Optimize Your District's Acceptable Use Policy to Keep Your Students and Your District Safe

A practical guide to building, updating, and enforcing an AUP that protects students and reduces district liability.

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Introduction

While it is of course impossible to eliminate risk entirely from your edtech use, it is possible to greatly mitigate that risk by making sure that everyone uses their devices responsibly. Essential to that effort is a comprehensive—and up-to-date—acceptable use policy (AUP) that all users, even young students, understand and follow. With the changing digital landscape and its impact on learning, it’s important to regularly revisit your district’s AUP to ensure it is current and not leaving your students or your district vulnerable.

For instance, some of America’s largest school districts had the personally identifiable information of all their current students stolen. The culprit? An educational app that did not have the proper safeguards in place to protect students’ data.

Education and research were the top targets for cyberattackers in 2021, with an average of 1605 attacks per organization per week, a 75% increase from 2020, according to research by Check Point Software Technologies.

Source: csoonline.com

The takeaway is simple but critical: what your students access on their school-issued devices can have serious consequences. Just one student accessing one unapproved app can expose the personally identifiable information of everyone in your school’s community, which can leave your district vulnerable to cyberattacks that compromise your students’ safety, credit, and wellbeing for years to come. An AUP can help reduce those risks, but only if it’s up to date.

In this guide, we’ll examine the AUP elements you need to maintain and optimize to keep your district secure and your students safe while they learn and use the internet.

While an AUP is needed to secure E-rate funding, it’s about more than that. An AUP is an agreement between the school district and the students about how students are permitted to use their devices online, which can help keep students safe.

The following are important elements your AUP needs to address and regularly update as technology changes. If your AUP does not already include these components, work to add them in.

1) Lower the Risk of Cyberattacks and Data Breaches

An AUP that spells out what students can and cannot browse, download, and search on the internet can help your district maintain a safe network and reduce the chances of cyberattacks against your district. If a student were to open a suspicious attachment or visit unsecured websites, they could make your district’s network vulnerable to hackers and viruses.

2) Avoid Illegal Activity

An AUP can help ensure students follow the law. If someone breaks the law on your network, your district can be liable, which is why outlining prohibited activities in your AUP is essential. For instance, an AUP may strictly prohibit students from pirating music, movies, or other files, and could outline that if a student violates these rules, he or she will be banned from the network.

3) Promote Student Productivity

Letting students know what is acceptable to do and not do with school-issued devices can help keep students on task and focused on classwork rather than looking up things for fun on the web. Including this in your AUP can also protect your students from inappropriate websites.

That’s why, according to a Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) report, a good AUP will achieve two critical goals:

1) Protect

Protect students from harmful content on the internet and regulate students’ use of the internet so they do not harm other students or interfere with the district’s instructional program.

2) Provide

Provide students with good access to digital media to support engaged learning.

The challenge, of course, is balance. Focus too strongly on protection, and your AUP will deny students access to emerging learning opportunities that make the most of your edtech. Focus too strongly on the provision of digital media, and your students will access materials that jeopardize your data and your community’s safety.

The fact that a trade-off always exists between protection and provision is what makes it so important for your district to develop an AUP. Instead of having each student or educator trying to figure out whether each new resource poses an excessive risk, the AUP spells out the guidelines for use in clear terms so there is no ambiguity about any resource. In effect, writing an AUP is a way for your district to make the tough decisions about what to allow and what to block. This will not only remove the guesswork from students trying to figure out what content they should access, but it will help limit the district’s legal liability from incidents that may occur as a result of student device usage.

According to the National Education Association, an effective AUP will be comprised of the following six components.

1) Preamble

This part explains why the policy has been implemented, what it hopes to achieve, and the process by which the policy has been developed. It is also a good place to remind students that the district’s code of conduct and honor code (if one exists) apply to all online behavior.

2) Section of Definitions

Here the writers of the AUP should define all the important terms that will be used in the policy. This portion should be written clearly and simply so all stakeholders, even young students, can understand the policy.

3) Policy Statement

The district should spell out which activities and services are covered by the AUP and the circumstances in which students may use their devices. Permission may only be granted upon signing the AUP, for instance, or upon the completion of a computer safety literacy course.

4) Acceptable Uses

This is the district’s chance to state positively everything the school-issued devices and network may be used to do. It is important to note that purposes like “educational activity” must be defined: what one student considers to be educational may in fact be unacceptable to the district, so ambiguity must be removed.

5) Unacceptable Uses

In this section, you should spell out what activity is unacceptable. You should be as clear and specific as possible. For instance, you may wish to:

a. Name particular websites that are out of bounds
b. Explain which types of information may not be shared
c. Detail the kinds of activities that are prohibited (such as shopping or financial trading)
d. Explicitly forbid any modification to hardware students have been issued
e. List which social networking sites are expressly forbidden

The above list is not meant to be exhaustive; rather, it is intended to suggest the kinds of activities you should address in this section. Further, you may also wish to create separate lists of unacceptable uses based on student age: what is acceptable use for a senior in high school may be deeply inappropriate for a third-grader. Be as thorough and specific as possible about which rules apply to whom.

