AHE 591: Lesson 7

Much like the Americans with Disabilities Act that was covered in last week's lesson, I must admit that I am probably not as well versed in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) as I should be. My mode of operation when it comes to privacy laws in higher education is simply to use common sense, which is not to share a student's information with anyone else but that student. I am not a faculty member at my institution, and as such, I do not deal with student grades. I do, however, deal with and handle a lot of student information in my role as Technical Division Advisor. Below are a few of my responsibilities that pertain to handling private student information...

• Scholarships: I am the head of the Technical Scholarship Committee. This committee chooses which students majoring in a technical program are awarded a scholarship. The students who apply for this scholarship turn in their applications to me. These applications contain personal information, an area for the student to write about their goals and aspirations, and any attachments (resume, letters of recommendation, etc.) that they want to include.
• Potential Students: Every month, the Department of Institutional Research at my institution sends me an electronic list of the students who have applied for admission. This list contains all of the student's contact information that they enter on the admission application. I use this information to stay in touch with these potential students, and ensure that they eventually enroll at my college.
• WIA: I am also the main contact person at my institution for technical students who receive Workforce Investment Act funding. While they are enrolled in classes, these students have an active file that I must keep up-to-date with the amount of tuition, books, and supplies that they purchase each semester. I electronically apply the necessary funds each semester to each student's account.
• Marketing: Part of my job as Technical Advisor is to market all of our technical programs. I do this by posting information on social media outlets, such as Twitter and Facebook, about each program that we offer. These posts could include things such as highlights of how a particular program performed at a SkillsUSA competition, or pictures of technical students.

In all of my different roles described above, I am in some way, shape, or form handling student information that is considered private. When it comes to the written documentation, such as scholarship applications or WIA files, I am careful to not share this information with anyone else. When it comes to visual documentation, such as the pictures I take and use to market our technical programs, I always get the student to sign a waiver that gives me permission to use their picture for marketing purposes.

In regard to online learning, Dr. Major accurately stated in her blog this week that "the line between what is and what is not acceptable is not always clear, particularly in the case of social media, and this uncertainty can influence our actions and our experiences." When faculty, or staff for that matter, find ourselves in this gray area of what should remain private and what can be made public in online learning, I believe that we should err on the side of keeping the material private. There is more than enough public content online now to make for a rich online learning experience, and this will only grow over time. As I stated at the beginning of my blog post, we should use common sense when it comes to FERPA. We may not know every privacy law, but we should know what information is o.k. and beneficial to share with others, and what is not.