Privacy notice

How the SemiAcademy Portal uses your information

The SemiAcademy Portal is run by the Intel Semiconductor Education Program at Central State University (ISEP-CSU). It handles registration for SemiAcademy micro-credentials.

What we collect

• Your name, email address, school or organization, role, country and age range.
• Your answer to how you heard about SemiAcademy, picked from a short list.
• For learners aged 13 to 17, a parent or guardian's name and email address, and the date they gave consent.
• The micro-credentials you chose, and the date and network address of your registration, to prevent misuse.

Why we collect it

• To confirm your email address and decide on your registration.
• To create your SemiAcademy account and enroll you in the micro-credentials you chose.
• To contact you about your registration.
• To learn which kinds of outreach reach people. Answers to "How did you hear about SemiAcademy?" are only counted by administrators.

Who sees it

SemiAcademy administrators see your registration. To support you and to check that each enrollment worked, they can also see which SemiAcademy courses you are enrolled in and when you were last active there, and every change they make to your registration is recorded. The people who teach a micro-credential you are enrolled in (its Teachers and TAs) can see, on the Teaching page of this portal, your name, your sign-in email address, whether your invitation is still waiting and when you were last active in that micro-credential. They see the same in SemiAcademy, and they see nothing else from this portal: not your registration, your institution, your answers or your badges. We do not sell your information or share it for marketing. Your course work and results are kept inside SemiAcademy, and digital badges are issued through SemiAcademy Credentials.

My SemiAcademy

My SemiAcademy shows you your own registrations, the micro-credentials you are enrolled in, your progress against each badge's requirements, the badges you have earned, and the details you gave us. When you sign in, SemiAcademy confirms who you are and the portal gives back the access it receives straight away. The page then shows only your own records, read each time you open it: your grades and which requirements you have met come from your SemiAcademy courses, and your badges come from the portal's record and from SemiAcademy Credentials, which lists them under your email address. The portal does not store your course work, and nobody else can see this page. If you are not enrolled yet, you can ask for a link by email instead: it works once, expires in 48 hours and shows only the status of your registrations, never your grades or badges. A visit lasts at most 8 hours (1 hour after an email link), or until you sign out. You can change your school or organization, role and country there; your name and email address are kept in your SemiAcademy account.

Badge eligibility

To tell SemiAcademy administrators when you have met the standard for a micro-credential's badge, and to issue that badge, the portal reads your grades and progress in that course from SemiAcademy about every 3 hours. It keeps only whether you have met the standard, a short summary of what was checked (for example, a score on one item), the date, and whether a badge has been issued. Only administrators see it, and the portal never changes anything in your course. Your badge is issued through SemiAcademy Credentials (credentials.semiacademy.org), which receives your name and the email address on your SemiAcademy account for that purpose and emails you the badge.

Reminders when you have not been in your course

About once a day the portal reads from SemiAcademy when each student last opened the micro-credential they are enrolled in. If you have not opened a course for 7 days, we email you a reminder every Monday until you do, up to 30 days. Opening the course at any time starts the count again. Teachers and TAs, and anyone whose badge for that course is ready or issued, are not included, and an administrator can exclude a person, for example while they are on a break. The portal keeps only the date of each reminder, warning or deactivation, for up to 400 days, and a deactivation until it is switched back on. Administrators see this on the Inactivity page of this portal, and every deactivation or switch back on is recorded in the activity log.

Badge checks and certificates

Anyone who has the ID or link of a SemiAcademy badge can check it on the badge check page of this site. The page asks SemiAcademy Credentials and shows the badge, who issued it, the date, the name of the person it was awarded to, and whether it is valid or has been withdrawn. It does not show an email address or the reason for a withdrawal. The portal does not keep a record of who checks a badge, apart from a count by network address, kept for up to an hour, to stop misuse. In My SemiAcademy you can download a one-page PDF certificate for any badge you hold. It is made when you ask for it, shows your name, the micro-credential, its learning time, the date issued, the badge ID and a QR code that opens the check page, and is not stored by the portal. A badge that SemiAcademy withdraws is removed from My SemiAcademy, and a certificate can no longer be made for it. Each badge there also has an Add to LinkedIn button and a Copy badge link button. Add to LinkedIn is only a link to LinkedIn's own form, filled in with the badge name, the month it was issued, the badge ID and the address of the badge check page: the portal does not send LinkedIn anything, your browser sends those details to LinkedIn only if you click the link, the portal does not post for you and it is not told whether you save the badge. What LinkedIn does with the details is covered by LinkedIn's own privacy policy.

Reports

SemiAcademy administrators prepare reports of totals for the programs that support SemiAcademy: how many people registered, enrolled, started and earned a badge, grouped by month, micro-credential, type of email address, role, country and institution. A report for a program or grant contains no names, email addresses or individual results, and a count under 5 is shown as "<5". The pre-course and exit surveys in SemiAcademy are summarized only as shares of the people who answered, and only once at least 5 people have answered.

Counting visits

To see how many people visit and which pages they use, the public pages of this site (the micro-credential pages, the FAQ and Support pages, the registration form, My SemiAcademy and this notice) and the About page at www.semiacademy.org use Statcounter. It records the page you opened, the page you came from, your browser and device type, and an approximate location worked out from your network address, and it may keep a small identifier in your browser to tell new visits from returning ones. It is not used on pages reached from email links or on administrator pages, and it never receives the details you type into the registration form.

Feedback

The feedback form on the Support page asks what your message is about, which page or micro-credential it concerns, and your message. An email address is optional: leave it empty if you do not want a reply. The portal does not keep your name, your network address or details of your browser with a message, and nothing you write is published. SemiAcademy administrators read the messages, are emailed when a new one arrives, and may write themselves a note about what was done. Please do not put passwords or other private details in a message.

Keeping the site healthy

To notice problems early, the portal counts, for each hour, how many pages it served, how many ended in a server error and how many were slow. These counts do not say who visited. Administrators also see a weekly summary of the portal's health checks, which includes totals such as the number of registrations waiting and feedback messages not yet read, and a list of problems found on the pages of the micro-credentials (such as a broken link or a picture with no description). None of this contains your registration details.

Backups

Every night the portal makes a backup copy of its records (registrations, requests, the activity log and settings) so they can be restored after a failure. The newest 14 copies are kept on the server. A record that is deleted from the portal, as described below, can therefore remain in an older backup until that backup is replaced. Backups are used only to restore the portal and to test, once a month, that a restore works. They are not used for any other purpose.

How long we keep it

• Registrations that are never confirmed are removed after 30 days.
• Declined registrations are removed after 365 days.
• Approved registrations, and the badge results above, are kept while you have a SemiAcademy account.
• The activity log, which records who did what and when (sign-ins, decisions and support actions, with names and email addresses where they were involved), is kept for 2 years and then removed.
• Feedback that an administrator has dealt with is removed after 365 days.

Children

Learners under 13 cannot register through this site. Learners aged 13 to 17 need the consent of a parent or guardian, and their requests are always reviewed by an administrator.

Your choices

To see, correct or remove your information, write to mhadizadeh@centralstate.edu.