40 FERPA and Data Security
FERPA and Data Security
The use of AI tools in educational settings presents several challenges related to compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Key concerns include data privacy, as FERPA protects the confidentiality of student education records, and using AI tools that process or store student data could risk violating these protections without proper safeguards.
Questions arise about data ownership, access, and transparency, particularly regarding AI-generated data and algorithms. The issues of data ownership, access, and transparency in the context of AI-generated data and algorithms in education are complex and multifaceted.
First, data ownership becomes a critical question when AI tools are used in educational settings. When an AI system processes student data and generates new insights or predictions, it’s not always clear who owns this derived information. Is it the property of the school, the student, the AI company, or some combination? This ambiguity can lead to disputes over data rights and usage.
The ownership of AI-generated insights from student data is a complex issue without a universally accepted answer. It’s influenced by various factors including contractual agreements between educational institutions and AI providers, institutional policies, legal interpretations of FERPA, and state and local laws.
While original student data typically remains the property of the educational institution or the student, ownership of derived insights is more ambiguous. Some argue these insights should belong to the student or institution, as they’re based on student data, while others contend that AI companies should have some ownership rights due to their algorithms’ role in generating these insights. In practice, many institutions are adopting a shared ownership model where schools retain primary rights to the insights, students have access and control rights, and AI companies may have limited rights to use anonymized data for system improvement.
However, this is an evolving area, and as AI becomes more prevalent in education, clearer guidelines or new legislation may emerge to address these ownership questions more definitively.
This work was generated in collaboration with ChatGPT, an AI language model developed by OpenAI.
This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0