We have created StudyCrafter so people like you could create projects, share ideas, and build a community. To make this happen, we collect some information from and for our users. StudyCrafter, Northeastern Game Studio, and Northeastern University are committed to delivering services that recognize and respect users’ privacy concerns. This Privacy Policy describes how we recognize these concerns and uphold our commitments to address them.

This Privacy statement is intended to inform you of our policies and practices regarding our collection, use, and disclosure of the information that you submit to us and that we collect from you during your use of the StudyCrafter website and editor (“Services”).

If you have any questions regarding this Privacy Policy, you can contact us at help@studycrafter.com.

What Information Do We Collect?

Profile

  • We collect data from the profile you set up when you sign up for the first time. This includes your username, email address, and birth month and year.
  • Optionally, we also gather country of residence, gender, race, social media accounts, personal websites, research experience, and other interests, if you include it in your profile.
  • You can edit what information is in your profile anytime by editing your Profile Settings.
  • Your profile information is by default only accessible to the StudyCrafter team. Each profile will be anonymized with a unique profile id. You have the option to display some of this information on your profile page to other users by editing your Profile settings.
  • You can also edit if you are willing to share your basic demographics with other users. Basic demographics involve: age, country of residence, gender, and race. This information will be included with the data collected from the projects you play.

Interaction with the platform

  • Projects You Make
    • When you use the StudyCrafter editor to create projects, we collect information on how you use the editor. We collect every interaction you have with the editor.
    • We collect data and have access to all content you create on the platform, including drafts or private projects.
    • If you prefer to work on projects in privacy, you can use the offline editor.
  • Projects You Play
    • Provided you gave consent, when you play a project, we collect data on the choices you make. The exact information differs from project to project, depending on how the user built the project. You can give consent at the end of each project or, if you have an account, you can set your consent to share your play data by default in your Profile Settings.
    • Country played in: We collect and store the country you were in when you played a project for statistical purposes. This is done through accessing your IP address and extracting your country from it. However, your IP address is not stored or saved anywhere by the StudyCrafter team. As soon as it is used in our calculations, it is deleted.
    • This data is also accessible by the community at large; however, this data is anonymized with a unique player identifier. This identifier will only show up more than once if a single registered user plays a game multiple times.

General Website Use

  • We also collect information based on your interaction with the website. This includes:
    • Browser type
    • Projects played
    • Communication on the site (comments, forum posts, etc.)
    • What pages you visit
    • The date and time you visit
    • What you click on

How Do We Collect Your Information?

We collect information about you as follows:

  • When you use our Services
  • When you voluntarily provide it to us
  • When you register and set up an account
  • When you communicate with us
  • When you contact us offline or submit information to us offline
  • When you provide it through our website

StudyCrafter uses WordPress Plugins that may also collect data and have different privacy policies than those of ours. Below is a list of of plugins we use that may collect your data, and a link to their privacy policies:

  • Advanced Custom Fields PRO: https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/legal/privacy/
  • Aksimet Anti-Spam: https://automattic.com/privacy/
  • BuddyPress: https://wordpress.org/about/privacy/
  • Custom Login Page Templates, Profile Builder:  https://www.cozmoslabs.com/privacy-policy/

How Do We Use Your Information?

We limit the collection of personal information to that which is required in order to provide services to you. We collect data to deliver and better tailor the features, performance and support of our services, and to offer you additional information about our services, personalized to you, your role, and interests. Uses of some common categories of information are described below.

Personal Information

An email is required to set up an account, which concerns the only information you have to provide that is directly personally identifiable. We use this to communicate with you (see below). On your profile, you have the option to provide additional personal information, such as your real name, email address, personal websites, and social media accounts. Such personal information can help you get in touch with other users outside of StudyCrafter or make it easier to log in. However, we stress exercising caution and care in providing such information and do not allow our users at any point to disclose their phone number or physical home address. Please report projects, comments, or forum posts that contain this kind of information, so we can remove it.

Communication

You can choose to receive occasional email updates about StudyCrafter to the confirmed email address on your profile. You can unsubscribe or change the frequency of these emails from your profile settings at anytime. If you forget your password or username, we will send you an email with instructions.

Moderation and Maintenance

The StudyCrafter  team closely monitors activities on the platform and takes necessary actions if content and behavior violates our Terms of Use, this Privacy Policy, and the Community Guidelines. Such monitoring and the general maintenance of the Services requires the team to have access to user information. Please report content if you experience any discomfort or encounter any issues. 

User Profiling

The profile information will give us insight in who is using the platform. The profile information combined with activities on the platform will help the StudyCrafter team to consider how the platform can be personalized and catered to different users.

Project Data Sets

Based on the play data, we automatically generate data sets for each project that are immediately accessible to the user who created it. Other users get access when the project data sharing is set to public. Data sets can be used to analyze the project outcomes. We automatically analyze some of this data on the project page.

Statistics

From all the data, we generate statistics for you personally and for the Services at large. These Service statistics are displayed at your profile page and at dedicated Statistics page. The purpose of these statistics is to display the number and type of activities you performed and that all users performed across the platform.

