Full Circle Associates

Via OlDaily, a useful piece for those in the US who teach online and bring in guests. Take a read if this is you! "Student Privacy Issues, Ethics, and Solving the
Guest Lecturer Dilemma in Online Courses".

In an era where our privacy seems to be slowly dwindling—when our email can be viewed by our employers and cameras sit perched on street corners—some strongholds of privacy do remain. And, perhaps surprisingly, one such stronghold carries over to the online realm. While your face may be on camera and your words in print, your identity remains protected and privileged information. Of interest then is the special situation when an individual enrolls in an online course. For some, it is the very nature of online anonymity that prompts an educational move to online courses.

Many assume that anonymity is a given in the virtual course, but the truth is that there are many levels of anonymity. A teacher/tutor may not know what the student looks like or even the gender of that student, but some things are known, such as the student's name and email address, for instance. (Of course, it is also known that the individual is enrolled in the given course at the given institution!) Through community development and ice-breaking activities, even more may be shared among virtual classroom participants. The sharing of personal information should end with the class community. When a student posts information in a forum, the intent is not that it will be shared with the world. Herein lies a problem for the online instructor.

In the online classroom, student identities are available to those with access to the course, and must remain protected from those outside of it. In the United States, such protection in education is more than just ethical, it legally falls under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). (For an overview of FERPA, see www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/index.html.) The intent of such laws is not to prohibit educational activity within the course, but unintended consequences that might arise due to the nature of the online environment such as guest lecturers.

When we allow a guest into an online course, he or she may have access to a list of students in the course, potentially violating FERPA. In a face-to-face setting, the guest gets to physically interact with the students; they're generally not given a roster and will not know students' names. However, such information is clearly visible in most online classrooms. In addition, the guest in a face-to-face setting only experiences what happens on any given day. In an online course, however, the guest may have access to the entire history of course discussion; in forums that have nothing to do with the content that guest led or took part in. (Although this second situation would not necessarily be under FERPA provisions and newer course-management systems may begin to make it possible to limit an individual's access to a single forum.)

I had never thought about this. Wow!