Bellarmine University is committed to protecting the privacy of all students, including distance education students, by complying with the rules of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974. Bellarmine University's policies on educational records and acceptable use of technology apply to its distance education courses and programs.
Students who enroll in distance education courses at Bellarmine University access their courses through a learning management system (LMS) called Moodle, which is a secure cloud-based environment hosted and maintained by Bellarmine University's Office of Information Technology. Upon admittance, students receive from the Admissions Office a unique username and password that they use to access Moodle and their other Bellarmine University accounts. Students are prompted to change their password at their first log-in.
Faculty may post course materials and assignments in the Moodle LMS, and students may interact with the faculty and each other. Student information available to other students within a distance education course is restricted to directory information. In the Moodle LMS, faculty only have access to student educational records of the courses to which they are assigned to teach.
In addition to educational records, the University has implemented core business practices that are compliant with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and associated electronic infrastructures (storage and data transfers) that protect individual financial data and other individual electronic information.