Are you protecting student privacy?


Before you record, make sure they are on board! Technology is being used for presentations, podcasts, recorded classroom lectures, etc. While these things are important and will very likely increase student learning, it is crucial to be in compliance with student privacy laws while doing so. Many times these laws are not thought of when doing these types of things in the classroom. The most basic way to protect student privacy in the classroom is to only record the instructor. According to student privacy laws, their maybe scenarios where student written consent is required for video recording, photography, or anything else that involves student presence. Capturing student voices is not typically an issue and does not require student consent as long as their names are not being said and no personally identifying information is presented, including their image.

Below is a list of Best Practices that can help protect against privacy violations when using multimedia in your classroom:
  1.  Set guidelines and policies: Set consistent guidelines and consistently apply these to each of your courses where images, video, and/or audio of students may be recorded, including during student individual or group presentations. Policies must comply with FERPA regulations.
  2.  Provide clear consent procedures: Use a student consent form, such as the one from UMASS (COOL is currently developing one for faculty to use in-house at CCU) where student identity may be revealed.
  3. Limit the scope of recordings: For example, focus more on the instructor rather than the students; only use within the current semester in which students are enrolled; allow students to be seated in areas that are off camera, if they so choose.
  4. Limit who has access to the recordings, photos, and recordings: To comply with FERPA, it is important to protect the privacy of our students. To do so within the campus community is simply a matter of using a link to the materials that first requires students to login, such as to the LMS (Moodle) or to the LCS (Echo 360) to access the content.



For more information about student privacy, please visit this excellent site from UMASS. You may also find it useful to review the FERPA website. 

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