Policy on Servers for Teaching

In consultation with John Harwood, the College now expects that pedagogical activities involving electronic media will normally operate through PSU servers:  the goal is to ensure that all classroom sites involving student work are password-protected, that students are protected from outside surveillance as they would be in the classroom, and that students are insulated from advertising appeals which would be inappropriate to an academic environment.

If instructors—faculty or graduate students—wish to use non-PSU servers, they may do so on the following conditions:  the activity must not be available through PSU; the sites must be password-protected; instructors must moderate (i.e., serve as intermediary to) postings by people not enrolled in the course (so that non-students cannot participate or intervene in blogs, wikis, or analogous course materials without the instructor’s sanction); the sites should be non-profit in character. In other words, students should be able to count on the same protections from off-campus sites and servers that they would enjoy from PSU sites and servers.  Only the Dean specifically may offer an exception; when in doubt, people should ask. 

Rationale:
While the vast majority of our classes use ANGEL and other services provided by ITS, some classes are being hosted on inappropriate servers over which the College and University have no control; in these cases, students and faculty are not able to use their PSU Access accounts for authentication, students may be exposed to inappropriate commercial appeals, and particular student work can be readily identified (because of information within the papers) or their papers even modified without permission by outsiders to the University. There are also other issues--with student privacy, for instance--that cannot be easily addressed in those outside environments.  Hence this policy.  Wikis and the like already operating may continue to operate on their current servers for the remainder of this semester.  But all course-related activities more generally must be switched to university servers or to appropriate off-campus sites in accord with the policy above after June 1.  Direct questions to Jack Selzer or John Harwood.