Schoology Learning

Configure privacy overrides

Privacy Overrides allows system administrators to set system-wide privacy limits. Use this feature to set a threshold on the privacy level of courses, groups, and user profiles in your school.

To access Privacy Overrides, select Tools and choose School Management. Then, select Privacy Overrides.

Privacy levels

Each area of privacy settings can be assigned one of the following availability levels.

Privacy level

Available to

Everyone

Anyone with Internet access, including non-Schoology members. Not available for student profiles.

Schoology users

Any user logged in to Schoology, including users in other schools.

Organization

All users in your organization.

School

Users in the same school. Users in multiple schools see content at this level in all associated buildings.

Course

Members enrolled in the course.

Group

Members enrolled in the group.

Connections

Users with whom you are connected.

No One

Hidden from everyone.

Adjust privacy at the course, group, and user level

Course admins, group admins, and users may tighten (but not loosen) the privacy setting for their own course, group, or personal account. For example:

  • If Course Profile privacy is set to School at the system level, a teacher can restrict their course's privacy to Course.

  • Users who set Messaging to No One cannot send or receive messages.

To manage individual course or group privacy settings, enter the course, select Course Options, and choose Edit Privacy / Course Settings.

Changes to privacy overrides may take a long time to propagate across your entire school. If a user receives a Private Information message, check that area's privacy settings.

Parent and visitor settings

Parent/Visitor settings control the default parent permissions for every course, group, and building in the school. Parents have view-only access to their child's courses and groups. Visitors are users not associated with a course who may have viewing privileges if privacy is set to Schoology Users or Everyone.

Anonymity options

These permissions help maintain student anonymity from parents and visitors:

  • Anonymous member names - Displays student names as Anonymous. Parents can only review teacher names and their own child's name.

  • Hide comments/posts - Hides all student comments. Parents can only review teacher and their own child's comments.

If a parent is also a teacher in the same district, privacy settings default to the parent role.

Lock parent and visitor settings

System administrators can select Lock settings for all organization buildings so that course, group, and building admins cannot adjust them.

Search settings

Select Allow faculty to list their profiles in Schoology's directory to enable faculty members to appear in Schoology's directory. When listed, faculty are searchable by other schools and organizations within Schoology.