For the last two years, students enrolled in the Internet Application Development Class were provided with individual virtual Linux Web servers with which to do their work. These servers offered access to technology, such as MySQL databases and Apache Web Servers, not offered to students by the College. In our present curriculum, access to, and experience with, this technology significantly impacts student sucess in their more advanced classes

For their own servers, each student was the exclusive administrator and content provider. At no time did anyone else edit, or access, a student's account. Though the Linux Chmod utility, each student had the capability to make their servers as open or as private as they wanted. The class textbook includes instruction on making a login page and employing password protection.

At no time were student grades, scores, or any other educational records stored, or displayed, on the student computers. No College, or University, educational records were ever stored on a student's computer. No document on the student's servers was ever in the custody of any College, or University, employee.

Problem Statement

Recently, I have been made aware of allegations that the ungraded student work that each student stored on their own server constituted a violation of the Federal Family Educational Records Privacy Act (FERPA).

Response

1.) Ungraded student work is not, as defined by FERPA, an educational record.
2.) Portolios were on student controlled virtual servers hosted by a commercial ISP. At all times, students had exclusive control over their own computers including exclusive control over amount of information that these computers displayed.
3.) Since they never hosted any educational records, as defined by FERPA, there was never any FERPA violation.

For more information, concerning both FERPA and the Portfolio assignment, click on the Portfolio FAQ or the FERPA FAQ links above and to your left.