Join us for an online training program that will provide faculty with critical information about FERPA, the federal statute that governs nearly all student records. Beginning with an overview of the FERPA framework, we will address issues that faculty commonly face—often without realizing the implications and risks—including:
Posting grades
Emailing with, and about, students
Writing recommendation letters
Using online tools and collaborative pedagogies
Speaking with (helicopter) parents
Administrators requesting student information
If you are searching for relevant scenarios and practical tips for better understanding how FERPA applies to everyday work of faculty, this online training is right for you.
Bonus Training Material and Quiz
Included in registration is a bonus lesson covering specific nuances of FERPA as it relates to faculty and an accompanying quiz which will provide a chance for you and your team to test your knowledge immediately before or after the webcast. This 20-minute training will cover:
Taking attendance, posting grades, and other course communication
The Do’s and Don’ts of identifying students online, in person, and on paper
Using Student Data to Identify Future Criminals: A Privacy Debacle
Under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), schools can share student records with a contractor or outside party to whom the school has outsourced certain functions, if that outside party (like a designated school resource officer) meets all three of these conditions:
The outside party is performing a service that would otherwise be performed by school employees.
The outside party’s use of education records is under the direct control of the school.
The outside party does not use the education records for anything other than the reason they were originally shared, and does not share the education record with anyone else unless it secures written consent from the parent of the student.
Investment continues to flow to ed tech, with $803 million injected during the first six months of the year, according to the industry news website EdSurge. But half of that went to just six companies, including the celebrity tutorial provider MasterClass, the online learning platform Udemy and the school and college review site Niche.
From the outside, the ed-tech sector may appear as if “there’s a bonanza and it’s like the dot-com boom again and everybody’s printing money,” said Michael Hansen, CEO of the K-12 and higher education digital learning provider Cengage. “That is not the case.”
Even if they want to buy more ed-tech tools, meanwhile, schools and colleges are short on cash. Expenses for measures to deal with Covid-19 are up, while budgets are expected to be down.
Analysts and industry insiders now expect a wave of acquisitions as already-dominant brands like these seek to corner even more of the market by snatching up smaller players that provide services they don’t.
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Tech-based contact tracing could put schools in murky privacy territory
A white paper from the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) suggests the use of contact tracing technology by schools could erode student privacy and may not be effective in preventing the spread of coronavirus.
Despite the pandemic, schools still must conform to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and other laws governing student privacy. Districts can disclose information to public health officials, for example, but information can’t be released to the general public without written consent from parents.
The Safely Reopen Schools mobile app is one tool available for automating contact tracing. The idea is that if two mobile phones are close enough to connect via Bluetooth, the phone owners are close enough to transmit the virus. The app includes daily health check-ins and educational notifications, but no personal information is exchanged between the phones, and the app won’t disclose who tested positive.
Colleges are also using apps to help trace and track students’ exposure to coronavirus. In August, 20,000 participants from the University of Alabama at Birmingham were asked to test the GuideSafe mobile app, which will alert them if they’ve been in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. The app determines the proximity of two people through cell phone signal strength. If someone reports they contracted the virus, an alert will be sent to anyone who has been within six feet of them for at least 15 minutes over the previous two weeks.
Critics of the technology claim these apps aren’t actually capable of contract tracing and could undermine manual efforts to do so.
New York’s Lockport City School District, which is using public funds from a Smart Schools bond to help pay for a reported $3.8 million security system that uses facial recognition technology to identify individuals who don’t belong on campus
the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF), a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C., published an animated video that illustrates the possible harm that surveillance technology can cause to children and the steps schools should take before making any decisions, such as identifying specific goals for the technology and establishing who will have access to the data and for how long.
My note: same considerations were relayed to the SCSU SOE dean in regard of the purchase of Premethean and its installation in SOE building without discussion with faculty, who work with technology. This information was also shared with the dean: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/10/31/students-data-privacy/
Whether your school or district has officially adopted social media or not, conversations are happening in and around your school on everything from Facebook to Snapchat. Schools must reckon with this reality and commit to supporting thoughtful and critical social media use among students, teachers and administrators. If not, schools and classrooms risk everything from digital distraction to privacy violations.
