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Personal data in connection with teaching

Below you will find information about, as well as specific examples of, how to take information security and data protection into account when conducting teaching. 

Occasionally, you may need to use personal information in your teaching. In this connection, you should always consider whether it is necessary to show examples with personal information. If you think it is necessary to show, for example, parts of an assignment, X-rays or other types of personal information in your teaching, then do so in an anonymous form. Also remember to ensure that personal information is not disseminated. So even if it is necessary to use confidential or sensitive information in your teaching, you have to remove it before putting your slides on itslearning. Furthermore, always remember to ask for permission to use the material. 

Team lists containing names and SDU email addresses appear from itslearning, where fellow students and lecturers have access to the lists. The students themselves can add a picture and other details to the team list in itslearning, which will then be available to lecturers and fellow students. The lists may not be passed on unless there is a legal basis to do so.

If you as a lecturer need to store the lists somewhere else, you must use one of the SDU-approved systems, e.g. OneDrive or SharePoint.

As a lecturer, you have the pedagogical managerial right as well as the copyright to any material you have produced. It is therefore for you to decide whether to grant students permission to audio and/or video record teaching session, but you should give the matter some thought before responding to the student’s request. You need to ensure there is a valid reason for refusing permission to record (e.g. that it impedes the learning space), that students are treated equally and that requests from SPS and Elite students should generally be accommodated as they have special needs. 

Students are responsible for obtaining permission from their lecturer and fellow students prior to recording. Read the student guidelines for recording of teaching sessions here.

 

 As a general rule, you as a lecturer may record teaching, laboratory experiments, etc., without obtaining consent from the students. 

If you make recordings, you must:

  • Ensure that there is no sensitive personal information on the recording.
  • Tell the students that a recording will be made and what it will be used for.
  • Limit the dissemination of the recording (internal team page in itslearning is OK, publication on the internet is generally not OK)
  • Consider whether it is possible to respect students who do not want to be recorded (for example, by turning off the microphone when they speak or by allowing them to sit outside the camera angle)
  • Every time, consider whether there is something on the recording that would be inappropriate to share (for example, because the subject of the teaching is sensitive, or because a student shares something very personal on the recording)
  • Be aware if students present material on the recording that may be protected by copyright (e.g. presentations that they also use in other contexts). Contact SDU RIO if in doubt. 

You can read more about the legal considerations in this note (in Danish).

If you use a mobile phone for recordings, make sure it is encrypted. If you do not know whether your mobile is sufficiently encrypted, please ask SDU IT for advice. 

Personal information may only be stored in SDU-approved systems, such as OneDrive, SharePoint or MS Teams. Furthermore, remember to only store what you need and delete information when you no longer need it. It may be a good idea to set some deletion deadlines for yourself. The start of each semester could, for example, be the time when you delete information that you no longer need. Overall, a ‘clean desk policy’ is encouraged. 

It is also important that you actively consider who has access to the systems and thus the data you store. Also remember to delete accesses when a colleague no longer needs that access to the data in question.

If you want to use other IT systems than those approved by SDU, you must always contact SDU RIO to clarify whether there is a data processing agreement or whether it is possible to enter into one. This also applies if you ask students to set up/use other systems than those approved by SDU.

 
Notes from examinations (including examination assignments) must be kept for 1 year to respect the time limit for submission of appeals. Use one of the SDU-approved systems to store the notes and make sure to delete them 1 year after the examination date.
If you choose to extract personal information from SDU’s IT systems, maybe to print a team list with names or to send a team list via email, you must be aware that it is your responsibility to process the personal information in accordance with current rules.

 

Last Updated 02.12.2022