In a previous entry, I laid out this 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?
There were some very good answers in the comments section, and now it’s time for me to share mine.
The short answer is yes.
There are a few land mines in this scenario, but the one that jumps out to me is that the instructor leaves comments on the blog regarding the student’s posts. When an instructor reads a student-submitted work—as a blog would be when it is read and graded by the instructor—it is then considered part of the student’s educational record. Remember the definition of an educational record according to FERPA (PDF): “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.” When the instructor leaves evaluative feedback for the student in a comment to the post, he or she violates FERPA by making his or her evaluation of that part of the student’s educational record public.
Another land mine in this scenario is the fact that the blogs were not necessarily made private, so anyone could view them and associate the student’s name with the course they are taking and reveal that they are students in a particular course, term, and institution. Requiring the student’s name to appear on the front page is also a red flag.
Since you were so good at answering my last question, I pose another to you: what could an instructor do differently in this assignment to keep the academic objective of the assignment (self-reflection) without violating FERPA?
FERPA and web are complicated… and while that’s easy to say, it’s harder to distill in a way that makes much sense to net-natives (i.e. students).
In response the posed question, students could create a private blog which only allows access to those who are specifically invited. While this would protect the student, instructor, and institution it would also mitigate the benefits of blogging – assuming here that one of the pedagogical intents was to help students see themselves as capable of publishing content for the world to review; that is to say, that a private blog isn’t much different from a paper when it exists only for the instructor and student.
Similarly, students could be advised to publish their content under a pseudonym. This would ensure that the outside world could not directly identify a student, though one might conclude that given the content of a blog in relation to a particular course (assuming that there are links on the blog to other course materials) would disclose personally identifiable information: “other information, that alone in combination, is linked or linkable to a specific student that would allow a reasonable person in the school community, who does not have personal knowledge of the relevant circumstances, to identify the student with reasonable certainty.” Assuming that all linkable information could be removed, students are still required to publish under a false name, divorcing themselves from their intellectual property. Said another way, what good is a portfolio of your work when it’s penned under another name?
Of course, the instructor could respond to students with evaluative feedback only via email. This, however, does not solve the problem of the student being publicly identifiable. Furthermore, it undermines the nature and structure of blogging comment systems as structures for additional scrutiny and discussion. One might argue for the importance of comments in the blogosphere as a means of continuing the dialogue between author and community, or for that matter between various community members. The instructor might encourage peer to peer comments in an effort to meet the FERPA exception for “Grades on peer-graded papers before they are collected and recorded by a teacher;” though it’s arguable that the instructor’s commentary would be essential in modeling appropriate technique and tone, that without direction students may direct their attention ineffectively.
In an effort to cover all the bases, the instructor might restructure the assignment so that each blog is private, and that evaluative comments are only shared via email between the instructor and student.
One must, however, ask the question: “how is this any different than turning in a paper?”
As I agree with the statements noted pertaining to FERPA and the utilization of net-based programs to drive innovation and collaboration amongst the educational realm, I would also challenge that instructor(s), as well as the student(s), ensure that the public learning environments being created be password protected or only open to those interested in creating accounts to partake in the forum(s). Although this may limit the amount of viewers it will, however, minimize potential risks in obtaining personal identifiers for those adding to the site as well as the creator.
Very interesting discussion. I’m interested in using a blog like blogspot for its ease of use in making useful information accessible to others. I am also interested in capitalizing on the functionality a free blog provides without the need for anyone to download and install software. I’m toying with the idea of having students use it as a vehicle to prepare and submit an assignment that combines some original research and writing with embedded videos that already exist on the web–for example, pic two videos that already exist on YouTube, write an intro to explain on what dimension you will compare and contrast them, embed them, and then proceed to actually compare and contrast them. Students would submit them under an identifier I assign to them–establishing an account under that identifer and whatever e-mail address they choose, even just a gmail account they do not intend to use for any other purpose. I see real advantages to this because I as the instructor could tell other students to critique the work under their assigned id’s, and no one would know who is commenting on who. The occasional non-course commenter if such existed would only add to the interest. As to building a portfolio of intellectual property–well, perhaps that’s forsaken, and maybe at very little loss. Anyone who felt their work was truly valuable could always cut and paste it into some more formal format is they really wanted to show it in an even wider distribution. Your thoughts?
I was attending a workshop virtually that spoke to the fact that instructors really don’t have the authority to “”click through” agreements without explicit institutional approval. That would mean that a popular blog service, even if viewing rights were made private, would still be off-limits.
Setting that (and identity) aside, wouldn’t consent forms allow an instructor to bypass FERPA?
And is a distinction made between purely formative (read: non-graded) assessment and evaluative marks recorded in the gradebook?
On a tangential note, it’s been my observation and experience that personal, course-specific blogs usually don’t last past the term–or only outliers do. In order for them to truly be useful, they would need more programmatic implementation, and institutions (or vendors) need to create compelling and streamlined CMS/LMS experiences. Otherwise, the “authentic” experience may not be the best to try to cultivate.
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