Google Apps for Faculty Use

In Fall 2008, the Office of Information Technologies (OIT) began providing Notre Dame students with nd.edu email accounts from Google. Students now have access to additional services beyond e-mail, such as personal calendars and file sharing space. These applications are known as Google Apps for Education. Since that time, some faculty members have inquired about access to those same services to more easily collaborate with students electronically. The OIT supports facilitating all forms of interaction between students and faculty, and will therefore provide access on a per request basis. However, there are several caveats about which you must be aware when using the Google Apps for Education. These caveats follow:

Google Apps for Education are not Hosted on Campus

The OIT does not host, maintain or secure the content in Google Apps. Therefore, you must be responsible for backing up and securing any content they may choose to place in the Google Apps domain. For example, the OIT cannot recover an accidentally deleted file, nor will Google provide this service.

Intellectual Property Rights

You are responsible for protecting not only your own, but your students’, intellectual property in Google Apps for Education.

Highly Sensitive University Information

Notre Dame’s Information Handling Standards governs the use, transmission and storage of highly sensitive information, such as social security or credit card numbers. Highly sensitive information may never be placed into Google Apps.

Participation of “Outside” Individuals

Google Apps users can invite other Google Apps at ND users, as well as others outside of ND who have a Gmail account, to view and co-edit documents or use other collaboration tools. Since the OIT has no administrative access to Google Apps, it is your responsibility to ensure that appropriate controls are used to prevent sharing or collaboration by users you do not wish to access the information placed into Google Apps for Education.

If you have a Google Apps at ND account and wish to share a document in Google Apps with an ND colleague who does not have an ND Google Apps account, the colleague must request an account on the Google Apps at ND domain via e-mail to the Help Desk.

Coordination and Management of Users

Google Apps for Education are separately hosted third party services that are not integrated in any way with Notre Dame’s Student Information System (Banner), Concourse (Course Management System) or Courseware (web file storage). Since the OIT has no administrative access to Google Apps, if a faculty member chooses to use Google Apps for Education for class-related activities with his/her students, that faculty member must manually maintain access privileges to Google Apps documents or Google Sites.

If you have any questions about the use of Google Apps for Education, please contact the OIT Help Desk.

Best Regards,

 

Gordon Wishon
Associate Provost/Associate Vice President & CIO
University of Notre Dame