Moodle Learn Data Privacy Policy

General Information Collected on our Websites

When you visit any of the websites within the York St John University domain we hold certain information about you for service and security reasons. For more information on this, please see https://www.yorksj.ac.uk/privacy-policy/.

The University VLE (Moodle) also uses your data as set out below.

Cookies

In order to use the VLE you must have 'cookies enabled' on your web browser. When you register with the VLE, you agree to allow certain information about you to be collected.

We collect your information by cookies. Cookies are small file structures used by the University VLE to 'request' information from the computer which you are using. This information is then returned to the VLE and stored. The types of information we collect may include usage statistics, for example when users last logged into the system, when they accessed certain activities, or when they uploaded content.

We use this information to help improve the VLE services by ensuring that the material and content of the courses match with the users' requirement and also to make sure users are not having problems with access. The usage statistics are visible to the VLE administrators and may be visible to course tutors and, where applicable, authorised users from your employer's organisation.

Legal Basis for the use of Personal Data in Moodle 

If you create an account and use this to access Moodle, our legal basis for using your personal information is in order to deliver our contractual obligations to you as a user of our service. 

Learners / External Users

If you access Moodle as a Guest or External user (i.e. login to Moodle using a personal email address), we use your personal information with your consent for administrative and educational purposes. By extension, on registration on the VLE, you are giving your permission to the University to process your personal data via the VLE. This is for the purposes of teaching, learning and research.

The VLE is hosted in the UK at York St John University. However, some aspects will be hosted by third parties under University contract. YSJU and contracted third parties will deal with your personal data in accordance with the principles set out in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as per YSJU Data Protection policies: https://www.yorksj.ac.uk/university-secretarys-office/what-we-do/data-protection/

You always have the right to withdraw your consent and have your account permanently deleted. Should you wish to withdraw your consent you should email Technology Enhanced Learning at TEL@yorksj.ac.uk.

Staff

How the University collects and uses your personal data to manage your employment relationship is set out in the University Privacy Notice, available at https://staffroom.yorksj.ac.uk/. The VLE holds your name and University email address. Personal information which you may enter into your VLE profile, including your photograph, is provided by yourself.

Data Held by Moodle

Data held by Moodle includes your name, email address, username and your course/module enrolment information. 

Moodle logs contain detailed information about user activity within each course, including the date and time of when course-specific information was viewed and/or updated, the address of the machine from which the access was made, the browser identification information and information about the referring web page. Logs are used to create summary statistics which may be made publicly available. Summary statistics do not include personal data.

Information about contributions to courses, including contributions to chat rooms and discussion forums, ownership of resources, assignment/file submissions, text matching scores and evidence of participation in other Moodle-based activities is held within the Moodle platform. 

Information and data related to users, including grades, feedback comments, scores, completion data, access rights and group membership is also recorded. 

Additional personal data may be held within individual courses, either within documents/resources uploaded to the course, or within activities within the course. Other than contributions to chat rooms and discussion forums which are submitted by individuals in a personal capacity, course maintainers are responsible for the information held about you that may be uploaded onto such courses.

How Moodle uses Your Personal Information

Moodle records and uses your personal information to:

·         Provide you an account on, and identify you within, the VLE (Moodle)

·         Provide you access to courses/modules within Moodle

·         Provide you the ability to upload, amend and delete certain information within Moodle 

·         Provide you access to the information, resources and activities uploaded to Moodle

·         Control access to different parts of the VLE

·         Help support Moodle users

·         For system administration and bug tracking

·         Report on course, resource and activity access, activity completion, course completion and course data (such as grades, scores, submissions and content uploaded)

·         For producing usage statistics for management and planning purposes

Individual courses within Moodle may collect additional personal information in order to: 

·         Provide services to users

·         Facilitate and support business processes

·         Support users in their use of Moodle

A non-exhausted list of examples of this may include: 

·         Booking information

·         User feedback

·         Data collection for the purposes of business processes

·         Contact information

·         Application information 

Where Moodle Information Comes From

For all users, Moodle records information supplied by the user. This includes information entered into your profile (such as telephone numbers, addresses and University related information, such as School, Department or Course).

For users who identify themselves through a local login mechanism (Guest users), Moodle uses information supplied by:

·         The Moodle user who creates the account.

·         Relevant University departmental systems and services.

Additional information maybe uploaded onto individual courses by users of the system.

Who has Access to Moodle Data

The Moodle Systems Administration function in Innovation & Technology Services (ITS) has access to all information stored within Moodle for the purposes set out above.

All course Administrators, Tutors and Managers have access to the personal information of the other users of that course.

Access to Moodle logs is restricted to authorised staff in ITS, with the exception of course-specific tracking data which is also accessible to course maintainers (Tutors/Managers).

Relevant subsets of this data may be passed to teams in ITS, Registry, or Academic Schools as part of any investigation into computer misuse, academic integrity, or other academic misconduct.

How the ITS Helpdesk Uses Your Information

If you approach the ITS Helpdesk for help with a fault, issue, question or support, Moodle support staff will need to look at your data held on the system, including files in your personal areas and the Moodle courses to which you belong. We may need to perform any of the following:

·         In the process of providing support, answering your helpdesk question, reproducing/investigating your issue/problem or when forming a response, ITS may navigate and interact with Moodle using your account. To do this we may use a feature know as 'login-as' which allows ITS to take control of your account. ITS does not add, edit or delete any data within Moodle when doing this, without your prior permission. We will never ask you to send your password to us as part of any support that we provide.

·         ITS, when providing support to your query, may also duplicate your course or data and transfer it into another part of the system or one of our test systems. This is to allow us to carry out investigations, test solutions and provide you with support.

·         When providing support, ITS never gives out your personal information, including usernames and passwords.

Moodle Data Retention

Information and data uploaded to Moodle, including accounts, courses and about contributions to courses, including contributions to chat rooms and discussion forums, ownership of resources and evidence of participation in other Moodle-based activities may be retained indefinitely.

Moodle data is backed up at a facility managed by ITS. The backups are held for the purpose of reinstatement of the data, e.g. in the event of failure of a system component.

Please see the Data Retention Schedule below.

Other Policies and Notices

A full list of relevant policies and notices for Moodle can be found here: [Accessibility, Terms & Conditions].

Disclaimer

Please note that the University reserves the right to remove, vary or amend any of the content which appears on the VLE at any time and without prior notice.

Please also note that the VLE may contain links to other websites outside the University's control and that the University is not responsible for the content or accessibility of these sites.

Further Information

For more information about how we handle your personal information, and your rights under data protection legislation, please see https://www.yorksj.ac.uk/university-secretarys-office/what-we-do/data-protection/.

This document was last updated in June 2020.