As instructors within Brightspace, it is important to keep in mind the different forms of student personal information that you have access to.
A lot of student personal information including (but not limited to) student names, emails, ID numbers, and grades are easily accessible to instructors. This information should not be shared to other students lightly, and should always be done with student consent.
CPI recommends consulting Brock University’s Privacy and Records Management Brightspace site for any questions regarding the practices of sharing and protecting personal information of colleagues and students.
Refrain from sharing student numbers and contact information beyond their student email unless strictly necessary.
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Consent
Students should be made aware of what personal information the instructor wishes to share, and to whom. There should also be a chance to give/revoke consent before this information is shared. Instructors must then work with students to create alternative pathways to success.
Instructors should strive to share the least amount of information possible to complete their task.
Reasons for Sharing Student Information
In most cases, instructors will want to share student contact information such as emails or usernames for the purposes of facilitating group discussion. Instead of sharing information and having students discuss independent from the instructor, CPI recommends either making use of a Course Teams channel, or a Discussions area in the course.
Other instructors may wish to share student’s grades with the class for means of celebration or discussion, this is not recommended. If done, all data should be anonymized before sharing.
Collecting and Disseminating Student Info in Brightspace
The easiest way to acquire student information efficiently is through the Grades tool.
Select Grades on the course navbar.
Navigate to the Enter Grades tab, which is normally the default landing page for Grades.
Select the grey Export button in the top-left of the Grades area.
From the Export area, instructors can personalize what information gets exported to an excel file. They also have the ability to exclude grades entirely should they so choose.
Once the desired settings are chosen, select Export to Excel at the bottom of the page to generate an excel file for download.
OrgDefinedID in the Export area refers to a student’s ID number