FERPA Compliance and Student Interaction in Merged Canvas Courses
Answer
Overview
Cross-listing courses on Canvas may violate FERPA. If course sections do not meet together and are cross-listed in Canvas, instructors should take steps to ensure compliance with the Family Educational and Privacy Act (FERPA). Students in Canvas cross-listed courses should not be permitted to see or interact with students in other sections unless these sections are listed as cross-listed in PAWS.
A Word from Records and Registration on FERPA
The College of New Jersey recognizes that there is a delicate balance between the responsibility for maintaining student privacy rights and providing effective and efficient service to our students. To maintain this balance, it is essential that members of the campus community understand the issues related to student privacy and the handling of student information pursuant to the federal law known as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
Steps that need to be taken in Canvas to ensure student privacy when cross-listing
- Set Section Privileges for all students enrolled in the course. This includes any that are added.
- Disable Comments on Announcements
- Disable “Let students organize their own groups”
- Disable the following under Settings -> Navigation
- Chat
- Conferences
- Zoom - More below.
- Collaborations
- If adding participants under People such as Learning Assistants, set “Can interact with users in their section only” [3]
- Groups - When creating a group set “Require group members to be in the same section”
- Chat - The names of all students who post are visible in the Course level chat. Create separate Groups for each section and use the Chat within the group space instead.
- Discussions - The names of all students who post are visible in the Course level Discussion.
- For graded discussions, create differentiated due dates for discussion topics restricted to individual sections.
- For ungraded discussions, use the "Post to" option to post topics to individual sections instead of the entire class.
- For group discussions, use Groups with the “Require group members to be in the same section” set.
- Message / Inbox - When sending a Canvas message to two or more students in different sections, check Send an individual message to each recipient. This will send a separate copy to each recipient and hide the names of the recipients in the message header.
- Zoom - If you choose to use Zoom within Canvas, you must disable cloud recordings because all course participants have access to the recordings tab. Students should only attend the Zoom session for their section. Alternatively, you can create Zoom sessions outside of Canvas and share those links only with the appropriate sections.