Research

StudyCrafter is an academic project. The StudyCrafter team seeks to collect data from users to develop a better platform but also to advance the science on human behavior and learning research methods. In accomplishing our research goals, we take a number of necessary steps to protect the privacy of our users. We work with fully anonymous user data and secure and limit access to profile information to site administrators only. Results are shared with researchers and educators through conferences, journals, and other venues. We also share the results here on this platform. Your willingness to participate will help shape the next generation of science through game-based and crowdsourcing technologies. For more information on the work pursued by the StudyCrafter team, see Our Research page.

How Do We Share Your Information?

Except as otherwise stated in this Privacy Policy, we do not sell, rent, or share your information with third parties. We may disclose your information to: departments within the University; third parties involved in assisting the StudyCrafter team and University in providing services, including but not limited to human subjects protection, employee background checks, administrative services, and technical services; local, state and/or Federal agencies, pursuant to valid legal process; and other parties as we deem reasonably necessary in order to protect and defend our rights, or the rights or safety of third parties.

How Personal Information is Shared

All data collection on StudyCrafter is anonymized except for your account information. We use your Personal Information from your profile primarily to enable delivery, personalization, and improvement of services for StudyCrafter. Under rare circumstances, this Personal Information may be shared with the StudyCrafter team and third parties assisting the team to deliver and improve services offered or to satisfy local, state and federal laws and regulations.

How to Request Access to or Deletion of Information

As a registered user, you have the right to request access to information and files pertaining to you. You also have the right to request that information pertaining to you be removed and deleted permanently. We cannot identify data from guest users and, therefore, we cannot handle any requests to access or delete information from such users.

  • Project and Account deletion
    • You can delete your account and data at anytime by going into your account settings and selecting “Delete Account”. Upon deletion you will have two options:
      • Delete everything regarding your account including projects.
      • Migrate projects to a unique ghost account and delete all personal data. This action will preserve your contributions to the community.
    • You can delete any project at anytime in the editor. Once the deletion is confirmed, the project and all its associated data will be removed.
    • Please note that we cannot restore accounts or projects. Once something is deleted, it is deleted permanently immediately.
  • Project and Other Data Access
    • To access your project data, you can download this from each individual project page or download all data from your profile page at once.
    • If you would like access to any other data we collect about you, you can email help@studycrafter.com with your username and the reason for requesting the information.
      • We will generally respond to such requests no later than sixty (60) days after receipt.
      • We keep the right to deny your request and to extend that time by no more than an additional thirty (30) days. You will be notified of this delay.
      • If denied, we will send an explanation explaining the reason for the denial, and a notification of your right to file a written statement of disagreement.
      • If granted, you will be sent a copy of your data.

How to Change Accessibility to Your Information

In your Profile Settings you have the option to display profile information privately or publicly. When set to private, only the StudyCrafter research team can access the data, which will help us improve our Services to you. When set to public, any user can view this information. By default your profile information is set to private.

Projects and their associated data can be set to private, unlisted, or public.

  • Private: invitation only. Only users with an email invitation can access the project and its associated data.
  • Unlisted: any user with the url has access. Project and its data cannot be found through search functions.
  • Public: any user has access. Project and its data can be found through search functions.

As per our Terms of Use and Community guidelines, you will need to make your project and data public after completion of your study. One year after the project end date, we will send you a warning and automatically make your project and data public. If there are valid reasons for not making your projects and/or data public, you can email help@studycrafter.com with your username, project information, and a reason for not making your project/data public. For projects, you have to choose your preferred setting before you can begin acquiring data. Project data is set by default to private.

How Do We Protect Your Information?

We maintain a multi-disciplinary approach to privacy, aimed to address all aspects of information protection, including both security and privacy programs. We strive to protect your information from any unauthorized access and/or disclosure. We also anonymize all data. Your identity will not be known to other users and to the StudyCrafter team. Only site administrators who are responsible for maintaining the servers have access to personal information, which is stored securely and separately from all other data. Systems that solicit or display personally-identifiable information are protected by authentication and authorization controls and web-based experiences involving personal information are secured by SSL (Secure Sockets Layer protocol) with 128-bit encryption. We remind users, however, that no method of transmission over the Internet can be 100% secure. In the event of a data breach, we will notify all registered users within 72-hours.

Age Restrictions on Data Collection

By the laws of the United States of America and the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the legal age of consent to research participation is 18 years and older. Minors need to receive parental/guardian consent. For this reason, only participants that can verify that they are 18 years or older are eligible to create an account and participate in this community as a registered user. Minors can still play projects as guests and should acknowledge that they are younger than 18 years old in order to prevent any data collection.

Rights as Research Participant

Users of StudyCrafter are research participants as part of the work pursued by the StudyCrafter team, see Our Research page. If you have any questions about your rights in this research, you may contact Nan C. Regina, Director, Human Subject Research Protection, 490 Renaissance Park, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, 02115. Tel: (+1) 617.373.4588, Email: n.regina@northeastern.edu. You may call anonymously if you wish.

Changes to the Privacy Policy

The Privacy Statement is subject to change at any time, and the revision date will be noted here. We encourage users to regularly review the Privacy Policy for any changes. You will also receive an email from us everytime we update our Privacy Policy with the most recent changes listed.

The StudyCrafter Privacy was last updated on July 26th, 2018.