Instructors who have requested a “special use” non-catalog Canvas course through our Miscellaneous Site Request form need to review the following FERPA guidelines and a new practice for adding Course start and end dates to your sites.
The FERPA guidelines (Ensuring Student Data Privacy within Manually Created Non-Catalog Sites) apply to non-catalog courses who enroll current undergraduate/graduate students at the University (i.e. new student orientations, graduate program orientations, career center courses). It does not apply to Canvas course sites where only faculty/staff are enrolled (i.e. faculty/professional development). It also does not apply when the course enrolls users outside of the University through the guest management system or faculty/staff/students, if those enrolled are in just one offering of the course (e.g. all users enrolled start and end the course at the same time).
Staging sites used for course development are not applicable. Independent Study sites, which are catalog sites (ex: 22F-COUR100-000) not automatically created through the automated course creation process, already should be in compliance if the students are all registered for the same section.
Also, “special use” courses need to make sure they have course start and end dates specified. Normally, they do not follow the standard terms on campus (i.e. 22F) which controls the visibility of the course and participation by students and other users. If you are unsure how to set these dates in a course, please review “How do I change the start and end dates for a course?” If you want a course to be set to reflect a UD term (i.e. 22F) just let us know when you request a course.
If you have a “special use” non-catalog course which currently has undergraduate/graduate students enrolled, you can reach out to canvas-info@udel.edu for some assistance in changing the student role to the participant role as explained in the FERPA guidelines linked in this post or any other questions you may have regarding these new guidelines.
