This post (from Hack Education) claims that Georgia Tech has banned public class wikis as a FERPA violation. Most of us understand FERPA as the day we were told we could no longer post exam scores on our doors. Georgia Tech is interpreting the requirement in a much broader way and claiming it prevents the use of a public wiki as a class assignment (I am assuming no names and no grades).
If this is the case, what is the limit on this restriction. For example, what about all of the K-12 projects in which projects are shared between classes? Does public imply and viewer not a member of the class? Grades are not really to be viewed by anyone else, even other members of the class. Would this then outlaw any kind of internal content sharing?
Perhaps this is a case of lawyers gone amuck eliminating what are useful practices. I still don’t understand why I can’t provide students access to grades with ID #s. Who really would know another student’s ID number and even if this should happen what about the cost/benefit of speed of feedback versus a potential privacy violation with unknown negative consequences.
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