3.3 - Federal DE-related Regulations Privacy/FERPA, Copyright, Tracking Attendance

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In addition to the DE requirements from the Code of Federal Regulations noted on the previous page, there are several additional federal laws about which all instructors, but especially those teaching DE classes, should be informed. Please click each tab below.

FERPA: Student Privacy

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99) protects the privacy of student education records. MiraCosta has a website dedicated to explaining FERPA and its implications for faculty, staff, students, and parents. You are encouraged to review it if you have not previously done so.

Protected records include information such as class enrollment/schedule, student gender and ethnicity, and student grades. Even directory information (information which may be publicly disclosed) such as student names and email addresses can be requested by an individual student to be kept private.

Therefore, all instructors, but especially instructors of DE classes which include significant online activity, must be especially conscientious of issues such as the following:

Adding "visitors" to your online class. (See DE Work Requests Page to learn how to do this properly.)
Using third-party technologies not supported by College of the Desert as a required part of your class. (Are you sure they are FERPA-compliant? For tools that may be public-facing such as social media, do you give students the option of using them without using their real name? Don't assume that even commonly used education technologies such as online textbook resources are in compliance - ask and investigate!)
Using tools other than Canvas to discuss assignment and class grades with students.

Copyright

There is some guidance in interpreting federal regulations including Title 17 of US Code (Copyright Act), especially Fair Use provisions for educators, and the TEACH Act, which provides more guidance for educators in the use of copyrighted materials online. However, with the advent of OER this area is very gray.

Here are just a few key points and resources regarding copyright and fair use:

While some copyright matters are black and white, much of it - especially with regard to educational fair use - is gray. Resources like the Emerson College Educational Fair Use Tool are helpful guides but not clear cut answers.
- There are four factors for Fair Use of copyrighted material; the two typically most relevant to faculty considering including material in a class are the 3rd, amount of the work used, and the 4th, effect of the use upon the market for the work. See Columbia's 2-page Fair Use Checklist for a simple tool weighing whether your considered use of material is likely to be considered Fair Use.
BYU's Copyright Tutorial is fun and interactive, and could be useful to share with students if that's important (for example, if your students are publishing projects online that incorporate copyrighted material).
It's "safer" from a copyright perspective to link to legitimate material on the web than to make your own copy for posting in your course.
Not everything you may find on the web is "legitimate" - don't assume that textbook copy you discovered online is something you may use without consequence. Linking to pirated material is not only ethically dubious, such material often disappears quickly from the web, breaking the links for your students.
If you really want to go deep in learning more about this, many large research universities have well-developed websites with comprehensive guidance for faculty about copyright, fair use, and the TEACH act. Columbia's Copyright site and LSU's TEACH Act site are just two examples - a little searching will turn up much more.

When in doubt, check with our Librarians.

Tracking Attendance

As a COD instructor you'll likely hear about "clearing your roster" early in the semester and reporting the "last date of attendance" when a student drops.

It's important to help students get started with a DE class and establish who's attending as soon as possible, both simply to help students get going, and also to allow you to drop those on the roster who aren't participating, opening space for others to be added and start the class without being too far behind. Reporting the last date of attendance of students who withdraw is a requirement of federal financial aid.

Instinctively, many instructors new to online teaching think that a student who logs into Canvas and accesses the class should be given the same credit for attending as a student who comes into a physical classroom. This isn't the case, however. Federal financial aid regulations (see p. 5-65) state that:

In a distance education context, documenting that a student has logged into an online class is not sufficient, by itself, to demonstrate academic attendance by the student. A school must demonstrate that a student participated in class or was otherwise engaged in an academically related activity, such as by contributing to an online discussion or initiating contact with a faculty member to ask a course-related question.

Attendance will be determined through contact with professors in the first week of the term; logging into the learning management system does not constitute active participation. Professors may drop students from DE courses for lack of active participation. Active participation may include, but is not limited to, writing in discussion forums, submitting assignments, taking quizzes and/or exams, or other interactive class activities.

