This privacy policy is inclusive of both the Terracotta.education website and the Terracotta application. The website has no passive data collection, and the application collects only what it must in order to facilitate its function. Terracotta is a service of Indiana University, and as such, is committed to upholding the university's privacy standards as outlined in this policy
Your privacy is important to us.
Terracotta is committed to protecting your privacy, and we’ve prepared this privacy policy to let you know what the website and LMS-plugin are collecting, why we’re collecting it, and how it will be used. The information collected will only be used in the ways described in this notice.
Terracotta.education website
The terracotta.education website has no passive data collection, and does not create cookies nor place cookies on visitors’ web browsers. If you submit a contact form, the website will transmit your data to the contact email, and to a member of our team who will reply with the information you requested.
Terracotta LMS plugin
This privacy policy covers the Terracotta + Canvas LMS plugin, which collects only what it needs in order to function properly. Coincidentally, this functionality includes the collection of student learning data for research purposes.
Our relationship to Indiana University.
Indiana University is a nonprofit public institution of higher education. Terracotta is an open-source service of Indiana University. Terracotta is presently grant-funded, and managed by the eLearning Research and Practice Lab, a unit within Indiana University's Pervasive Technology Institute.
Here’s what Terracotta + Canvas collects.
When you open a Terracotta assignment within the LMS, Terracotta automatically collects the following information:
- User-specific login information (username)
- User-specific information on which pages are visited
- The date and time of visit
When you interact with the Terracotta assignment, Terracotta also collects:
- Responses to questions in Terracotta
- The correctness of these responses
- Clickstream data on students’ interactions with questions in Terracotta
- Timestamps of interactions with questions in Terracotta
Though Terracotta collects this information, it is housed only in server logs, where it will be retained for 3 months and then deleted. We use this information to help track errors, and not to create maps of users or sell information to third parties.
We only share data about your use of Terracotta + Canvas after we remove information that could identify you.
When you launch a Terracotta assignment in Canvas, the Terracotta app collects your responses to assignment questions. Those responses, along with other data related to the assignment, can be exported by your teacher once the experiment is over, but that export does not contain your name or other identifying information.
We will not share personally identifiable information with other entities or organizations.
We will NOT…
...sell your data.
...send you unsolicited correspondence.
Your data are secure.
Because information technologies are constantly evolving, no transmission of information over the Internet can be guaranteed to be completely secure. While we are committed to protecting user privacy, we cannot guarantee the security of any information users transmit, and users do so at their own risk. We do, however, use safeguards aligned with industry standards and the sensitivity of the data being stored to maintain the security of that information.
Additionally, Indiana University has both a dedicated Information Security unit and a Data Management unit that are responsible for setting policy with which Terracotta is in compliance.
Terracotta wants you to have a clear picture of what we are doing to ensure your privacy:
- Terracotta is hosted in the cloud through Amazon Web Services in an AWS project managed by Indiana University Cloud Services.
- All access to Terracotta's AWS project is actively managed through IU Account Management Services with restrictive permissions to prevent unauthorized sharing or access privileges.
This policy applies to users under 13 years old.
By way of further explanation, and in accordance with COPPA:
- Parents of children under 13 years old have the right to know that their child will be using Terracotta, and to opt out of an experiment. The teacher or researcher will collect consent, and/or the school’s principal or a district administrator will determine whether a study is approved.
- Terracotta will never sell data to a third party, and does not even collect the kind of data a third party might want.
- Terracotta only uses cookies to associate students’ activity with their Canvas accounts, which makes it possible for browsers to remember login information and keep sessions open.
- Terracotta only exports de-identified data, which means that the teacher or researcher using Terracotta will only see student activity after names and other identifying information have been omitted.
- The student does not need to purchase anything or create an account. Terracotta is integrated with Canvas.
- As stated above, Terracotta only collects students’ names and Canvas usernames. It does not collect their passwords or any other identifying information.
We’ll let you know if this policy changes.
Internet technologies are always changing, and Terracotta may make changes to this notice in the future. Any changes we make will be consistent with our commitment to your privacy, and will be posted clearly in a revised privacy notice.
Please contact us if you have any questions!
If you have questions or concerns about this policy, please contact us at info@terracotta.education.
