Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey
This privacy notice explains how your personal data will be processed for the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES). The surveys are carried out by Advance HE on behalf of Higher Education providers including BCU. BCU is the data controller for your personal data and is subject to UK data protection laws. For contact details relating to data protection, please see section 5 below.
1. How we collect your personal data and the types of personal data that are collected
The purpose of the PTES is to gain insight from students about your learning and teaching experience. All responses collected through our student experience surveys are stored by Jisc (a data processor).Your responses will be held securely by BCU, Jisc and Advance HE.
We will use personal data held on our student records system and data provided directly by you in response to the survey. To make the survey as easy as possible to complete, some data that you have already supplied to the University is preloaded. This data is about your course, year of birth, name, Student ID, university email address and some special category data (e.g. ethnic background, country of domicile).
We process your personal data on the basis of your consent. You can withdraw your consent to have your survey responses used in the ways described here and we will destroy your individual survey response, however we will keep the aggregate data which does not identify you within our datasets. Should you wish to withdraw your consent please contact studentcommunications@bcu.ac.uk .
2. How will the personal data be used and how long is it kept for?
The purpose of this survey is to gain insight from students about your learning and teaching experience. Your personal data will be used only by relevant BCU staff where the data is necessary for them to undertake their designated role.
BCU may use artificial intelligence (AI) where it may bring benefits to the university and / or people and organisations who interact with BCU. Please be assured that BCU will only use AI where it has been assessed as safe and appropriate. BCU makes every effort to ensure that it meets its’ legal obligations under data protection laws when using AI tools in order to protect your personal data.
All the data we gather from the survey will be kept for 10 years after the survey closes for use in longitudinal research into quality of teaching and the student experience. However, we will remove any identifying information within one year after the survey closes.
3. Who can access my personal data and will they share it with anyone?
Your personal data will be used only by relevant BCU staff where the data is necessary for them to undertake their designated role. Access to the raw data is restricted to the Planning & Performance Department for analysis purposes. After that all staff within the institution will only have access to anonymised aggregated results.
All participating institutions, BCU included, have agreed not to identify any individuals when reporting their results internally or externally, and will ensure that no individuals can be identified by those results. The full dataset will be available to Advance HE in order to conduct national level research and analysis.
In addition to the circumstances stated above we will share your personal information if we believe someone’s life is in danger or we believe we are compelled to by law.
4. What rights do I have regarding my personal data?
You have the right to correct or update your personal data at any time. If you are a BCU student, your main contact for this is the Student Support Centre. If you are a BCU staff member please use ERP or log a ticket on the HR Helpdesk. If you are neither, please contact your main contact at BCU. If you cannot do that, you can contact informationmanagement@bcu.ac.uk. You may have the right to have your data deleted, theright to restrict processing, the right to objectand / or theright to data portabilityand you have the right to know about and challenge automated decision making and profiling. Follow the links to find out whether those rights apply in these circumstances. To do any of those things or if you have followed the links but would like clarification, please email informationmanagement@bcu.ac.uk.
You have the right to request to see the personal data we hold about you. You can submit a Subject Access Request (SAR) in accordance with the Subject Access Requests (SAR) Procedure.
5. How to ask questions or raise concerns
If you have read this privacy notice and would like further information, you’re welcome to contact our Data Protection Officer by emailing informationmanagement@bcu.ac.uk or by post to: Data Protection Officer, Information Management Team, Legal Services, Birmingham City University, Floor 1, Joseph Priestley Building, 6 Cardigan Street, Birmingham, B4 7BD, or by phoning 0121 202 4597.
If you are not content with how we handle your information, please follow our Data Protection Complaints Procedure. If you have used that procedure and are unsatisfied with the response you have received, you then have the right to complain directly to the Information Commission (IC). You can find out more about this on the IC’s complaints website.