Key Elements to Include in a Social Media Policy
Create parent opt-out forms that specifically address social media use.Avoid blanket opt-outs that generalize all technology or obfuscate how specific social media platforms will be used. (See this example by the World Privacy Forum as a starting point.)
Use these opt-out forms as a way to have more substantive conversations with parents about what you’re doing and why.
Describe what platforms are being used, where, when and how.
Avoid making the consequences of opt-out selections punitive (e.g., student participation in sports, theater, yearbook, etc.).
Restrict location sharing: Train teachers and students on how to turn off geolocation features/location services on devices as well as in specific apps.
Minimize information shared in teacher’s social media profiles: Advise teachers to list only grade level and subject in their public profiles and not to include specific school or district information.
Make social media use transparent to students: Have teachers explain their social media plan, and find out how students feel about it.
Most important: As with any technology, attach social media use to clearly articulated goals for student learning. Emphasize in your guidelines that teachers should audit any potential use of social media in terms of student-centered pedagogy: (1) Does it forward student learning in a way impossible through other means? and (2) Is using social media in my best interests or in my students’?
Moving from Policy to Practice.
Social media policies, like policies in general, are meant to mitigate the risk and liability of institutions rather than guide and support sound pedagogy and student learning. They serve a valuable purpose, but not one that impacts classrooms. So how do we make these policies more relevant to classrooms?
First, it forces policy to get distilled into what impacts classroom instruction and administration. Second, social media changes monthly, and it’s much easier to update a faculty handbook than a policy document. Third, it allows you to align social media issues with other aspects of teaching (assessment, parent communication, etc.) versus separating it out in its own section.
1. Using a blockchain for automatic recognition and transfer of credits
The decline in first-time, first-year student enrollments is having a real financial impact on a number of institutions across the United States and focusing on transfer students (a pool of prospects twice as large) has become an important strategy for many. But credit articulation presents a real challenge for institutions bringing in students from community colleges. While setting standardized articulation requirements across the nation presents a high hurdle, blockchain-supported initiatives may hold great promise for university and city education systems looking to streamline educational mobility in their communities.
2. Blockchains for tracking intellectual property and rewarding use and re-use of that property
If researchers were able to publish openly and accurately assess the use of their resources, the access-prohibitive costs of academic book and journal publications could be circumvented, whether for research- or teaching-oriented outputs. Accurately tracking the sharing of knowledge without restrictions has transformative potential for open-education models.
3. Using verified sovereign identities for student identification within educational organizations
The data footprint of higher education institutions is enormous. With FERPA regulations as well as local and international requirements for the storage and distribution of Personally Identifiable Information (PII), maintaining this data in various institutional silos magnifies the risk associated with a data breach. Using sovereign identities to limit the proliferation of personal data promotes better data hygiene and data lifecycle management and could realize significant efficiency gains at the institutional level.
4. Using a blockchain as a lifelong learning passport
Educational institutions and private businesses partner with online course delivery giants to extend the reach of their educational services and priorities. Traditional educational routes are increasingly less normal and in this expanding world of providers, the need for verifiable credentials from a number of sources is growing. Producing a form of digitally “verifiable CVs” would limit credential fraud, and significantly reduce organizational workload in credential verification.
5. Using blockchains to permanently secure certificates
The open source solution Blockcerts already enables signed certificates to be posted to a blockchain and supports the verification of those certificates by third parties.
When an institution issues official transcripts, obtaining copies can be expensive and burdensome for graduates. But student-owned digital transcripts put the power of secure verification in the hands of learners, eliminating the need for lengthy and costly transcripts to further their professional or educational pursuits. An early mover, Central New Mexico Community College, debuted digital diplomas on the blockchain in December of 2017.
