CourseAssist Privacy Policy

Effective Date: Mar 25, 2024

Introduction

Welcome to CourseAssist, an AI-powered tutoring and discussion platform designed for university courses. We are committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use and share it, and your rights regarding your personal data when you use CourseAssist. Our practices are designed to comply with United States laws and regulations, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) for student education records.

Information We Collect

Personal Information You Provide: When you create an account, we collect your name and email address. This information is used solely for setting up your user account and enrolling you in the appropriate course or discussion board. In some cases, an educator or institution may provide us with a roster of student names and emails to facilitate course enrollment, in which case we collect those student email addresses and course details to invite them to the platform. We do not require or collect sensitive personal data beyond what is necessary for these educational purposes.

Content and Communications: We also process any content you post on CourseAssist (such as questions, answers, or comments) as well as communications you send to us (for example, support requests or feedback). This user-generated content is stored to operate the discussion board service. Please note that posts you make in a course discussion may be visible to other authorized users in that course.

Information Collected Automatically: Like most online services, CourseAssist automatically collects certain technical data to ensure the platform functions securely and effectively. This includes information such as your IP address, browser type and language, device type or operating system, and timestamps of your visits or actions on the site. We use cookies or similar technologies to keep you logged in and to remember your preferences. This automatically collected usage data helps us troubleshoot issues, monitor performance, and improve our services. We do not use cookies for advertising purposes.

How We Use Your Information

CourseAssist uses your personal information only to provide and support the educational services you have requested. Specifically, we use the data we collect to:

• Provide the Service: We use your name and email to create your account, enroll you in the correct course forums, and allow you to participate in course discussions and AI tutoring sessions.
• Communicate with You: We may send administrative emails or in-platform notifications related to your course -- such as updates from instructors or responses to your posts, password resets, or changes to our service or policies. We will not send you marketing emails unrelated to CourseAssist’s educational services.
• Ensure Integrity and Security: Information like IP addresses and logs are used to help us monitor for suspicious activity, prevent fraud, and protect the integrity and security of our platform. This helps us keep CourseAssist safe for all users.
• Improve and Develop Services: We may use aggregated, anonymized usage data to understand how users engage with CourseAssist and to improve our features (for example, refining our AI tutor’s ability to answer questions). Any analytics are performed on de-identified data and no personal information is included in such analysis.

We do not use your personal data for any advertising or profiling outside the scope of delivering the CourseAssist service. In particular, your data is not used to train third-party AI models. CourseAssist does not sell or rent your personal information to third parties.

How We Share Information

We understand the importance of keeping your information private. CourseAssist only shares personal data in a few limited circumstances:

• Service Providers: We use trusted third-party service providers to host and operate CourseAssist. In particular, our platform is built on Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure infrastructure. These providers store data and manage user authentication on our behalf. They are contractually obligated to protect your information and cannot use it for any purpose other than providing services to CourseAssist. All data transmitted to or from CourseAssist is encrypted using TLS 1.3, and data stored on our servers is protected with AES-256 encryption to ensure confidentiality and integrity.
• Academic Institutions or Instructors: If your use of CourseAssist is part of a course at an institution, certain data (like your name, email, and participation in the course site) may be visible to your instructor or university administrators for educational purposes. We do not disclose your personal information to other students except as you choose to share via your posts or profile.
• Legal Compliance and Protection: We may disclose information if we are required to do so by law or a valid legal process (such as a subpoena or court order), or if we have a good faith belief that such disclosure is necessary to (a) comply with applicable law, (b) protect and defend our rights or property, or the rights, safety, or property of our users or others, (c) investigate or assist in preventing any violation of law or our Terms of Service, or (d) respond to an emergency that we believe in good faith requires us to disclose information to help prevent harm.

Outside of the scenarios above, we will not share your personal data with third parties. In particular, we do not share personal information with advertisers or other companies for their independent use.

Data Security

We take the security of your data seriously. CourseAssist implements industry-standard security measures to safeguard your personal information from unauthorized access or disclosure. All network communications are encrypted using Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.3, and personal data is stored in encrypted form using AES-256 encryption. This means that both in transit and at rest, your data is protected with strong cryptographic protocols. Our systems are hosted on Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, which maintain robust security practices and compliance certifications to protect data. We also apply strict access controls: only authorized personnel who need to support the service have access to user data, and they are bound by confidentiality obligations.

