Institutional & classroom use
This page supplements the terms of service for professors, departments, and institutions who use foyl Learn with a class - whether you are piloting it with one class or running it across a programme. It explains how classroom use works and, importantly, what foyl does and does not do with student data. If any term here conflicts with the terms of service, this page controls for classroom use.
Students create their own accounts and join your class with a code. Your institution never sends us a student roster, and we never receive a student's email, legal name, or student ID. Because of that, foyl operates as a learning tool your students use directly - not as a "school official" that maintains education records on your institution's behalf.
How classroom use works
- An instructor creates one or more classes and shares an 8-character invite code with their students.
- Students self-register. Each student signs in with their own GitHub account and chooses their own display name. Enrolment is the student's own action - the instructor never uploads or provides student identities to us.
- Instructor accounts are verified by us. Verification is a manual check that you are teaching a real class. Until it completes you can explore the platform and the teaching resources, but you cannot create classes, view rosters, or assign shifts. Email support@foyl.io to start it.
- There is no seat limit and no per-student charge. Once you are verified, every student who joins any of your classes has the full platform - all labs, foyl Range, the report builders, foyl Shift, the incident walkthroughs and certificates - free for as long as they remain enrolled. Add as many students and classes as your teaching needs.
- A student who leaves your class, or whose class is deleted, keeps their account and their progress but returns to the free tier. Their work is never deleted because of a change in access.
- Fees, if any are ever agreed with your institution, are for access to platform features - never for us to process student records on your institution's behalf.
We are not a FERPA "school official"
Because students enrol themselves and your institution discloses no education records to us, foyl is not designated as, and does not act as, a "school official" with a legitimate educational interest under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and we do not maintain education records on your institution's behalf. Specifically:
- We do not receive, request, or store any personally identifiable information from your institution's records - no email, no legal name, no student ID, no institutional identifier. The only identity we hold is an opaque GitHub account id plus a display name the student chooses.
- Your institution remains the sole custodian of its official education records. The progress a student generates on foyl Learn is practice telemetry, not an official grade or record of record. Any grade you assign for classroom work belongs in your institution's own grade system.
- We do not use student activity to build advertising profiles, and we never sell or rent student data. foyl Learn is supported by voluntary donations, not by monetizing learners.
Some institutions require every vendor that touches students to sign a data processing / school-official agreement, regardless of the actual data flows. If yours does, we can discuss an institutional arrangement under which foyl is formally designated a school official with the corresponding controls. Reach out to support@foyl.io and we will work with your procurement or privacy office.
Student data and rights
- What we collect, and how, is described in full in the privacy policy. In short: a GitHub account id, a self-chosen display name, an optional class display name, and the student's own activity on the platform.
- Every student can export or permanently delete their own account and all associated data at any time from their privacy & data page - this is the student's own right, exercised directly, and does not depend on the institution.
- A class instructor sees only the display name, class display name (if set), progress, checkpoints, scores, shift results, and their own private teaching notes for students who have joined that instructor's class. Instructors must keep this confidential and may not export or reuse it outside the platform.
- The Analyst Dossier is a separate, entirely student-controlled public portfolio. Nothing a student does on the platform is made public unless that student opts in themselves.
Instructor responsibilities
- Use the platform only for legitimate teaching, and keep any student data you can see confidential.
- Do not present foyl Learn progress as an official institutional record, and do not require it as the sole system of record for grades.
- foyl Learn is for learners who are at least 16 years old. Do not direct anyone under 16 to create an account. If you teach minors under 16, an account-free classroom arrangement must be discussed with us first.
- You are responsible for using verified-instructor access in good faith, for the class or programme it was granted for. Creating classes to hand the full platform to people you are not teaching is a misuse of it, and we may withdraw verification.
Availability and changes
foyl Learn is provided "as is" and "as available" as described in the terms of service. Features and the contents of each tier may change; we will give reasonable notice of material changes that affect an active class, and we will not withdraw content from under a class mid-term. We may update this page as the platform evolves.
Contact
Questions about classroom use, instructor verification, or an institutional arrangement: support@foyl.io.