Student roster and class e-mail

blackboard > about blackboard > fall 2000 faculty survey > student roster

The Pilot group of faculty met many unforeseeable obstacles pertaining to the student Roster and E-mail functions. With these functions every student's e-mail address and name is displayed on a class site. Out of concern for student's privacy rights a FERPA ruling was requested to ensure federal compliance. The request for this decision delayed the implementation of the e-mail functionality and class rooster.

The LBJ School curtailed the FERPA ruling by receiving signed statements from students in which they acknowledged and gave consent to their names and e-mail addresses being posted on Blackboard. Once their e-mail addresses were added via Group Pages, new problems were encountered. Student e-mail addresses posted by Blackboard were not always the primary e-mail addresses of the students. Often times students needed to change their e-mail information with the registrar's office. There was a lag period between students updating their e-mail address and the UT directory or Blackboard recognizing the change. To further complicate the matter, if the student is a UT employee as well as a student, the employee e-mail address overrides the student e-mail address and is incorporated into the Blackboard database. Student employees would need to speak to their department Human Resource contact or navigate through the OHR web page in order to change their e-mail address. Data feeds from OHR take a weeks time at the very least to be reflected in the Blackboard system.