Communication between students and professors has taken a step toward the safer, yet possibly less convenient side of things. Now due to standards set by the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), there are limits to what email accounts professors are to use when communicating with students. At UC, the university secured system is known as the Bearcat Online Account, or BOL. Only students of UC can get BOL accounts. The university needs to guarantee that the student is actually the one receiving the emails. This helps secure privacy for all students.
While there are many positive reasons for restricting the use of email to BOL, the change has caused some controversy among the staff at RWC. Some faculty have expressed questions about communicating with students through Blackboard, the online service that allows professors to post assignments and announcements to the whole class. Blackboard isn’t associated with BOL. Blackboard allows students to choose what email address emails would be sent to if the class were to be emailed through Blackboard, thus causing an issue in regards to the use of only BOL.
According to Pamela Lineback, RWC Assistant Dean of Student Affairs, professors are expected to make it clear to their students that communication outside of BOL will not occur, and that they must only use BOL. RWC also hopes that only using BOL will keep students better aware of such things as deadlines for registration and graduation.