Faculty and students must comply with the Distance Education Policy of the Río Piedras Campus of the University of Puerto Rico (Certification No. 91, 2024-2025 – See, Article VIII Support Services, page 11; Article IX Faculty and students responsibilities, page 13). More recently, the Office of the Dean for Academic Affairs established the Principles and guidelines for the integration and use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in academic and research projects at the Río Piedras Campus Circular 8 (2024-2025) Lineamientos y guías para la integración y uso de la Inteligencia Artificial (IA) en los proyectos académicos y de investigación del Recinto de Río Piedras – Decanato de Asuntos Académicos.

The UPR-RP has distance education policies that comply with the authentication and privacy standards established by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE – 34 CFR 602.17, section g). These are outlined in the Academic Senate Certification 91, 2024-2025 and are summarized below.

  1. The distance education platforms used will be those approved by the Office of the Dean of Academic Affairs (DAA, in Spanish).  
  2. Secure access to the distance education platform is individualized with the username and a password. Each student is assigned a username and password through the platform. The platform allows the student to change their password. This guarantees the privacy of the evaluation processes, complying with the federal law known as FERPA.  
  3. Any official communication between professors and students about official course matters will be made exclusively through institutional email, or through the authorized platform.  
  4. The professor will verify the identification of the student with the mechanisms provided by the Institution.
  5. The professor will include the rules described here in the syllabus and discuss them with the students in the first-class meeting.
  6. As far as partial or final grades are concerned, the institution will ensure that the platform used allows each student to see only their own grades.
  7. Professors are responsible for verifying the identity of each student through the authentication mechanisms authorized by the institution and previously authorized by the Office of the Dean of Academic Affairs and incorporated as an amendment to these regulations.
  8. The use of cameras or monitoring systems to oversee the administration of exams and tests (proctoring service), as well as other activities for the evaluation of student learning will be regulated by a protocol (Appendix 2, Certification No. 91,2024-2025, AS).
  9. The use of cameras and recording of classes by teaching staff will be regulated by a protocol (Appendix 3, Certification No. 91,2024-2025, AS)

Since 2020, the UPR-RP installed in the Moodle platform Respondus Lock Down Browser/Respondus Monitor* tools as a verifier of academic honesty and deterrent to cheating.  Updates to these policies occur periodically. 

[*Monitor records of the entire testing session on the student’s webcam and uses software to detect possible cheating behaviors.]

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