Responsible Use Policies

This week’s blog topic is an interesting one. The reference to Acceptable Use Policies is dated in New Hampshire, where most districts have migrated to Responsible Use Policies agreements beginning in 2015. An unscientific survey of 20 school districts surrounding mine revealed that not one of these districts has retained the Acceptable Use Policy label. The New Hampshire School Board Association first proposed model Acceptable Use Policies in 2010, then replaced these with Responsible Use Policies in 2018. My own district’s Responsible Use Policy replaced the Acceptable Use Policy previously adopted in 2010 in 2017, and I piloted the policy change after discussion at the staff, administrative level, and community level.

Roblyer and Hughes define the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) as an “agreement created by a school or other educational organization that describes the risks involved in Internet use; outlines appropriate, safe student behavior on the Internet; asks students if they agree to use the Internet under these conditions; and asks what information about themselves, if any, may be posted on the school’s website” (2018, p. 504). This definition appears not to have been adapted to changes in the last decade, and seems to refer to the state of the AUP back in the early 2000s. Missing from this definition is the larger scope of other technologies, such as devices and social media.

AUPs began to be implemented by school districts in the late 1990s, early 2000s when it became clear that the Internet was a useful tool for education, and as a result the federal government began to provide funding through its E-Rateprogram. In 2001, the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) was voted into law. CIPA required districts wishing to receive E-Rate funding to demonstrate that they had policies in place to protect students, filter content, and teach digital citizenship (Sauers & Richardson, 2019, p. 28). AUPs were crafted to describe how districts addressed these issues. They also provided guidance on acceptable ways for staff and students to make use of the technologies provided by districts.

Some AUPs were created by district administrators, and relied on prescriptive lists of ways in which the various technologies could be used. Other AUPs were developed by committees of teachers and students, and described the way in which technologies would empower them to further educational goals. Yet others were crafted by chief technology officers and tech departments to explain in no uncertain language what the policies and procedures were for using technologies. Hybrids of these models also yielded AUPs. AUPs were then presented to parents and students, and required a signature before students would be allowed to use the district’s technologies.

Regardless of how they were created, these AUPs “tend[ed] to be out-dated and rigid, lack[ed] specificity and robustness, and serve[d] to overcover the legal issues inherent with children using technology” (Sauers & Richardson, 2019, p. 27). The growth of mobile devices and LTE cellular service meant that for all intents and purposes students could access unfiltered material on their own personal devices during school hours, bypassing the school filters and gaining access to the whole of the Internet. The emphasis on punishment and “do nots” were not effective tools in teaching our students how to be good digital citizens.

In a blog post I wrote back in December 2017, I explained the reasoning behind the district switching from an AUP to a RUP. I described the changes between the two, and pointed out that the district’s “Acceptable Use Policy was focused on the school desktops in the computer lab and the portable laptops available in carts in both schools, and discussed what students should not do with technology. By implementing a revised document called the Responsible Use Policy, we reframed what could and could not be done with technology to focus on the responsibilities of the user, and we included our 1:1 iPad program in the policy. Our hope is that this document better highlights responsible use and appropriate digital citizenship” (Vallée, 2017), not only with our district-own devices, but in students’ lives as well. Simply said, “AUPs focus on all of the things employees and students cannot do, and responsible use policies instead focus on the ways employees and students should act” (Sauers & Richardson, 2019, p. 31), as AUPs were “likely a holdover from times when technology was new and something to fear, rather than to embrace” (Sauers & Richardson, 2019, p. 37).

RUPs should include references to legal issues, usage, and physical treatment of devices and of the technologies, and should be designed to explain how a technology-driven education can be provided in a responsible and respectful manner that displays good digital citizenship skills. It must offer a vision not of what is acceptable to do, but what it should be used for. It must also address local concerns and circumstances, and thus should not be a copy and paste of state or national organization recommendations. Finally, RUPs need to be developed by the school community as a whole, and include staff, students, administrators, parents, and members of the business community, and be driven by the district’s vision and mission. Saurs and Richardson conclude that school districts “serve as a hub of innovative thinking, doing, and practicing. Hence, policies should be constructed so that they increase the diffusion of technology innovations in P–12 schools, rather than focus on what students and teachers should not do” (Sauers & Richardson, 2019, p. 40).

Here are four Responsible Use Policies from New Hampshire, which address these elements: My own District’s Responsible Use Policy; Freemont School District’s Responsible Use Policy; Goffstown School District's Responsible Use Rules; and Merrimack Valley School District's Responsible Use Agreement.

References

Roblyer, M.D., & Hughes, J.E. (2019). Integrating educational technology into teaching (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. 

Sauers, N. J., & Richardson, J. W. (2019). Leading the Pack: Developing Empowering Responsible Use Policies. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 51(1), 27–42. https://doi-org.libproxy.boisestate.edu/10.1080/15391523.2018.1539644 

Vallée, E. (2017, December 1). Moving from an acceptable use policy to a responsible use policy. https://maipadpilot.blogspot.com/2017/12/moving-from-acceptable-use-policy-to.html