I did not know that there was law(s) that protected student information, I find this very interesting, and am looking forward to learning more.
As a nurse FERA seems to be the educational equivalent to HIPAA. All educational records are private and need to be protected. All personal identifiers must be maintained confidential. Only certain parties need access to certain records and should not be allowed to have recorded information that is not pertinent for them to complete their task. School records are confidential and should not be given out to just anyone who calls and requests.
As educators it is our responsibility to maintain the confidentiality of the records of our students.
FERPA is designed to protect the student, just because the institution employs someone, it does not mean they automatically have the right to access certain information. FERPA keeps everything confidential, some school officials may not be employees of the institution but have a legitimate interest based on the role served.
I am glad they shared the scenario with the student who requested to see her previous advisor's handwritten notes. I thought there would be more editing prior to view.
Outlined what the purpose of FERPA is and what is included in the students educational file. This will be useful to know how to apply these principles in management student confidentiality properly.
I learned that not all employees in an educational institution need access to student files. Only certain support staff needs access.
the need of institutions to comply with requests for academic records
FERPA allows us to actively protect our students' personal and academic information while also ensuring that anyone who goes against this compliance is held accountable. Compliance is fairly simple, however compliance is subject to interpretation when it comes to who is considered school personnel with interest in the well being and education of the student. Still we should be able to act appropriately within the confines and refresh ourselves as needed to ensure we maintain the compliance.
FERPA is meant for the privacy of students records. It helps students access their records whenever they need it provided to them.
My takeaways from this module are the fundamentals on which FERPA is based, what rights students' have, and what is defined as an educational record.
Comment on Carmen Andreu's post:
Very well said. FERPA provides specific guidelines in Protecting the students rights!!
I learned that:
1. FERPA is a federal law that protects the privacy of student education records
2. students have the right to access and request changes to their education records.
3. Staff and faculty notes that are maintained in a student's shared file are considered an educational record and must be shared with students upon request. However, notes that are maintained in the "sole possession" of an employee are not part of the student's educational record.
4. Institutions must permit access to that part of the record which pertains only to the inquiring student, cannot destroy any documents that are pending a request for access, and may charge fees for providing copies of records as long as it does not restrict access. When a student requests access to their education records, institutions must protect any sensitive information while also ensuring the student's right to access is not denied.
The best thing you can do is to just treat every piece of information about a student as confidential and thus controlled by FERPA -- it is better to be safe than sorry.
Proper procedures ae needed to make sure a requester of student information is who they say they are and has a valid right to the information.
I learned that notes about a student were considered sole possession, unless you transferred the full file to someone else, then they are considered to be a record.
Keeping information confidential is a base for safety and respect that everyone should be able to feel confident about not having third party access.
FERPA is similar to HIPAA in that records must not be accessed without a specific reason. I learned form this module that schools have some autonomy when it comes to complying with FERPA as long as compliance is maintained. For example, when schools validate callers they can construct their own screening methods.
FERPA is for education and it kind of resembles HIPPA that is used in the medical field. It was nice to see that we have one that works with the students to keep our information safe.
For me this is basically the same as what we do on a daily basis in the healthcare field, protect PII. It can be tempting to look at information that you really don't need to (we as humans are nosey) but if it does not apply to us or anything that we are specifically doing then we don't need to access it.
