Southeastern University MyFIRE Guest Access Policies & Procedures
Occasionally, there could be instances where guest user access in MyFIRE is required for non-SEU individuals. This could include but is not limited to, users from special partnerships, high school administrative professionals, course developers, or other parties with temporary or ongoing relationships to Southeastern University’s academic programming. The following guidelines are applicable in such circumstances.
Qualifications for Guest Access
To process a guest access request for MyFIRE, the Digital Learning department uses the following guidelines to determine if guest access is approved. ID&T will verify the request to ensure the quality of the onboarding process of the guest user:
Access must be requested from an SEU representative/employee (the requestor).
Digital Learning must be able to verify that the guest user’s email is affiliated with the corresponding site, partner, or organization.
The requestor must confirm the purpose of the access in detail.
All potential guest users who are not officially affiliated with SEU who are requesting access to teaching sections that contain
protected student information must be approved by the Registrar’s Office and the FERPA organization to gain course access.
All requests for guest access for external users outside of SEU will be granted read-only access.
Third-party users (publishers or software developers) do not receive access to MyFIRE without supervision from a Digital Learning administrator.
If the guest user is a guest speaker/presenter/lecturer for a course, a guest user account is not required. Guest speakers/presenters/lecturers can be invited to present either in-person lectures or through synchronous online tools provided through MyFIRE (such as Teams, Virtual Classroom, or Google Meet sessions).
If the user is in the vetting process to become an approved instructor, the user must complete the vetting process in order to gain access to his/her teaching section(s) by receiving an official SEU account from SEU’s HR & IT departments and have been marked an active professor in SEU’s information system. If the instructor is not being vetted by SEU, the above conditions will be applied to the request.
Process for Requesting Guest Access
Step 1: The Requestor must email the request to IDTsupport@seu.edu. Include the following information:
First & Last Name
Email
Affiliated Partner, Site, or Organization
Purpose of the Access
Duration of Access Needed
Step 2:
If it is determined that the request does not include a course that contains student-protected information, Digital Learning will
make a determination on whether the request is approved or not approved based on the criteria above.
If approved, Digital Learning will continue to step 9.
If not approved, Digital Learning will ask for additional information and/or communicate the decision.
If it is determined that the request includes a course that contains student-protected information, ID&T will advise the requestor
that the request will be passed along to the Director of the Registrar’s Office and the FERPA organization for approval. ID&T will include the following FEPRA standards when advising of the next step to the requestor.
FERPA is a federal law that protects the privacy of students’ education records. The term “education records” means those records that are: (1) directly related to a student; and (2) maintained by an educational agency or institution or by a party acting for the agency or institution. See § 99.3 “Education records.” At the postsecondary level, FERPA affords students (“eligible students”) the right to have access to their education records, the right to seek to have the records amended, and the right to have some control over the disclosure of information from the records. Under FERPA, an educational institution is prohibited from disclosing personally identifiable information (PII) from students’ education records, without consent, unless the disclosure meets an exception to FERPA’s general consent requirement. See 34 CFR § 99.30 and § 99.31. Here is a link to the FERPA regulations on our website: https://studentprivacy.ed.gov/resources/family-educational-rights-and-privacy-act-regulations-ferpa.
FERPA allows “school officials, including teachers, within the agency or institution” to obtain access to education records provided the educational agency or institution has determined that they have “legitimate educational interests” in the information. 34 CFR § 99.31(a)(1). Although “school official” is not defined in the statute or regulations, this office has interpreted the term broadly to include a hired teacher; teacher’s assistant; school principal; president; chancellor; board member; trustee; registrar; counselor; advisor; admissions officer; attorney; accountant; human resources professional; information systems specialist; and support or clerical personnel. Typically, a school official has a legitimate educational interest if the official needs to review an education record in order to fulfill his or her professional responsibility.
If the professor or extension site wants to delegate some of his/her/their responsibilities to a guest user, then you would have to go through your HR in order for the guest user to be considered a school official. Otherwise, the professor/site director could share student records in a non-personally identifiable form, as long as students’ identities are not identifiable. See § 99.31(b).
Step 3: The requestor will confirm if he/she would like to continue with the request to the Registrar’s Office and FERPA.
Step 4: If the requestor agrees to proceed, then Digital Learning will send an official request to the Registrar’s Office (Registrar Director) for approval.
Step 5: The registrar’s office will send the request to the FERPA organization and wait for their response.
Step 6: The FERPA organization will send approval or denial of the request to the Director of the Registrar’s Office.
Step 7: The Registrar’s Office will communicate FERPA’s decision to Digital Learning.
Step 8: Digital Learning will communicate FERPA’s decision to the requestor(s).
Step 9: If approved, Digital Learning will communicate the requester’s information to Savannah Forquer. Savannah will complete her process by creating an SEU account and communicating with the requestor(s).
Step 10: Savannah will let Digital Learning know when the requestor(s) have successfully logged into MyFIRE and access to the course(s) will be granted.
Process for Removing Guest User Access
The user will be automatically removed 30 days from the last login date or otherwise specified by the initial request to the Digital Learning department.
Process for Denying Guest User Access
The request will be denied if the user or circumstance does not meet the required conditions as stated above. If the guest user access is denied, Digital Learning will communicate the decision to the requestor.
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