6. Using blockchains to verify multi-step accreditation
As different accreditors recognize different forms of credentials and a growing diversity of educational providers issue credentials, checking the ‘pedigree’ of a qualification can be laborious. Turning a certification verification process from a multi-stage research effort into a single-click process will automate many thousands of labor hours for organizations and institutions
From: Jodie Borgerding [mailto:Borgerding@amigos.org] Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2017 3:07 PM To: Miltenoff, Plamen <pmiltenoff@stcloudstate.edu> Cc: Nicole Walsh <WALSH@AMIGOS.ORG> Subject: Proposal Submission for Privacy & Security Conference
Hi Plamen,
Thank you for your recent presentation proposal for the online conference, Privacy & Security in Today’s Library, presented by Amigos Library Services. Your proposal, The role of the library in teaching with technology unsupported by campus IT: the privacy and security issues of the “third-party,” has been accepted. I just wanted to confirm that you are still available to present on September 21, 2017 and if you have a time preference for your presentation (11 am, 12 pm, or 2 pm Central). If you are no longer able to participate, please let me know.
Nicole will be touch with you shortly with additional details and a speaker’s agreement.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks!
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Jodie Borgerding Consulting & Education Services Manager Amigos Library Services 1190 Meramec Station Road, Suite 207 | Ballwin, MO 63021-6902 800-843-8482 x2897 | 972-340-2897(direct) http://www.amigos.org | borgerding@amigos.org
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Bio
Dr. Plamen Miltenoff is an Information Specialist and Professor at St. Cloud State University. His education includes several graduate degrees in history and Library and Information Science and terminal degrees in education and psychology.
His professional interests encompass social media, multimedia, Web development and design, gaming and gamification, and learning environments (LEs).
The virtuality of privacy and security on the modern campus:
The role of the library in teaching with technology unsupported by campus IT: the privacy and security issues of the “third-party software” teaching and learning
Abstract/Summary of Your Proposed Session
The virtualization reality changes rapidly all aspects of learning and teaching: from equipment to methodology, just when faculty have finalized their syllabus, they have to start a new, if they want to keep abreast with content changes and upgrades and engagement of a very different student fabric – Millennials.
Mainframes are replaced by microcomputers, microcomputers by smart phones and tablets, hard drives by cloud storage and wearables by IoT. The pace of hardware, software and application upgrade is becoming unbearable for students and faculty. Content creation and methodology becomes useless by the speed of becoming obsolete. In such environment, faculty students and IT staff barely can devote time and energy to deal with the rapidly increasing vulnerability connected with privacy and security.
In an effort to streamline ever-becoming-scarce resources, campus IT “standardizes” campus use of applications. Those are the applications, which IT chooses to troubleshoot campus-wide. Those are the applications recommended to faculty and students to use.
In an unprecedented burgeoning amount of applications, specifically for mobile devices, it is difficult to constraint faculty and students to use campus IT sanctioned applications, especially considering the rapid pace of such applications becoming obsolete. Faculty and students often “stray” away and go with their own choice. Such decision exposes faculty and students, personally, and the campus, institutionally, at risk. In a recent post by THE Journal, attention on campuses is drown to the fact that cyberattacks shift now from mobile devices to IoT and campus often are struggling even with their capability to guarantee cybersecurity of mobile devices on campus. Further, the use of third-party application might be in conflict with the FERPA campus-mandated policies. Such policies are lengthy and complex to absorb, both by faculty and students and often are excessively restrictive in terms of innovative ways to improve methodology and pedagogy of teaching and learning. The current procedure of faculty and students proposing new applications is a lengthy and cumbersome bureaucratic process, which often render the end-users’ proposals obsolete by the time the process is vetted.
Where/what is the balance between safeguarding privacy on campus and fostering security without stifling innovation and creativity? Can the library be the campus hub for education about privacy and security, the sandbox for testing and innovation and the body to expedite decision-making?
Abstract
The pace of changes in teaching and learning is becoming impossible to sustain: equipment evolves in accelerated pace, the methodology of teaching and learning cannot catch up with the equipment changes and atop, there are constant content updates. In an even-shrinking budget, faculty, students and IT staff barely can address the issues above, less time and energy left to address the increasing concerns about privacy and security.