6) Violations and Sanctions

Explain to students the right channels for reporting any violations of the AUP. Also be sure to tell students whom they should contact with any questions about whether the AUP covers a particular site or application: no AUP will be so thorough and clear that students won’t have questions about its application. And finally, spell out the punishments that students will face for intentional violations of the policy. Doing so acts as a deterrent and will also promote fairness.

When refining your AUP, always keep this fact in mind: your AUP is meant to communicate to children. Not only do you want to include the goals and elements of the above sections in your optimized AUP, but it is also imperative that you write in simple, straightforward language, free of jargon, legalese, and unnecessarily complicated sentences. You should also be as concise as possible because the longer your AUP is, the less likely students are to read it in its entirety.

When you update your AUP, consider involving students in the process (and in future updates of the policy). The more students feel invested in the policies that govern their online education, the more likely they are to respect the rules. Furthermore, by turning your AUP into something constructive and positive instead of a series of prohibitions, the easier it will be to get students’ buy-in.

Here are three steps you can employ to make your AUP accessible to all.

1) Break your AUP into different versions based on grade level

Not only will appropriate content vary based on age, but it will also ensure that students are reading the policies that pertain to them.

2) Translate your AUP into the languages spoken in your district

So that all students, regardless of background, will be able to understand your AUP—and so will students’ families.

3) Regularly audit your AUP

Instead of treating your first version as set in stone. Doing so will not only give you a chance to change what you find isn’t working, but will also give you a chance to be responsive to community feedback about common struggles students are having with the AUP you have implemented.

Three steps to make AUP accessible to all:

✓ Break up your AUP into different versions based on grade level

✓ Translate your AUP into the languages spoken in your district

✓ Regularly audit your AUP

Updating your AUP can seem like a daunting task, but there are many resources designed to help you update and maintain your AUP. Here are two to get you started:

Another effective way to ensure you regularly update your AUP is to make it part of your broader efforts to promote digital citizenship in your district. Consider the following resources from Common Sense Education and Lightspeed Systems®:

  • This resource from Common Sense Education, informed by the research conducted by Project Zero at the Harvard School of Education, is designed to “help students take ownership of their digital lives.”
  • Lightspeed Systems® created a free resource for parents and guardians on digital citizenship. Download and distribute this guide to families in your community so they can understand what digital citizenship is, why it matters, and how they can teach it at home.

Districts are often happy to share their AUPs, so don’t be shy about reaching out to similar districts to learn their policies and see if they might also be useful in your district.

For instance, Boston Public Schools developed a student-centered AUP, discussed in this case study, and shares their AUP online. Even if your district is much smaller than Boston Public Schools, resources like these can help you understand other districts’ processes and what tactics led to their AUP’s success.

Finally, it’s important to remember your AUP will always be a work in progress, something you and your district should continually update and collaborate on to make sure your educational technology is working for everyone you serve.

Having and regularly updating your AUP is only the first step in promoting responsible web use. With an optimized AUP, you must turn your attention to the ongoing challenge of enforcement and student adherence.

We strongly recommend that all districts put measures in place to ensure students read your AUP carefully.

One way to do so is to regularly test your students on their comprehension of the AUP. Doing so confers several advantages to your district.

  • First, you will be able to determine who actually understands what is expected of them, allowing you to direct extra attention toward those who need it.
  • Secondly, testing will prevent people from skimming the AUP—or, worse, signing it without reading.
  • Finally, if you periodically test students on their comprehension, you will make it less likely that students forget crucial rules of the AUP as time passes.

But making sure that your whole community knows the AUP won’t be enough; there must also be consequences for students who willfully violate your policies. The consequences you choose—further courses on digital citizenship, suspension, loss of certain privileges—should be spelled out in the AUP alongside the acts that will incur these consequences. Whatever course you choose, it is important that you stick to it. If students believe that the AUP is not actually enforced, many of them will simply ignore it, regardless of how often they are tested about its content.

Fortunately, your district can be proactive about enforcement. Lightspeed Systems® offers software that can help enforce your AUP and keep your students safe online. Our award-winning filter won’t just keep your district CIPA-compliant; it also leverages the most comprehensive database of K-12 online content in the industry to automatically block millions of inappropriate and harmful sites, images, and videos—without sacrificing access to essential educational materials.

Lightspeed Filter™
Helps scale student safety with cloud-based, device-level protections, functional across all devices, operating systems, and learning environments—both on- and off-campus. Our integrated SmartPlay™ technology grants access to only approved YouTube videos, while customizable social media controls ensure safe access by only approved people—all features that can support your district’s AUP.

Lightspeed Analytics™
Can also help support your district’s AUP. This product helps your learning community see the approved tools and apps for your district, what ones are being used, and who is or is not using the tools your district has purchased. You can also track your student data privacy agreements and ensure that district policies are being followed.

Lightspeed MDM™
Additionally, consider deploying a mobile device management (MDM) solution on all of your devices. Lightspeed MDM™ will not just make it easy for you to block applications and websites that violate your AUP, it will also automatically alert educators when students install inappropriate applications and when it detects suspicious activity on a student device.

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So you can leverage the right software to help enforce your AUP, keep your students safe online, and make the most of your edtech.
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