Request for Information: Student Data Privacy Courses

Purpose

The U.S. Department of Education (the Department) is conducting market research to gain a greater understanding of the available options for offering a suite of online courses to help teachers and other education actors, in both K-12 and higher education, understand the principles and laws governing student data privacy. The purpose of this post is to solicit market information on viable sources, industry practices, answers to specific questions, and industry comments related to the requirements of the model design, development, and implementation, as well as strategies for how to ensure continuous improvement of this suite of courses. [1]

In order to consider moving forward on designing and building the student data privacy courses, the Department is interested in obtaining responses from prospective offerors. These prospective offerors could provide the services and systems development for either designing or building the courses. The Department encourages responders to this post and prospective offerors to propose the most innovative, cost-effective method to achieving the desired capabilities and results.

Background

The Department’s Student Privacy Policy Office (SPPO) within the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development is tasked with providing technical assistance around student data privacy to education actors in both K-12 and higher education. Historically, the Department has primarily provided resources and training through Student Privacy Technical Assistance Center (PTAC). More specifically, PTAC has produced online, self-paced learning modules to help students, parents, and educators understand the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). These modules have been well received. Approximately 100,000 individual users have taken the course in 2019 alone and several states have integrated it into their student privacy trainings.

Objective

Given the evolving nature of issues surrounding student data privacy and advancements in technology to produce high quality e-learning experiences, it is an opportune time to consider whether the technical assistance we provide would benefit from restructuring, including updating the existing course suites. This procurement would include one primary task — designing concise and engaging competency-based modules for each stakeholder group, including facilitating integration with various state systems, and two additional tasks 1) identifying key stakeholder groups that are most likely to benefit from online, self-paced courses (e.g. teachers, professors, or other individuals who handle personally identifiable information or PII under relevant statutes) and 2) providing ongoing updates for continuous improvement.

Request for Information

The Department wants to identify industry specific information, provided by suitable industry business partners, to help develop high quality, in-service learning opportunities for education actors. This model might include the following minimal functionality:

1. Identify key stakeholder groups, which includes –

a. Identifying new stakeholder groups not targeted by existing courses;

b. Clustering stakeholders by common privacy issues; and

c. Ranking clusters to prioritize the stakeholders that would most benefit from technical assistance.

2. Employ state of the art design techniques to maximize up take, which includes, but is not limited to –

a. Modular design (e.g. micro-learning, exportable in part or as a whole);

b. Personalization (e.g., diagnostic quizzes, adaptive questioning or similar tools);

c. Highly engaging pedagogy (e.g., scenario-based instruction);

d. Usability testing;

e. Minimize personal data collection to maintain high levels of privacy for participants; and

f. Open licensing techniques.

3. Create a custom e-learning system, which includes, but is not limited to –

a. High fidelity learning records (e.g., xAPI integration);

b. Flexible and professional web development (e.g., PHP, javascript, SQL);

c. Custom interactive elements (e.g., interactive learning checks or custom photograph or video); and

d. Design for continuous improvement (e.g., flexible and easy to update with changes in policy).

Instructions

To help the Department in reviewing the market information, we are asking those who wish to provide information to direct their responses to tech@ed.gov. Please use the subject line “Response: Student Privacy Courses”. The information will be most valuable if received by Wednesday, March 11, 2020. We are asking those who are interested to reply in no more than six pages and to provide the following information:

a. Company Name;

b. Address;

c. Point of Contact (include contact information such as a corporate email address and website URL);

d. Previous contract(s) performing same or similar services as identified in this notice overall contract value; Agency/Business Entity contracted with; brief overview of services performed;

e. Are you a small business/large business/not-for-profit/educational institution? Please also include all socioeconomic categories for your company;

f. Solution and Product description — include information related to how the solution, approach, and plan, can meet the requirements. Also detail any potential limitations;

g. Schedule — Provide a sample milestone schedule detailing the events deemed necessary to achieving the design, development, and implementation of the student data privacy courses;

h. Timeframe — Based upon your experience with similar projects, how long would it take to design, build, and test these courses; and

i. Costs — Based on experience with similar projects, provide estimated labor and other costs for design, development, and implementation. If helpful, you may describe your costs using the unit of 1 hour of instruction created. In other words, you would say — it would cost $X to create one hour of content that the user experiences, and would cost a similar amount per hour to create additional amounts. Or is there a different unit of measurement that would be more applicable to your organization or for comparison with other organizations?

[1] This notice is NOT a request for proposals, but is instead an invitation for potential offerors to express interest and provide information regarding their relevant knowledge, skills and capabilities. Information submitted may be used to assist the Department in finalizing its acquisition strategy. No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in your response. The Department reserves the right to use any non-proprietary technical information in any resultant solicitation(s). The Department will not pay for the provision of any information nor will it compensate any respondents for providing this information. This notice in no way obligates the Department to award any contract to any interested party. Feedback will not be provided to any interested party who submits information to the Department in response to this notice.