Procedures for Protecting the Privacy of Students Enrolled in Online and Hybrid Courses

Faculty members teaching online and hybrid courses are responsible for creating and maintaining an online teaching and learning environment that provides for the privacy and security of students’ personal data and coursework. Accordingly, online and hybrid instructors will enforce the provisions of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974, which is designated to protect the privacy of students’ educational records. The College’s policies and procedures are used to ensure that students’ FERPA rights are protected. Relevant policies are outlined in the College Catalogue and apply to online, hybrid, and traditional on-campus courses alike.

To further ensure student privacy in on-line and hybrid courses, these procedures shall be followed:

Protection of student information, course data, and student participation is required by all Marymount Manhattan College faculty and staff involved in the design, development, delivery, and administration of online and hybrid courses. Faculty members teaching online and hybrid courses may utilize the Blackboard learning management system, which requires all users to have a unique log-in ID and password.
Student postings to discussion boards, chat rooms, and class forums shall be accessible only to members of the class, the course instructor(s), the program coordinator and anyone specifically authorized and responsible for student learning assessment or oversight of the academic quality and integrity of the course.
Instructors may use the gradebook provided by the Blackboard learning management system, which prohibits students from accessing other students’ grades. Posting of class-wide grade reports in any form is prohibited, as is sending a student his/her grades through an e-mail message that could be intercepted by someone other than the student.
Grades for discussion board participation, online student examinations, and written assignments are confidential, and are only accessible by the individual student, the course instructor(s), the program coordinator and anyone specifically authorized and responsible for student learning assessment or oversight of the academic quality and integrity of the course.
Material from online and hybrid courses provided by course instructors to be used in program assessment reports will not include the identity of individual students; program coordinators will be responsible to ensure that no information specific to identified students will be included in such reports.
Instructors shall ask students never to reveal their log-in names and passwords to anyone.