In an unprecedented burgeoning amount of applications, specifically for mobile devices, it is difficult to constraint faculty and students to use campus IT sanctioned applications, especially considering the rapid pace of such applications becoming obsolete. Faculty and students often “stray” away and go with their own choice. Such decision exposes faculty and students, personally, and the campus, institutionally, at risk. In a recent post by THE Journal (https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2017/06/06/cybersecurity-and-students/), attention on campuses is drawn to the fact of cyberattacks shifting from mobile devices to IoT but campus still struggling to guarantee cybersecurity of mobile devices on campus. Further, the use of third-party applications might be in conflict with the FERPA campus-mandated policies. Such policies are lengthy and complex to absorb, both by faculty and students and often are excessively restrictive in terms of innovative ways to improve methodology and pedagogy of teaching and learning. The current procedure of faculty and students proposing new applications is a lengthy and cumbersome bureaucratic process, which often render the end-users’ proposals obsolete by the time the process is vetted.
Where/what is the balance between safeguarding privacy on campus and fostering security without stifling innovation and creativity? Can the library be the campus hub for education about privacy and security, the sandbox for testing and innovation and the body to expedite decision-making?
Discuss and form an opinion about the education-pertinent issues of privacy and security from the broad campus perspective, versus the narrow library one
Discuss and form an opinion about the role of the library on campus in terms of the greater issues of privacy and security
Re-examine the thin red line of the balance between standardization and innovation; between the need for security and privacy protection a
chat – slide 4, privacy. please take 2 min and share your definition of privacy on campus. Does it differ between faculty and students? what are the main characteristics to determine privacy
chat – slide 5, security. please take 2 min and share your definition of security on campus regarding electronic activities. Who’s responsibility is security? IT issue [only]?
poles: slide 6, technology unsupported by campus IT, is it worth considering? 1. i am a great believer in my freedom of choice 2. I firmly follow rules and this applies to the use of computer tools and applications 3. Whatever…
chat – slide 6, why third party applications? pros and cons. E.g. pros – familiarity with third party versus campus-required
pole, slide 6, appsmashing. App smashing is the ability to combine mobile apps in your teaching process. How do you feel about it? 1. The force is with us 2. Nonsense…
pole slide 7 third party apps and the comfort of faculty. How do you see the freedom of using third party apps? 1. All I want, thank you 2. I would rather follow the rules 3. Indifference is my middle name
pole slide 8 Technology standardization? 1. yes, 2. no, 3. indifferent
chat slide 9 if the two major issues colliding in this instance are: standardization versus third party and they have impact on privacy and security, how would you argue for the one or the other?
Dr. Steve Albrecht, author of Library Security: Better Communication, Safer Facilities, manages a training, coaching, and management consulting firm, using a dedicated and experienced team of subcontractor specialists. He is internationally known for his consulting and training work in workplace violence prevention training programs, school violence prevention, and high-risk human resources. Dr. Albrecht provides HR consulting, site security assessments, coaching, and training workshops in supervisory improvement, workplace violence prevention, harassment prevention, drug and alcohol awareness, team building, and more. He holds a B.A. in English, B.S. in Psychology, M.A. in Security Management, and a doctoral degree in Business Administration (D.B.A.). He has been a trainer for over 26 years and is a certified Professional in Human Resources (PHR), a Certified Protection Professional (CPP), a Board Certified Coach (BCC), and a Certified Threat Manager (CTM).
Session Description: Libraries don’t always need to hire a consultant to review the level of facility security. Using a structured assessment process, librarians can create a report that will help to make their building, staff, and patrons safer.
Chris Markman, MSLIS, MSIT Public Services Librarian Worcester Public Library
over the last four years, 49 states and the District of Columbia have introduced 410 bills related to student data privacy, and 36 states have passed 85 new education data privacy laws. Also, since 2014, 19 states have passed laws that in some way address the work done by researchers.
researchers need to get better at communicating about their projects, especially with non-researchers.
One approach to follow in gaining trust “from parents, advocates and teachers” uses the acronym CUPS:
Collection: What data is collected by whom and from whom;
Use: How the data will be used and what the purpose of the research is;
Protection: What forms of data security protection are in place and how access will be limited; and
Sharing: How and with whom the results of the data work will be shared.
Second, researchers must pin down how to share data without making it vulnerable to theft.
Third, researchers should build partnerships of trust and “mutual interest” pertaining to their work with data. Those alliances may involve education technology developers, education agencies both local and state, and data privacy stakeholders.
08/09/18
