Complying with FERPA in Merged Courses

Overview

Faculty may choose to merge their courses in Canvas to save time distributing the same course content to students across multiple course sections.

Important Considerations

Merge Canvas course sites before the quarter begins. Student submission data could be lost if merging occurs after students have interacted inside your Canvas course site.

Due to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)regulations, the SU Registrar’s office requires that students cannot have access to student information of course sections they are not enrolled in. Because of this requirement, students are not allowed interact in Canvas with students from another course section. The steps outlined below show how to comply with FERPA regulations in a merged Canvas course site.

Note: FERPA restrictions do not apply to a merged Canvas course if students physically meet in the same classroom at the same time. Please see the section below on Sending Messages to Course Sections for instructions on 1) communicating with students by section, 2) creating student groups to facilitate student interactions by section, and 3) (optionally) creating calendar events and assignments by section.

Distributing Course Content

Faculty must remove the People, Chat, Conferences and Collaborations course navigation tabs from their Canvas course site to restrict students’ ability to view and interact with another course section. Please see the Simplify course navigation Links to an external site. section of the SU Faculty Canvas Tutorials for instructions.

Note: student comments are disabled by default on Announcements in Canvas courses. Do not modify this setting in merged courses in order to comply with FERPA restrictions.

Note: the option that allows students to create new discussion topics must be disabled. Go to Discussions and click the gear icon[1]. Next, un-check the Create discussion topics option [2] and Save Settings[3]

Discussion edit window

Sending Messages to Course Sections

To send messages to students in a particular course section, the quickest method is to use the Canvas Conversations Inbox. Please see the Send personal messages Links to an external site. section of the SU Faculty Canvas Tutorials for a Conversations Inbox overview.

When creating a new message in the Conversations Inbox, select your course[1], click the Address Book [2] and navigate to and select the appropriate course section [3]:

Course section conversation settings

You are now ready to compose a message to be sent to students in a particular section.

Creating Student Groups to Facilitate Student Interaction

In addition to removing the course tabs mentioned above, faculty create Canvas Student Groups identical to the course section enrollments to allow student interactions within course sections of a merged Canvas course site. Please see the Canvas guide: How do I manually create Groups in a Group Set? Links to an external site.

After creating Canvas Student Groups, there will be separate group workspaces for each course section inside the course.

Student perspective:

A “Groups” menu is accessible on the left-hand Global navigation, enabling students to navigate directly to their course section group workspace
The Group workspaces Links to an external site. section of the SU Student Canvas Tutorials provides information on the tools faculty and students can use to collaborate with classmates in group workspaces (e.g.:Announcements, Pages, Discussions, Files, Conferences and Collaborations)

Faculty perspective:

Faculty can also goto these separate group workspaces and interact with students separately in each section (e.g. send announcements, create collaborations, etc.)
How do I view student activity within a group as an instructor? Links to an external site.

Facilitating Discussions by Section

Once Canvas student groups are created identical to section enrollments, faculty can set up group discussions to separate student posts, ensuring that students only see discussion posts from classmates in their course section. Please see the Using Canvas for Small Group Projects Links to an external site. section of the SU Faculty Canvas Tutorials for instructions.

(optional) Setting Calendar Events and Assignment Due Dates by Section

Note: these steps are not required for FERPA compliance, but may be helpful for managing your merged sections. A single calendar event can have varied dates for each section in your course. Please see the Canvas guide: How do I set a different Calendar event date for each section in my course? Links to an external site.

Additionally, using Differentiated Assignments you can create a graded assignment for a specific section of a merged course. Differentiated Assignments also allow you to create graded assignment due dates and availability dates by course section.