Penn State Privacy Policy for Grades
Grade Record Encryption
Instructors are responsible for ensuring that files containing student grades are secured appropriately (preferably on a location with a password). Encrypting the data, for example, is one way to help protect student records and to mitigate the risk of exposure. Check with your local IT staff to learn more about encryption and other security measures that can be applied.
More policy information can be found at Policy AD 23 Use of Institutional Data and Policy AD 11 Condifendiality of Student Records. The ITS Security Operations and Services contains addiitonal information.
Posting Student ID's
In the past Penn State Policy allowed instructors to post grades by the last four digits of a student ID number. As of January 2005, you can no longer post a list of grades by student ID number.
Under interpretations of Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA) regulations, the PSU ID cannot be used to display a student's scores or grades publicly. This also precludes posting grades using only the last four digits of the PSU ID.
— From Penn State Policy A.D. 19
Grades must be reported or sent to each student individually. See Policy A.D. 19 use of the Penn State Identification Number for further details.
Using ANGEL To Report (Publish) Grades
See the ANGEL Help and Information Guide for more details on using ANGEL to Import Grades from a comma delimited (.csv) file and Publish Grades them to eLion. To create a comma delimited file, open your Excel file then select File >> Save As and select the Comma Delimited File option in the format menu.
Note: All Gradebook documentaiton is found in the ANGEL Help and Information Guide under Courses >> Manage >> Gradebook in the folder based navigation.
Last Update: July 27, 2009