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FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) Certification

All Instructors need to be FERPA certified. To complete FERPA certification, see the FERPA Certification website. For more information, visit Purdue’s website on FERPA.

How to avoid violating FERPA:

  • Do not share personally identifiable student information (e.g., student name, personal identifiers (PUID, SID, SSN). See the FERPA site for the complete list.
  • Do not publicly post grades or leave student work with their name in a box for them to retrieve.
  • Do not send student grades over email.

What you can do:

  • Pass back assignments during class.
  • Have students retrieve work during office hours.
  • Have students pick up work from another FERPA-certified person, such as a teaching assistant (TA) or staff member.
  • Have students check Brightspace for their grades.

Office Hours/Student Contact Hours

Instructors must hold office or student contact hours as a teaching load. Listing the time and location of office hours are required in your syllabus. Please refer to your department for the number of hours required for your course.​​​​​​​

Recommendations:

  • Hold office hours in areas frequented or easily accessible to students (unless a private discussion is needed).
  • Hold virtual office hours using web conferencing software such as Zoom, Teams, WebEx, etc.
  • Choose times that work for both your students and you.​​​​​​​​​​​

Accessibility

Brightspace Accessibility

Brightspace provides several tools to help you offer an inclusive course experience:

  • Check the font you use in your Brightspace course for accessibility. The built-in accessibility checker will ensure the color contrast of your text meets accessibility standards, and your images have an alternate description for screen readers to use, among other essential checks. For directions on how to check for accessibility in Brightspace, go to the Purdue D2L Brightspace resources website.
  • You can grant students extra time on quizzes and assignments to comply with their time accommodations decided by the Disability Resource Center. Please see the Student Accommodations and Services webpage for more information.

Document Accessibility

Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat provide accessibility checkers to help you make sure all students can read your documents. 

Tips for Microsoft PowerPoint and Excel formatting are also available on the Innovative Learning website: Creating Accessible Documents.

Video Accessibility

An automatic closed captioning option is available when you upload videos in Brightspace using Kaltura. As automatic captioning is not always accurate, checking the captions and manually making corrections where needed is essential.  

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