SMS Terms and Conditions

Northwest Shoals Community College is committed to protecting your privacy and making it easier and more efficient for individuals and businesses to interact with the College. We recognize that it is critical for individuals and businesses to be confident that their privacy is protected when they visit Northwest Shoals Community College campuses and websites. You can travel through many of the College’s websites without giving us any information about yourself. Sometimes we do need information to provide services that you request, and this commitment of privacy explains our online information practices.

NWSCC does not collect any personal information about you unless you provide that information voluntarily by sending an e-mail, completing a request form, accessing online services, or interacting in distance education or web-assisted courses.

Information Collected Automatically When You Visit

When visiting nwscc.edu, the college automatically collects and stores the following information about your visit:

• The Internet Protocol (IP) address of the computer that accessed our website.
• The type of browser, its version, and the operating system on which that browser is running.
• The webpage from which the user accessed the current webpage.
• The date and time of the user’s request.
• The pages that were visited and the amount of time spent at each page.

The information that is collected automatically is used to improve NWSCC’s website content and to help the College understand how users are interacting with its websites. This information is collected for statistical analysis and to determine what information is of most and least interest to our users.

When visiting and interacting with Canvas as an instructor, student, or guest, all information about your visit is recorded and may be accessed via logs by an administrator or course instructor. Some information collected includes the following:

• The Internet Protocol (IP) address of the computer that accessed Canvas.
• The date and time of the user’s visit to the site.
• The pages that were visited and the amount of time spent at each page or on each activity such as discussion forums, quizzes, exams, and assignments.
• All communication with instructors, administrators, and students.

The collected information is used in the normal activities of teaching and learning in a distance education or web-assisted course format. Students should be aware that any information posted using course tools such as discussions, blogs, wikis, or videos, will become available to the instructor and may be seen by fellow students. Caution should be exercised when considering posting any personal or confidential information.

When providing feedback to students, instructors will not share specific student feedback or grades on assignments or exams using a tool or method that may be accessed by other students. However, instructors may provide general feedback using online tools such as discussion forums accessible to the entire class. Instructors may request student permission to share portions of work anonymously with other students as an example.

Course evaluations and surveys that students are asked to complete via Canvas link or links on the NWSCC Website are completely anonymous and accessed via a secure (encrypted) link. Results from these evaluations and surveys are compiled each semester and provided to course instructors without any identifying student information.

Instructors may also provide additional information regarding student privacy and feedback in the course syllabus.

The information collected on NWSCC websites is not collected for commercial marketing purposes and the college is not authorized to sell or otherwise disclose the information collected for commercial marketing purposes.

E-mailing the College

Your e-mail and the contents of your message will be collected. The information collected is not limited to text characters and may include audio, video, and graphic information included in the message. Your e-mail address and the information within the message will be used to respond to you. Your e-mail address is not collected for commercial purposes and the College is not authorized to sell or otherwise disclose your e-mail address for commercial purposes.

Disclosure of Information Collected Through NWSCC Websites

NWSCC will only collect personal information via the NWSCC website or the Canvas Learning Management System if the user has consented to the collection or disclosure of such personal information.

NWSCC may collect or disclose personal information without consent if the collection or disclosure is:

1. made pursuant to a court order or by law:
2. for the purpose of validating the identity of the user; or
3. information to be used solely for statistical purposes that is in a form that cannot be used to identify any particular person.

NWSCC may disclose personal information to federal or state law enforcement authorities to enforce its rights against unauthorized or attempted unauthorized access to NWSCC’s information technology assets.

Information that is collected on NWSCC websites is submitted from the user and will not be used for any other purpose than what it was intended for (i.e. on- line application, request for information, participation in distance education coursework, etc.), except for the exceptions stated above.

In regard to the disclosure of information you provide as a Learning Management System (i.e., Canvas) user, the information is used in the process of teaching and learning and to improve the content of our website, courses, and services. It is not shared with or sold to other organizations for commercial purposes, except to provide products or services requested, when we have your permission, or under the following circumstances:

• It is necessary to share information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, or as otherwise required by law.

The information collected on NWSCC websites is not collected for commercial marketing purposes and the college is not authorized to sell or otherwise disclose the information collected for commercial marketing purposes.

NWSCC encourages you to review the privacy statements of websites you choose to link to from NWSCC websites so that you can understand how those sites collect, use and share your information. NWSCC is not responsible for the privacy statements or other content on websites outside of NWSCC websites.

Use of Cookies

Your browser must be set to accept cookies to use the Northwest Shoals Community College Student Online Services and the Learning Management System (i.e., Canvas). We use cookies for session management. Temporary cookies serve to identify the user during each individual visit to the site (“session”). These cookies are temporarily stored in the user’s browser throughout the course of each individual session. This identifier is needed to create a unique server object that represents that specific user session. The ID stored in this cookie is sent to the server each time the browser requests a page so that it can recognize the browser and retrieve the requested information from the website’s database. We wish to make it clear that no other use is or can be made of the information contained in these cookies and they disappear when you close your browser.

Security

NWSCC is concerned about the security of your transactions. Online Services and the College’s Learning Management System (i.e., Canvas) require a browser capable of 128-bit encryption. By requiring 128-bit encryption, we are assuring the highest level of commercially available security for your transactions.

All information and course materials in the Learning Management System (i.e., Canvas) may only be accessed with a valid NWSCC login. Students are provided with login information via the college website and/or semester schedule. Students and faculty are responsible for keeping login information secret and confidential and for notifying NWSCC if they believe that login information has been stolen or might otherwise by misused.

Disclaimer

The information provided in this privacy policy should not be construed as giving business, legal or other advice, or warranting as fail proof, the security of information provided through NWSCC websites.