I feel that FERPA serves as a protection for students. It allows them to review their academic record and request corrections for any perceived errors, which can potentially prevent career-damaging erroneous information from being disseminated to future schools and employers ("Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)"). FERPA has not affected my collegiate life so far in any substantive manner, but I feel good knowing it is there to protect me. Someone I know locally has encountered problems in the past with errors on his academic record that took a great deal of time to resolve; in the meantime, his application for jobs and advanced education were jeopardized.
In wired classrooms, instructors maintain student engagement during classes through such strategies as making students "responsible for their own learning" and offering them opportunities to collaborate with each other (McKenzie). Students that are responsible for their own learning "invest personally in the quest for knowledge and understanding...because the questions or issues being investigated are drawn from their own curiosity about the world" (McKenzie). When students are allowed to collaborate with each other, they can share ideas, learn from each other, and interact with others even though they are working with an impersonal medium-the computer (McKenzie). Engagement can also be promoted by giving students assignments that lead them step-by-step through a discovery or skills-building exercise, such as learning how gravity works or how to write a short story.
"Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)." U.S. Department of Education. McKenzie, J. "Creating Technology Enhanced Student-Centered Learning Environments." The Wired Classroom, 7.6, (March 1998). FNO.org. ...