Students who do not actively participate in the course during the first week must be dropped as "no show".

FERPA Compliance & Merging Canvas Course Sections

FERPA Compliance in a Merged Course - Drop down to view.

FERPA Compliance and Student Interaction in Merged Canvas Course Sections

Faculty may request to merge Canvas courses when they are teaching multiple sections of the same course in order to more efficiently share the same content across course sections, freeing up time for other instructional activity. This must be done prior to the start date of the course sections.

However, according to Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations, students cannot have access to student information (including the fact of their enrollment) of students in course sections other than their own (with the exception noted below). Because of this requirement, students are not allowed to interact within a Canvas course with students from another course section.

Canvas limits the visibility of students from other sections in a merged Canvas course. However, this does not cover all Canvas tools, so if you request to merge Canvas courses, you'll need to take additional steps to protect your students’ privacy, as outlined in this document.

NOTE: FERPA restrictions do not apply to a merged Canvas course if students physically meet in the same classroom at the same time (i.e. “true cross-listed courses”). Course sections that meet simultaneously typically are combined in Canvas by default, and this document is not relevant for those merged courses.

What Canvas Does for You

In Canvas courses merged upon faculty request, students are prevented from seeing students in sections other than their own in

the full roster view of the People tool,
and the Inbox (Conversations).

What You Must Do to Maintain FERPA Compliance

Click Settings in your course menu and:

Under the Navigation tab, be sure that the Chat and Conferences items are hidden from students. If they are active (appearing in the top grouping of navigation items), drag them to the lower grouping or click the gear icon at the right of each and click Disable. Be sure to scroll down and click Save at the bottom.
Under the Course Details tab, scroll down and click more options. Make sure that:
Let students create discussion topics is NOT checked
Let students organize their own groups is NOT checked
Disable comments on announcements IS checked
Click the Update Course Details button at bottom.

If/when you create Discussions

Ensure that each section has its own separate discussion:

For graded discussions, restrict each discussion to an individual section using the Assign to See Canvas guide for detailsLinks to an external site.. See further details on section restriction under the What You May Do section below.
For ungraded discussions, use the Post to option (immediately below the discussion description) to select an individual section for the discussion.
Note – if you want each section to engage in discussions about the same topics, simply Duplicate the original discussion and modify it so it is available to a different section of students.

If/when you create Groups

Select the option to Require group members to be in the same section when creating a group set. See Canvas guide for detailsLinks to an external site..

If/when you create Collaborations

Be sure to add students to Collaborations who are enrolled in the same course section. The Collaboration setup screen doesn’t display section information for students, so you will need to refer to the People area.

If/when you send a Canvas Inbox message to students from multiple sections

Select the option to Send an individual message to each recipient. This will send a separate copy to each recipient and hide the names of the recipients in the message header. You may also compose messages addressed to all members of a specific course section.

If/when you offer synchronous (live) online sessions (e.g. use Zoom)

Hold separate synchronous meetings with each section. When you record a synchronous meeting, share the recording only with the section that participated in the meeting.

What You May Do:

Setting Calendar Events and Assignment Due Dates by Section

Note: This section is not required for FERPA compliance but may be helpful for managing a merged course if you would like to create differentiated events/activities for different sections.

The following Canvas Guides will help you create Canvas activities/assignments specific to a particular section within a merged course:

(Discussions must be separated by section – see notes in the What You Must Do section above.)

Note that when creating events/activities that are differentiated by section, you will need to select the section name in the Assign to area, which displays only a few options and is not scrollable. If your desired section is not displayed as an option, you will need to type in the section name until it shows up as an option to select.

Section names can be seen if you click Settings in the Course Menu and then the Sections tab. You may also click People in the course menu to see which section each enrolled student is assigned to.
Acknowledgements

Portions of this document are adapted from material originally developed by Seattle UniversityLinks to an external site. and modified by the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College district. Additional portions are adapted from material developed by Indiana UniversityLinks to an external site. and modified by Cornell UniversityLinks to an external site..

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