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Privacy Policy and Usage Agreement

Welcome!

We are a research group at the University of Hawaii offering this web site as a public service and as a vehicle for our research in the design of software for learning in online communities. So, by using this web site you are not only meeting your own goals, but are also contributing to science! We respect your privacy and want to assure you that information gathered via the web site will be kept private. Details are given below.

Dan Suthers and the LILT research team

What This Is About

This document covers how we treat information gathered from users of this interactive web site (the "Privacy Policy"), and the terms under which you agree to use this web site (the "Usage Agreement"). The remainder of the document has these parts:

  1. Privacy Policy - about how we protect your information while conducting our research
  2. Usage Agreement - what you agree to by using this web site
  3. Definitions of Terms - provided to make the above more precise
  4. Contact Information - how you can reach us with your questions or requests

Privacy Policy

Information Collected from All Users

If you access this web site in any manner, this web site's server automatically receives and records information from your browser, including the date and time of access, your browser type, your IP address, cookie information for this web site, the page you request, and other information required for proper response to your request.

We retain this information indefinitely and may examine this information in order to administer our server, improve our services, conduct research pertaining to the design and use of this web site, and when legally required.

This information does not identify you as an individual, and it is not practical for us to remove this information from our server logs. Therefore all users, including users who are not logged in, must agree to the collection and use of information as described above in this subsection.

Information Collected When You Request a Membership

When you request to be come a member of this web site, you provide us with identifying information consisting of your name, email address, and telephone number. We also ask you to create a login name and password, and may ask for your organization and your title or position in this organization, your web site URL, your reason for joining this web site, and other biographical information. Subsequently, you may edit your phone number, email address, home page and biographical information in your user profile area. Optionally you may upload your picture.

Your password is encrypted and is unavailable to anyone, including us. None of the remaining information is available to users who are not logged in unless you post it in a public area. All of the remaining information except for your reason for requesting an account is visible to other logged in members via this web site's membership directory, to help achieve the community building objectives of this web site.

Information Collected from Logged In Users

In general, any contributions you make to this web site are available to all logged in members. Access may be restricted in some cases to a subset of the membership. For example, some workspaces are only visible to those who have been invited into the workspaces, and some unit plans are visible only to their authors.

This web site may set and access cookies on your computer in order to remember your identity and session state during login sessions. This web sites' server continues to log actions you take while you are logged in. The next section describes how we use this information.

Use of Information Collected

We limit access to information about you to employees who we believe reasonably need to come into contact with that information in order to provide services to you or to do their jobs. We may analyze any of the information gathered (except your password) in order to manage this web site, improve our services or conduct research pertaining to the design and use of this web site. If results of these analyses are reported to others, identifying information will be removed.

In general, we will not reveal your identifing information or information about your specific activities in this web site to non-members except under the following circumstances:

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this policy. We will notify you about significant changes in the way we treat personal information by sending a notice to the primary email address specified in your member account or by placing a prominent notice on this web site.

Usage Agreement

All Users

By using this web site without logging in, you agree to the sections labeled "Information Collected from All Users" and "Use of Information Collected" in the above privacy policy.

Members

By requesting membership in this web site you affirm that you are 18 years or older. (Membership policy for minors is under development and may be amended here in the future.)

By requesting membership in this web site or logging into this web site, you agree to the entire privacy policy above.

You also agree that will not use our site in the conduct of any illegal activities, and that you will not deliberately post or upload material that is offensive to others and unrelated to the purpose of this site. Managers of site reserve the right to remove material considered offensive.

Deactivation ("Opting Out")

You may request that your account be de-activated, in which case your identifying information and postings will no longer be visible to users of the site. Resources that do not identify you may still be retained. Archived contributions may be retained by us for research purposes. You may request that your identifying information be removed from these archives.

Definitions of Terms

In order to avoid ambiguity in the above policy and agreement, the following definitions are provided.

"this web site"
Any documents accessed via Internet protocols within the Internet domain of lilt.ics.hawaii.edu or the physical server that this domain resides on.
"we," "our," "us"
Members of the organization responsible for hosting this web site. This organization is currently the Laboratory for Interactive Learning Technologies in the Department of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Hawai`i at Manoa. Contact Information is available at the end of this document.
"you," "user"
Any individual who accesses this web site.
"logged in"
Using the web site after having provided a user name and password that enables you to access this web site's interactive facilities.
"member"
A person (user) to whom we have provided a user name and password for purposes of logging into this web site.
"identifying information"
The name, email address, and/or telephone number of an individual covered by "you".
"postings"
Text that you submit and make available to others via this web site's facilities, including but not limited to community forum stories, workspace wiki pages, messages in threaded discussions, and within structured tools such as unit plans.
"resources"
Metadata describing resources that may either be uploaded directly or available elsewhere on the web.
"contributions"
Collectively, any information that you post to this web site, or files that you upload to this web site.

Contact Information

If you have questions or suggestions, please contact us by email at support@lilt.ics.hawaii.edu, by telephone at (808) 956-3890, or in writing to:

Dr. Daniel Suthers, Associate Professor
Department of Information and Computer Sciences
University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa
1680 East West Road, POST 317
Honolulu, HI 96822

If you have any questions about your rights as a participant, please contact

Committee on Human Studies
University of Hawaiʻi
2540 Maile Way, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi 96822
Phone: (808) 956-5007