How does StuComm handle our students’ data?
The mission of StuComm is to help students all over the world to succeed on campus. To achieve that, we have created the StuCommApp. With the StuCommApp we make the life of students easier. It allows them to fully focus on their studies. In the app, students can access all information they need on a daily basis. Amongst this information are the timetable and study results of students. This information falls in the category of personal data.
Understandably, educational institutions ask us about the privacy of their students. Is the data secure? Is data shared with third parties? These are important questions to ask when technologies are implemented at educational institutions, such as the StuCommApp. At StuComm, the privacy of students is our highest priority. In this article, we explain how protect your students’ privacy.
StuCommApp and data
The StuCommApp contains various features where personal information of students. Think about timetables and study results. Educational institutions are able to choose how they store this data. At StuComm, we do not store any data unless it is absolutely necessary. The StuCommApp integrates with existing systems to and displays that data to students in the app.
In some instances, it is necessary to synchronise data from the educational institution with our back-end systems, such as timetables. This is necessary to be able to show students the right data. It is only done when educational institutions give us explicit permission to do so.
In the StuCommApp there is simply a view of data. Through caching, the data is temporarily stored on the device of students. This data will never be stored elsewhere nor will it be used for any other purposes than to inform students.
Something all applications do is tracking user activity. By analysing user activity, the creators are able to optimize the app. Naturally, StuComm also tracks the activity of its users. However, this is only done when data can be gathered anonymously, thus preserving the privacy of students.
Our vision
StuComm has the ambition to support students individually. By this we mean we want to provide the right service at the right time to each student. This could be suggesting a visit to a study counsellor with disappointing results, or supporting the search of a (part-time) job or internship. We want to enable contact between students and third parties, but only initiated by students.
How do we do this? In the app on the device of the student, we will offer personalised actions. This could be a matching job opening or a suggestion to visit the study counsellor. This is all done on the device itself, without sharing data with third parties. It is up to the student to initiate contact or not. This way, we facilitate contact between students and third parties, but only when students want it.
In the future, we will keep developing features through which we can support students even better. It is possible that in order for these features to work, data has to be shared with third parties. In that case, we will never do so without the explicit consent of students. Furthermore, it is up to educational institutions to decide whether they want to offer specific features to their students or not.
With everything we develop, the privacy of students is the priority. If you have any questions or doubts about how we protect the privacy of your students, please do contact us. We appreciate to be challenged to protect the privacy of your students even better.
