not logged in at all or if I were logged in as a student but not enrolled in the class. So we need to get some more definitive data on what is actually happening, and be vigilant about taking cache into consideration.
5. Gradebook single student view: If a student comes to your office and wants to talk about grades, the gradebook view requires some clicking to get to the single student view. It is possible to view other student's grades as the instructor struggles to get to the right screen. Would it be possible to trigger "full class view" or "single student view" earlier in the process?
6. Assignment and Quiz single student view: A similar situation exists with assignments and quizzes. If a students asks me if I have one of their assigments or quiz results, I click on the assignment or quiz and the list shows the results for every student in my class. I don't think I know of a good way to show the results for a single student, especially if that student's submission has not been graded yet.
7. Notes (Introduced in Moodle 1.9): A new feature in Moodle 1.9 allows notes at the site, course, and personal level. You can disable this feature by setting moodle/notes:manage to prohibit for the teacher role. This feature can be useful, but should be used within school policy with respect to need to know and student privacy expectations.

Keeping Up-To-Date on FERPA – posted by Kay Gaisford, week 7 in CIS237
MCC’s FERPA info site provides comprehensive instruction for college personnel, and also updated information on changes in the way the FERPA law is interpreted. For teachers and classmates to make publically visible comments on students’ posted work may be problematic, whether the comments are complimentary or suggesting changes. However, this practice may very well fall within the hypothetical situation described in the MCC tutorial which was judged as not violating the student’s rights
There have been changes in application of the law over these years. For example, the Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that students may not sue institutions over FERPA violations, but offending institutions may lose federal funding. Another change is that FERPA regulations now allow for electronic releases. This electronic consent for release of student information must identify and authenticate "a particular person as the source of the electronic consent" and indicate "such person's approval of the information contained in the electronic consent." For example, use of a personal identification number or password known only to the institution and the student, or a computer image that is created from the scanned image of the borrower's handwritten signature

(From Lorna)

Waterhouse, S., Rogers R., The Importance of Policies in E-Learning Environments, Educause Quarterly, Vol. 23, Number 3, 2004.
This article contains many different policy guidelines along with examples. It includes an interesting section on FERPA (scroll down to Student Privacy Policies). Nothing bad has happened yet, but I often wondered if it was a good thing that Blackboard allows students access to email addresses of all the other students in the class. The described Student Privacy Policy includes a Permission-to-use Form that allows students to state what information they will allow the instructor to make public or even available to other students in the class. (Posted by Lea)