POLICY

Recording of Remote Classes

Faculty utilizing Zoom […], and other digital technology to deliver course curriculum/material must be sensitive to issues of privacy. To that end, faculty offering classes through web conferencing digital technology like Zoom must not record a student in a class session without notice to all students registered in the class no later than the beginning of the first class. Students’ participation in the course following such notice constitutes consent to record. Similarly, CUNY does not permit a student to record a class unless such recording is permitted by college policy, the student has written permission from the instructor, or the student has an approved disability accommodation to record class activity.

Faculty who wish to record their class sessions must provide the following or a substantially similar announcement, in emails and/or class syllabus, to enrolled students and verbally at the opening of the first class.

Students who participate in this class with their camera on or use a profile image are agreeing to have their video or image recorded solely for the purpose of creating a record for students enrolled in the class to refer to, including those enrolled students who are unable to attend live. If you are unwilling to consent to have your profile or video image recorded, be sure to keep your camera off and do not use a profile image. Likewise, students who un-mute during class and participate orally agree to have their voices recorded. If you are not willing to consent to have your voice recorded during class, you will need to keep your mute button activated and communicate exclusively using the “chat” feature, which allows students to type questions and comments live.

As mentioned in the announcement, recording classes is for the benefit of students. It is a violation of the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”) for faculty to disseminate a recording of a class to anyone outside the class without the express written consent of all of the students in the class. In addition, faculty shall not use class recordings as a means of determining class attendance and are reminded that CUNY is classified by the U.S. Department of Education as a non-attendance-taking institution. Doubts faculty may have regarding the identity of participants should be alleviated if faculty offer their classes through applications and resources that have been licensed by CUNY Central or their college and require a CUNY/College ID for login, thereby giving reasonable assurance that participants are CUNY students.

If a class session is being recorded either by the instructor or by a student as permitted by these guidelines, to ensure the integrity of the recording, the instructor should read aloud all content from students submitted using the “chat” feature.

For the avoidance of doubt, the prohibition on recording without consent does not apply to audio or video lectures of the faculty member-only, and that does not include a student participation component.

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