Privacy Policy & FERPA Compliance Statement

1. Purpose and Scope

This application is a specialized educational tool developed and administered solely by the Course Instructor as a personal pedagogical aid for facilitating group formation, milestone tracking, and peer-review workflows. This policy outlines how student data is handled in compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and university data protection standards.

Access Restriction: Only students enrolled in Professor Rosario's courses have access to this system.

Pseudonymous Participation: Students are identified within this application primarily by their GitHub username. Students are permitted—and encouraged—to use GitHub accounts that do not reveal their legal identity.

2. FERPA Compliance & Legal Basis

This application operates under two complementary FERPA provisions:

• “School Official” Exception (34 CFR § 99.31): The Course Instructor has a Legitimate Educational Interest in the data collected. The application and its data are under the direct pedagogical control of the faculty member.
• “Sole Possession” Records: This tool functions as the instructor’s personal instructional memory aid for managing course logistics. The mapping between GitHub usernames and student identities is accessible only to the Course Instructor, and is not shared with other faculty, staff, or institutional systems beyond what is required for grade reporting via Canvas.

Independent Operation & Liability: This application is independently developed and hosted by the Course Instructor. It is not managed by or affiliated with the university’s central IT infrastructure or SSO. The Course Instructor assumes sole responsibility for the security and handling of data within this system.

• Data Usage: Student data is used exclusively for course-related activities. We do not sell, trade, or use student data for commercial purposes or targeted advertising.

3. Data Collection & Privacy Controls

This application collects limited Personally Identifiable Information (PII) to support roster management, enrollment verification, and team formation:

• What We Store: Student names, University IDs, email addresses, and GitHub usernames are stored in the application's database. This information is imported from the course roster provided by the Instructor and is used solely for enrollment verification and course administration. University IDs are retained to enable interoperability with university systems such as Canvas.
• Authentication: Access is managed via GitHub OAuth. Students are permitted to use GitHub accounts that do not utilize their legal names.
• Visibility to Students: Students can only see their own name and profile information. Peers within a team or peer-review group see only each other's GitHub usernames—never legal names, University IDs, or email addresses.
• Roster Not Displayed: The course roster is never displayed to any user through this application—including instructors. Roster data (names, University IDs, emails) is used solely on the backend for enrollment verification and is not surfaced in any user-facing view.
• No Public Directory: There is no public or course-wide directory of enrolled students. Student identifiers are only visible within the context of assigned group work or active peer-review cycles.

4. Third-Party Educational Systems

The app acts as an orchestration layer rather than a primary data repository:

• Work Products: Coursework, code, and feedback documents remain hosted on Google Workspace for Education (Google Drive/Docs), leveraging existing university-level security and privacy agreements.
• System of Record: Final grades and official assessments are not stored within this application; they are transmitted to and maintained within Canvas. Peer feedback and instructor comments are stored within this application to support the review process.
• Ephemeral Grade Processing: When grades are processed through this application for transmission to Canvas, they are handled ephemerally. Once a grade is successfully posted to Canvas, it is purged from the application's active storage. This application is not a system of record for grades.

5. Monitoring, Auditing, and Security

To maintain academic integrity and system security:

• Audit Logs: The application performs extensive monitoring and logging of user actions. Access to these logs is strictly limited to the Course Instructor and authorized system administrators.
• Data Security: Industry-standard encryption and secure token-based authentication are used to protect all data in transit and at rest.

6. Data Retention and Disposal

In compliance with university record-keeping requirements:

• One-Year Retention: All course-specific data—including group mappings, peer-review metadata, and audit logs—is retained for one year following the final submission of grades for the academic term.
• Permanent Deletion: Upon completion of the one-year retention period, all student-provided data and associated logs are permanently purged from the application's database.