FERPA inSL

Following is a review of the discussions and information regarding FERPA inSL I have been able to find through Google search, on SLED blog and from some personal communications with participants of SLED blog. I have tried to reference everyone specifically when I have used specific wording or ideas. This is not by any means the final words on the subject but I hope this can help continue the discussion of FERPA related issues inSL. Many of us will be tasked with creating guidelines and helping incorporate Second Life into existing policies and procedures of our institutions; hopefully, we can eventually provide some clarity to even the disagreements.

Aleph Blessed

FERPA: Student Privacy (Aleph's personal opinion of Key Issues)
· SL Avatar names should be considered identifying labels that create personally identifiable records (see discussion below).
· Conversations in SL are recorded by Linden Labs and may be recorded by anyone. There are no individually private areas in SL where conversations are not recorded.
· Faculty should record and archive all Chat and IM conversations necessary to remain in compliance with FERPA.
· Emphasize these points to your students as part of ongoing instruction regarding the lack of privacy when keystrokes go out over the Internet.

FERPA -- Discussion
There is little record of discussion of the impact of FERPA on the use of Second Life, and what there is is laced with frustration. Clearly, when FERPA was written Second Life was not anticipated. Questions about what constitutes part of a student’s record and what must be archived are important to consider. The comments of one recent blogger offer some insight:
…it doesn't take a very creative lawyer to argue that chat transcripts are part of a student's "academic record" if the SL experience is part of a course for which the student will receive a grade…
-Rob
--Prof. Robert Knop

Department of Physics & Astronomy, Vanderbilt University (as accessed 7/4/08 at https://lists.secondlife.com/pipermail/educators)

Colleen McGee makes a good point in her response to Rob:

As in-world educators, I believe we have a responsibility to our students to make clear how persistent and pervasive their online speech can be… I think many of our students are incredibly naive about typing words that go out over the web. My university has instituted training sessions about MySpace, Facebook, and other social networking sites to teach people about unintended consequences of youthful posting to those sites. (as accessed 7/4/08 at https://lists.secondlife.com/pipermail/educators)

Jan Van Galen provides some balance from her experience teaching FERPA:
The reams of conventional papers and exams and projects that students produce don’t become part of their official university record. The grades that students get on assignments feed directly into the grades that are maintained by the University on their transcripts, so grades are part of the educational record.

FERPA doesn't require that all student work be kept private. We require presentations in
classes, we encourage service work where students take projects into the community. Art
departments display student projects in public settings, we require musical recitals, publication of writing for a journalism class, or critique of student work by industry jurists. But we can¹t make grades on any of these things public…
(as accessed 7/4/08 at https://lists.secondlife.com/pipermail/educators).

Aleph’s Personal Concluding Remarks regarding FERPA
There is a lot of discussion regarding the classification of chat and IM conversations in SL and other communications linked to an SL Avatar name. An underlying question is: Do SL Avatar names constitute “personally identifiable information” or does the pseudonym create a barrier that assures student privacy protection?” A good case can be made that the avatar names constitute “personally identifiable information;” they certainly do not comply with name redaction and coding best-practices we would use to protect identity in research.

Of course the above discussion is not legal advice, but the educators make some good points:

1) Chat logs and IMs in Second Life, while they may seem like casual conversation, are indeed
written records that are linked to a specific student. These should be maintained in accordance
with your institutional policy regarding online communications and FERPA requirements. Some information can be found at:

http://www.chattanoogastate.edu/pdf/fall07cat.pdf and
https://lists.secondlife.com/pipermail/educators/2007-January/005369.html

2) All students need to understand that all of their typed communications are logged by Linden Labs, their institution’s web management system, and that anyone else may be recording as well. As Colleen McGee notes above, this can be considered an important opportunity to teach our students some very important facts about internet communications in general.

Aleph's personal TIPs on How to Log Chat and IM in SL.
It is easy to set the SL software to log all chat and IM by setting your preferences in Edit: Preferences: Communication. You can set it to log chat history, log IM history, and select a file location on your computer or elsewhere to store the records. The Chat History is stored as a long text file, that is appended to every time you log in. The IM Log is stored at the location specified under each avatar's name, and is appended to every time you IM that avatar.