Despite our safeguards, no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure. We therefore cannot guarantee absolute security of information. However, we continuously review and enhance our security practices to meet or exceed industry standards.

FERPA and Educational Privacy Compliance

Because CourseAssist is used in educational settings, we comply with the U.S. Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and similar student privacy laws. If CourseAssist is provided to you through a school or university, we handle student personal data as a “School Official” under FERPA, meaning we use student information only for authorized educational purposes and under the direction of the educational institution. We do not disclose personally identifiable information from student education records except as permitted by FERPA – for example, to school officials with legitimate educational interests, or with the student’s (or parent’s, where applicable) consent.

FERPA gives students (or parents of minors) important rights, including the right to access and request correction of their educational records, and to consent to most disclosures of their information. CourseAssist supports institutions in fulfilling these requirements. Any data that the school or instructor inputs into CourseAssist about students remains under the control of that educational institution, and we only use and disclose it in accordance with our agreements with the institution and applicable law.

Data Retention

We retain your personal data only as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Policy or as required by your educational institution or applicable laws. In general, this means we keep your account information and content while your account is active. If you are using CourseAssist as part of a course, we keep your data for the duration of the course and a reasonable period thereafter to allow instructors and students continued access, unless we are instructed otherwise by the institution. Once personal data is no longer needed for the purpose it was collected, we will delete it or anonymize it so it can no longer be associated with you, unless we are required by law to retain it for a longer period.

For example, if you request that we delete your account (see Your Rights and Choices below), we will remove or de-identify personal information associated with your account, except to the extent we need to retain certain information for legal compliance or internal legitimate purposes (such as audit, security, or fraud prevention) as permitted by law. Any retained data will remain subject to the protections of this Privacy Policy.

Your Rights and Choices

You have certain rights regarding your personal information:

• Account Deletion: You have the right to request deletion of your CourseAssist account and associated personal data. If you wish to delete your account, you (or your institution, if they administer your account) can email us at support@courseassistai.com with your request. We will respond to deletion requests promptly and will remove your personal data from our active systems, barring any information we are required to retain by law. Please note that once deleted, your account cannot be recovered, and you will lose access to any content or course data associated with that account.
• Opt-Out of Communications: We do not send marketing emails, but we may send essential service-related communications (for example, password resets or important course announcements). If at any time you receive non-essential email from us, you will be given a way to opt out of or unsubscribe from such communications. However, note that you cannot opt out of certain emails necessary for legal or security purposes (such as notices of policy updates).

If you have any questions about your rights or want to exercise any rights under applicable data protection laws, please contact us (see "Contact Us" section below). We will honor your rights to the extent required by law and in accordance with our institutional commitments. For users in certain states or countries, additional rights may apply under local laws, which we also honor when applicable.

Children’s Privacy

CourseAssist is intended for use by university students, educators, and adult learners. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of 13. If you are under 13, you are not permitted to use CourseAssist. If we learn that we have inadvertently collected personal data from a child under 13, we will take steps to delete that information promptly. Parents or legal guardians who believe that their child under 13 may have provided personal information to us should contact us so that we can delete the data.

For students under 18 who are using CourseAssist as part of a school-directed program (for example, dual enrollment or special pre-college programs), the educational institution is responsible for obtaining any necessary parental consents, in compliance with COPPA and similar laws. In all cases, our service is generally geared toward adult learners (age 18 and above).

Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons. If we make material changes, we will provide a prominent notice (e.g., by email to registered users or by posting a notice on our site) to inform you of updates. We will also update the "Effective Date" at the top of this Policy. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes. Your continued use of CourseAssist after any updates constitutes your acceptance of the revised policy, to the extent permitted by law.

Contact Us

If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or your personal data, please contact us at:

CourseAssist Privacy Team
Email: privacy@courseassistai.com
(Please include "Privacy Inquiry" in the subject line for faster response.)

We will do our best to address your inquiry promptly and thoroughly. Your privacy is important to us, and we welcome your feedback.