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Division of Instructional Innovation and Assessment

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Legal considerations

When creating media files that will be published to the Web, there are a few legal issues you must take into consideration.

Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)

Classroom recording can potentially impact student privacy (FERPA) if students appear on camera and their voices are recorded. Inform students as soon as possible that you are recording. Download a student release form template (.doc), fill in your course title and number, make copies, and have all your students sign these forms within the first week of class.

Copyright and intellectual property

For more information about copyright and intellectual property, see:

• UT System’s website on copyright law, including ownership issues, the use of others' works and protecting newly created works,
  
  
• UT System's rules of thumb pertaining to fair use of copyrighted materials,
  
  
• Copyright Law in the Electronic Environment, the creation and use of telecourses and distance learning materials, including multimedia courseware.

For more information on the legalities of webcasting, contact the UT Office of Legal Affairs.

Restricting webcast access to registered students

Just as faculty display materials under fair use in Blackboard, links to webcasts can be posted in Blackboard. This will allow only registered students to view webcasts by logging into Blackboard, thus limiting public access. Create a menu item in your Blackboard course called Lecture Webcasts. From there you can list the URLs to the webcasts by lecture number and date. It is recommended that faculty disable access to this menu item in Blackboard once the semester ends.

Note that posting webcasts in Blackboard does not guarantee that webcasts can never be copied. Screen recording devices can copy webcasts while they are streamed.