FERPA policy related to uploading Zoom class information

If you record a class session to post in Brightspace for students who didn't make it to class or for them to go back over for review, and a student asks a question, you may tend to refer to them by their name like, "Good question, John, let's look at that." As long as you’re posting the recording to Brightspace and not a website, and to the section that was recorded, this is not a FERPA risk. Students don’t have the right to be anonymous in the classroom, even if it’s an online class, so calling someone by name is fine. Brightspace is a secure site and the only people who can see the recording are those who’ve logged in with their password and who are registered in the same class.

If you post a recorded session from one class into another class, and students in the recorded class can be identified, then it’s a FERPA violation. Student class schedules and completions are protected information, meaning students in section A don’t have the right to know who the students are in section B, and vice versa. There could be a safety issue between two students, or a student in section A could give a student in section B a hard time about the question they asked in the recording (it has happened).

When recording sessions to be used outside the recorded section, just be sure the students aren’t visibly or verbally identifiable.