FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, as amended, protects the privacy of student educational records. It gives students the right to:

Review their educational records.
Request amendment to records they believe to be inaccurate.
Limit disclosure from those records.

An institution’s failure to comply with FERPA could result in the withdrawal of federal funds by the Department of Education. In order to ensure compliance with FERPA, <Replace with Institution FERPA Resource>.

Whether you are delivering a face-to-face or an online course, it is important to identify the difference between Directory Information and Personally Identifiable Information.<Replace with Institution FERPA Resource>. You may want to print and refer to this sheet as you design, develop, and deliver your online course.

The online environment provides new options to communicate with your students. In addition to using <Replace - Your LMS>, you may choose to use tools outside of your course to communicate with your students or hold virtual office hours . It is important to remember that you should not use any of these third party communication tools to discuss grades. The best method to communicate with students regarding grades or other personally identifiable information is through the <Replace- Your LMS> since this is password protected and FERPA compliant. In addition to the course mail tool, there are other areas in your online course where you can provide feedback and grades to students in a private area, including the grade book, the assessments tool, and the assignments tool.

Instructional Strategies & Best Practices

A few general guidelines to consider are provided below:

Never use Social Security Numbers to identify students.
Do not e-mail or share NIDs as this is personally identifiable information.
When mailing a group of students outside of <Replace - Your LMS> put all e-mail addresses in the blind carbon copy (BCC) box.
Do not email students outside of <Replace - Your LMS> with grade information or other personally identifiable information.
Be careful not to post grade information in areas of <Replace - Your LMS> where all students in the course may view the grade, such as replying to a public discussion post with grade information.
If you choose to use third party public tools (e.g., blogs, wikis) include a FERPA statement in your syllabus reminding students not to include any personally identifying information on this public site.

Visit Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository to learn more about the strategy of including a FERPA statement in your course syllabus.

Creative Commons License

TOPKit Sample Course was prepared by the University of Central Florida (UCF). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.