Zoom - FERPA | California State University, Northridge

Introduction

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is a federal law that requires universities to (1) give students access to their education records, and (2) keep personally identifiable education records confidential with respect to third parties.

Because an online environment creates a record of student activity, it is subject to FERPA privacy rights, unlike verbal exchanges in a physical classroom.

FERPA Guidance When Using Zoom

Chat

Disable Private Chat

To further control the environment, Private Chat should be disabled.

Sign in to the Zoom, https://csun.zoom.us
In the navigation menu, select Settings.
Select the Chat and Private Chat toggles to disable in-meeting chat.
Select Save Changes.

Disable Saving Chat

Turn OFF ability for participants to “save chat”.

In Settings, make sure you are on the Meeting tab
Scroll down to In Meeting (Basic)
Under Chat, check the box Prevent participants from saving chat to prevent participants from saving chat.
Select Save

Content Sharing Guidelines

Due to FERPA guidelines and to protect the identities of participants, the following content sharing guidelines must be considered:

If you, as the instructor choose to record your session and then share it with another party later, said video must not include student faces or a student's voice. Anything identifiable should not be shared.
Session recordings must be deleted after each term.

Meeting Invitations

For security reasons and to prevent unwanted parties from accessing the Zoom session, meeting invitations must be sent directly to participants via a secure system, not aliases and they cannot be posted to a public website. We recommend Canvas as the best location to post links to Zoom meetings.

Muting

Turn ON the ability to “mute individual participants” and “mute all”.

Mute Individual Participants

The Participants Panel will allow you to select a participant to mute.

To mute a specific participant, hover over the participant’s name and the Mute button will appear.
Select the Mute button to turn off the participant’s audio.

Mute All

Select Manage Participants in the toolbar.
Click the Mute All button at the bottom of the Participants window. This will affect the host who clicks the button, and it will also affect any other co-hosts and attendees.

Recording Sessions

To prevent information from being shared with those outside of the session, the ability to record the session should be disabled for all participants.

Sign in to Zoom, https://csun.zoom.us
Select the Recording tab.
Verify that Local Recording is disabled (this will disable the ability for attendees to record).
Verify that Recording Disclaimer is enabled.

Need Help?

The Zoom Help Center offers an extensive library of resources for all users. You can also contact the IT Help Center.

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Zoom - FERPA