I developed this Articulate Rise course to help university employees respond to requests for student information. The instruction focuses on checking whether access or disclosure is authorized and recognizing when further review is needed. A branching parent conversation gives learners practice responding as new information emerges.
I wrote the instructional content and built the course, using federal FERPA guidance to check the scenarios.
Analysis: defining the task
Ten years of college teaching helped me identify plausible requests involving student records, but I did not conduct a formal needs assessment at a university. I used federal guidance to establish what employees would need to check before responding.
The intended audience is university employees who handle student information. I selected situations involving outside requests and internal access, with additional instruction on protecting records and handling students’ rights. Because this is a general portfolio example, decisions that depend on local policy direct learners to the institution’s verification or review process.
Design: practicing workplace decisions
I organized practice around situations where a distinction changes the appropriate response. Verifying a requester’s identity, for example, does not establish permission to receive records. The activities also include authorized requests, so learners must determine when they can help rather than assume every request requires refusal.
Two features carry much of the practice:
- Branching parent conversation: Checking authorization leads to the parent’s claim of tax dependency and a discussion of next steps. Incorrect responses explain the error and provide an opportunity to retry; acceptable endings involve referral for verification or explaining how the student can give consent.
- Knowledge checks with explanatory feedback: Learners apply the guidance to specific requests, then receive an explanation of why their response is appropriate or what they overlooked.
Development: building and checking the course
Each lesson introduces the relevant guidance before giving learners checks to follow and practice applying them. I selected Rise blocks to suit the material, using accordions for related guidance and flashcards for recommendation-letter checks. Course images were generated with Rise’s native AI tool.
Checking scenarios against federal sources led me to revise claims that overstated a rule or confused a legal requirement with an institutional procedure. I also removed repeated explanations so the surrounding text prepared learners for practice.
For the branching conversation, I mapped each choice to its follow-up or ending before construction and reviewed the completed routes. Keeping the parent’s dialogue separate from explanatory feedback allowed the conversation to sound natural while the feedback addressed the learner’s decision.
Implementation and evaluation: proposed
The course has not been implemented or tested with learners. Before launch, the institution’s FERPA or records office would need to review its accuracy and replace general references with local procedures.
A pilot would assess employees’ responses to unfamiliar requests alongside quiz results. Their explanations would show whether they established authorization and recognized its limits, while observed misunderstandings would guide revisions. Any claim of improved workplace performance would require later evaluation.
Lessons learned
- Map the conversation before building. My initial version sent most choices straight to feedback or an ending. Mapping the routes helped me introduce meaningful follow-up questions and opportunities for correction.
- Verify familiar subject matter. Research exposed gaps in my FERPA knowledge despite years of handling student information, reinforcing the need to check assumptions against authoritative guidance.