Privacy Policy & FERPA Compliance Statement

1. Purpose and Scope

This application is a specialized educational tool designed to facilitate group formation 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.

This is a faculty-administered pedagogical tool for Professor Rosario's courses. Data is handled per the Privacy Policy.

2. FERPA Compliance & "School Official" Status

This application operates under the "School Official" exception (34 CFR § 99.31). The administration of this tool is conducted by the Course Instructor who has a Legitimate Educational Interest in the data collected.

• Institutional Control: The application and its administrator function under the pedagogical and direct control of the faculty member regarding the use and maintenance of education records.
• 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 Minimization & Identity Abstraction

To maximize student privacy, this app employs a "least-privilege" approach to Personally Identifiable Information (PII):

• Authentication: Access is managed via GitHub OAuth. Students are permitted to use GitHub accounts that do not utilize their legal names.
• Decoupled Identifiers: The application does not store or display University IDs, legal names, or emails "on demand." The mapping between GitHub usernames and student identities is maintained externally within the University's protected Learning Management System (e.g., Canvas).
• Selective Visibility: Student identifiers (GitHub usernames) are only visible to peers within the context of assigned group work or active peer-review cycles. There is no public or course-wide directory of users.

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.

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.