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Student privacy: The Law
| Tip: In order to protect students' privacy, do not change default course settings in Moodle, make sure to have an enrollment key and do not allow anonymous access to your site. |
By default, all Moodle sites are set to be secure and password protected. However, individual instructors/designers can choose to "open" their sites for public access (which is usually done if Moodle sites are used for simple content management). If you are a Moodle course designer, you need to be aware of the implications of such a decision. Please review the information below carefully.
Student data at the University of Minnesota is governed by FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act). Among other things, this law enables students to suppress some or all of their directory information, such as their internet IDs and e-mail addresses. Students who do so present a unique challenge to teachers who make use of digital technology in their courses. For example, Moodle allows a variety of interactions that may reveal student names and internet IDs. In threaded discussions, chats, and other interactive functions, student participation may reveal possibly suppressed information. We offer the following recommendations to insure FERPA compliance:
For regular academic sites that are made accessible only to the enrolled students, please include a statement on your syllabus such as the following:
"In this class, our use of technology will sometimes make students' names and U of M Internet IDs visible within the course website, but only to other students in the same class. Since we are using a secure, password-protected course website, this will not increase the risk of identity theft or spamming for anyone in the class. If you have concerns about the visibility of your Internet ID, please contact me for further information."
For sites that are open to the world and can be accessed by anyone, please include a statement on your syllabus such as the following:
"In this class, our use of technology will make students' names and U of M Internet IDs visible within the course website. This particular website is not secure, and it can be accessed by anyone. If you have concerns about the visibility of your Internet ID, please contact me for further information."
Bottom line
Instructors may require as a condition of participation in a course that students make themselves and their work visible to other students, to visiting guests, and/or to the entire world. If instructors do this, students must be informed of this condition of participation in the course, and tacit consent via continued participation in the course is sufficient. Ideally, instructors will protect student privacy except where they judge exposure of privacy essential to the course, and then they will expose student data only to the degree necessary. When they do elect to open the learning environment, instructors should provide some details as to what is visible and to whom, in order that students may make an informed decision. They should also provide some alternative accommodation in the very rare cases where students have a genuine need for protection.
Tips:
- Suppressing personal information in Moodle: If you have students who want to hide their name or email in Moodle, please advise them to modify their Profile settings and suppress the info there: http://umn.edu/moodle/students/guides/profile.html
- Gradebook: The Moodle grade book is a secure tool to post students grades, since a student may only see his/her own grades there.
Eligibility and site use
Anyone affiliated with the University of Minnesota may obtain a Moodle account and a site. Moodle accounts and services are provided for free by the Office of Information Technology (OIT).
Moodle sites can be used for academic and non-academic purposes. We distinguish 3 site types:
- Academic: a site set up to fetch class lists of registered students from the PeopleSoft® system.
- Development: a prototype course site, which allows to explore Moodle features and tools.
- Non-academic: a site used for any other purpose, like group collaboration, departmental web-board, internal training, etc.
Site requests for academic courses
For student privacy and FERPA reasons, we must be able to verify course instructors in the class schedule before associating student data with a course site. Verification will fail if there is no instructor of record or you are not the listed instructor of record. Our policy is as follows:
If you are not listed in the class schedule as the instructor, or if you have requested a course site for someone else (e.g. you are a TA), we will create the site so you can begin to work on it, but we will not fetch the classlist of registered students:
- If you are the one who will be teaching the course - ask your department to make sure you are listed in Peoplesoft as the instructor of record. Once this is done, let us know, and we will fetch the classlist of registered students into your site.
- If you have requested a course site for someone else (e.g. you are a TA), ask the instructor of record to email us the approval to fetch the students.
Designer/Faculty Sponsor Responsibilities
By requesting a Moodle site, the requestor and faculty sponsor (when applicable) agree to receive notices of Moodle server maintenance or upgrade activities, and to act responsibly when sharing the account according to FERPA regulations.
Copying site content
Content can be copied over from one Moodle site to another, once a designer of the original site sends an approval to moodle@umn.edu
Site size
Currently we do not have a set limit for the size of the Moodle sites. However, server space is crucial, so please do not take it up, therefore services to other users are not compromised:
- Remove outdated or duplicate files
- Optimize your audio, video and PDF files to reduce their sizes
- Delete all zipped files from your course sites, especially backups (Administration > Files > Backupdata folder)
If one of your sites exceeds 100 MB and you haven't contacted us, we may require more time to copy or restore your site, and will contact you to discuss your file storage needs and options. In extreme circumstances, we also may have to remove excessively large files with little notice.
If you have large files that you want to exchange with your students, please use Netfiles with Moodle. Netfiles is free storage area, and it allows everyone (faculty, students, and staff) to store up to 5 GB of data. Support page on using Moodle with Netfiles: http://www1.umn.edu/moodle/instructor/guides/moodle_netfiles.html
If you have videos, it is better to store them at the streaming server, therefore students would no need to download those. CLA offers MediaMill streaming server for video storage: http://mediamill.cla.umn.edu/mediamill
Site archival
Old academic sites are archived on a regular basis as part of our ongoing effort to improve server performance for current sites, and to accommodate future growth of Moodle.
Once a semester is over, old academic sites are moved to a separate Moodle instance located at: http://archive.moodle.umn.edu, where they stay in the same format and state as they were on the production server. Instructors continue to have complete and full access to their old Moodle sites.
This process does NOT affect any Training and Collaboration (non-academic), or Development sites.
If your students need to have access to the old academic site in order to finish their work, instructors should send an email with site title and URL to moodle@umn.edu at the end of the term, therefore the site will not be moved to the archive server.
Site backups/restore
If your site content is accidentaly deleted, we can help you to resore it. However, we are limiting such service to the situations when there is absolutely no other option available (e.g. the whole site is deleted, or student data or forum submissions are gone).
Support and training
Technical support is provided via email: moodle@umn.edu, and public forums (Instructor Community, Student Community) during regular business hours: Monday-Friday 8-5 pm.
Instructors and students may also review user guides posted at the official support page: http://umn.edu/moodle
Hands-on Moodle training is provided for free by UTTC several times during a semester: http://uttc.umn.edu/training/resources/moodle
Course designers can also schedule one-on-one sessions with DMC consultants, use DMC facilities and software, or hire student staff members for site development: http://dmc.umn.edu
Implications from changing an Internet ID
Changing your Internet ID can affect your access to many systems.
It is your responsibility to notify each appropriate system manger of your Internet ID change. Once Central Accounts Administration has changed your Internet ID, you will not be able to log in to some systems with either the old or the new Internet ID until system managers grant access to your new ID.
Contact moodle@umn.edu to request a matching change in your Moodle ID. Warning: Do not access Moodle until after your Moodle ID is changed; otherwise, your previous work may be lost.
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