Communicate 1.1.2 Laws of Communication

With the passing of FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), educators have had to become even more careful about the information that they share about their students. Some guidelines to prevent a teacher from violating FERPA are listed below:

1. Have a signed, written consent from a student before a school official, administrator, career services staff member, or faculty member releases personally identifiable information to an employer, third-party recruiter, or resume referral data base.
2. Remind students each semester or at least yearly of their rights under FERPA.
3. Obtain a new consent form if any student has to change any information on the original consent form.
4. Never share a students grade over e-mail.  With online education, it is very important to only show grades to the student through private means.
5. DO NOT share information about student with anyone other than the parent/guardian.

Also, distance education classes sometimes use blogs.  So it is very important to also protect the privacy of the students that post on blogs. The following suggestions will help.

1. Inform students before the course starts that they will have to use a public blog and give them a chance to discuss concerns with you.
2. Allow students to participate with a pseudonym or alias.
3. Explain to students that they should never post private information on the blog.

In the field of Education, another issue teachers face is copyright.

Most educators are trained in copyright laws, but in order to make sure copyright laws are not being violated, teachers should have ongoing training about copyright laws. This will help teachers know what they can and cannot use in their courses.  As well, students have to be informed in the syllabus or at the beginning of the course about copyright and held accountable.  There are computer programs available to check for plagiarism in students' work.

A question a student might ask is "Does copyright require that all work, images, words, and graphics must be original?"

The work that a student turns in as their own should be original.  If anything is ever used then permission must be obtained from the original creator of that work. In other words " Don't take credit for something you didn't do."