What you should know about student privacy: online and classroom study, monitoring and authentication, data on your own computer, and shared computers.
Teacher app · Privacy
Your school is the data controller, and its own guidelines take precedence over this guide. The privacy notice shown to students is also available on the download page.
1 Online study and classroom teaching
Students choose how they study and can change it at any time:
Online study – the student has a profile photo that face recognition works with.
Classroom teaching – there is no profile photo, and face recognition is not used.
Face recognition is based on the student's consent, so choosing classroom teaching must not put the student at a disadvantage.
Course delivery mode
In the course editor, choose the Delivery mode: online (requires a profile photo) or classroom. Online courses are not shown to classroom students. If a student deletes their profile photo in the middle of a course, the course is hidden from their app, but nothing is deleted, and their progress returns when they take a new photo.
If a classroom student needs the content of an online course, agree on an alternative with them (e.g. a classroom version of the same course or doing the tasks in class).
2 Monitoring and authentication are separate settings
Monitoring (camera, phone and exam window monitoring) also works without a profile photo. So monitoring can be on in an exam for a classroom group.
Authentication requires a profile photo. If you turn it on, a classroom student cannot start the exam, and the app advises them to take a profile photo or to talk to you. Only turn authentication on for exams where the person taking the exam cannot otherwise be verified (e.g. a remote exam without an invigilator).
Deviation images: the student always sees the image themselves and decides whether it is saved for you. If they end the exam, the image is not saved.
No video or audio is recorded. Suspected cheating is always assessed by you, not by the app. The exam log also records when a face comparison could not be made (e.g. no reference image).
3 Data on your computer
Retention: exam attempts, exam logs and submissions you have fetched stay on your computer. Keep them for as long as your school's retention period for assessment material requires, and then delete or archive them.
Backups: backups are encrypted with a passphrase that you set the first time. Keep your backup folder (e.g. OneDrive) for your own use only.
Account protection: your account is bound to your computer, and you are not asked for your password every time on your own computer. When you first sign in, the app shows a recovery code once: save it. On a new computer you enter your password and this code, and the computer is linked to your account (or you send a recovery request to the administrators if you have lost the code).
Important: the backup passphrase cannot be recovered. Keep it and the recovery code in a safe place.
On school computers, Symma is installed with an MSI package for all users of the computer (see the IT support guide). An installation that a student downloads themselves only works in the installer's own Windows profile.
When every student signs in to Windows with their own account, their Symma data is in their own profile, and the encryption key for their face image is bound to their Windows account. This is the recommended setup.
If the computer has a shared Windows account, each Symma account signs in with its own password or face and accepts the terms of use separately, but the account picker shows all accounts on the computer. In that case the student removes their account from the computer after the exam (the × in the account picker, or Settings → Delete User).
5 Messages, AI and plagiarism checking
Messages: course messages, group announcements and chat reception messages are deleted from the cloud automatically (chat after 6 months, others after 12 months).
AI assistance: available in course tasks, not in exams. Remind students not to write personal data to the AI.
Plagiarism check: the essay tool's check sends short excerpts of the essay to a web search without any student data. Only start it when a check is needed.
Saving grading for AI grading development: when grading, you can choose whether an individual grading is saved without student identifiers (kept for 3 years). The choice is always yours. Do not save the grading if the answer text contains personal data.
6 Student requests
Refer requests to access, rectify or erase data to your school's data protection contact person. The service provider helps with the technical side: Toni Tran, email.