Policies

This page details WIDA's privacy, copyright and accessibility statements and is subject to change at any time.

WIDA Privacy Policy

WIDA is committed to respecting your right to privacy. Our goal is to provide the greatest transparency concerning the information we collect, and the control that you maintain over your information.

This Privacy Policy applies to the following and only the following websites (the “WIDA Websites”):

• wida.wisc.edu (main public site)
• portal.wida.us (the WIDA Secure Portal for WIDA Consortium member educators)
• grow.wida.us (secure platform for a segment of WIDA's professional learning courses)
• learn.wida.us (secure site for WIDA's Learning Management System)

This Privacy Policy describes the types of data that we collect as a result of your interaction with the services provided on the WIDA Websites, how we use and share that data, and how you can manage your information.

Effective February 12, 2019

Table of Contents

• Agreement to Privacy Policy
• Types of Data and Collection Methods
• How WIDA Uses Data
• How WIDA Shares and Discloses Data
• How WIDA Secures and Stores Data
• Links to Other Websites
• Managing Your Information
• Contact Information
• Changes

Agreement to Privacy Policy

Please read this Privacy Policy in its entirety. Your use and access to the WIDA Websites is subject to your agreement with this policy, along with any applicable terms of service. By using or accessing the WIDA Websites, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with this policy, please do not use or access the WIDA Websites. You may print a copy of this policy for your records.

Types of Data and Collection Methods

WIDA collects both information that you give to us and automated data concerning your use of the WIDA Websites.

Data You Provide to WIDA

PERSONAL DATA

WIDA protects the identity of visitors by limiting the collection of personally identifiable information. You can use many of our services and their special features without explicitly giving us your personal information. 

However, in order to access and interact with many of our services, we require that you provide information to create a WIDA Secure Portal account that allows us to efficiently interact with you. This data may include:

• Email address
• First and last name
• State, district and school affiliation
• Professional interests
• Job function

You may edit this information at any time to change, add or remove it from our services (see Managing Your Information, below).

SURVEY DATA

WIDA occasionally conducts online surveys including customer satisfaction, feedback on our products and services, etc. All surveys are voluntary and you may decline to participate.

Automatically Collected Data

INTERACTIONAL DATA

We collect information based on your activities on the WIDA Websites. Through your interactions with our professional learning and training services, we collect information on your progress through and completion of course modules, as well as quiz results.

ANALYTICS

Like many websites, the WIDA Websites use cookies (small files transferred from a website to its visitors’ hard drives or browsers for record-keeping purposes) and other similar information-gathering technologies to collect certain information automatically and store it in log files.

Web beacons, tags and scripts may be used on our services. These assist us in delivering cookies, counting visits to the WIDA Websites, understanding usage and campaign effectiveness, and determining whether an email has been acted upon.

The types of information we are able to automatically collect using Google Analytics, as a result of your browser setting cookies, includes but is not limited to:

• Clicks
• Downloads
• Demographics
• IP addresses
• Referral sites
• Search terms

For more information on Google Analytics, please visit the Google Analytics website.

Our use of cookies, beacons and similar technologies also enable us to allow you to navigate the WIDA Websites, use our services, and access secure areas of our services.

How WIDA Uses Data

We process your personal data and automatically collected information about your use of the WIDA Websites to deliver services to you and to inform you of other benefits or opportunities associated with our services. We may also use this information to help us understand our users in order to better tailor our products and services to meet your needs.

Specifically, we use this data to:

• fulfill the delivery of our products and services
• improve our products and services
• monitor the use of our services and gather non-personal information about visitors to our sites
• track general information about the technologies our visitors use, such as web browsers, operating systems, device types and Internet providers
• track information about what pages you visit, how long you are on our sites, how you got there, and what you click on during your visit
• help diagnose problems with our servers and administer our websites
• analyze trends, track visitor movements, and gather broad demographic information that assists us in identifying visitor preferences
• deliver and administer professional learning, record the details of your studies, and determine/confirm your academic achievements
• better understand how you interact with our websites (including through the use of cookies and similar technologies) and ensure that our sites are presented in the most effective manner for you
• send you updates and information about our new programs and services, upcoming events or other promotions or news. We will only send you marketing information if you consent to us doing so at the time you provide us with your personal data.
• If you elect to receive marketing communications from us, then we will retain information about your marketing preferences until you opt out of receiving these communications.

How WIDA Shares and Discloses Data

With the limited exception of posting contact information on state pages, we do not post or publish personal information of individuals. You will have the most control over whether your personal data is publicly posted/published on the WIDA Websites. We will post/publish your personal data only if you have given consent that we may do so.

We do not sell or rent your personal data.

We may share your personal and/or automatically collected data with internal University of Wisconsin-Madison units (where WIDA is housed) and external third parties in the following circumstances:

• Your State or Local Educational Agency: To demonstrate compliance with assessment administration training requirements and completion of professional learning course requirements. We only share training/course completion information and scoring on applicable quizzes. We do not, however, share specific answers that you provide in quiz responses. We also may share survey results or other feedback that you have volunteered to provide to us to your state or local educational agency for their use in determining the effectiveness in our training and professional learning programs.
• Vendors and Service Providers: To assist us in meeting business operations needs and to perform certain services and functions, we may share your information with our third-party providers of technical support services, analytics and educator usage insights. These third parties are under contract with us and can only access, process or store your personal data in the course of performing their services for us. Our vendors and service providers are prohibited from using or sharing your personal data for any purpose other than providing their services to us and are prohibited from selling or renting your information to any party.

We encourage you to review the privacy policies of our vendors and service providers, including but not limited to: Wisconsin Center of Educational Products and Services (WCEPS), Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER), Data Recognition Corporation (DRC), Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) and MetriTech.

• Legal Requirements: If required to do so by law pursuant to valid legal process, applicable regulation or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to (i) comply with a legal obligation, (ii) protect and defend the rights or property of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, (iii) act in urgent circumstances to protect the personal safety of you our users, and the public, (iv) in response for requests for public records, as applicable under the Wisconsin Public Records law, or (v) protect us against legal liability.

How WIDA Secures and Stores Data

Data Security

We take reasonable administrative and technical steps to protect the your information from loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration or destruction. Where feasible, systems that solicit or display personally-identifiable information are protected by authentication and authorization controls. Web-based experiences involving personal information are generally secured by SSL (Secure Sockets Layer protocol) with 128-bit encryption. Additionally, we protect your data by restricting access to your Personal Data to only those employees who need to know that information within the scope of duties of their employment. Finally, we train our employees about the importance of confidentiality and maintaining the privacy and security of your information.

Data Storage

All data is stored by WIDA on its servers located at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and on the servers of cloud-based management services that WIDA engages, all located in the United States.

We will keep your Personal Data pursuant to our retention schedules which authorize retention for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, while we have a legitimate business need to do so, or as required by law (e.g. for tax, legal, accounting or other purposes), whichever is the longer.

Links to Other Web Sites

Our website may contain links to third-party web sites or services that are not owned or controlled by WIDA. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any linked website that you visit.

Managing Your Information

You may, at any time, do any of the following: 

• Access your Personal Data
• Amend and/or delete your Personal Data
• To unsubscribe from any contact list you sign up for
• Withdraw any consent that you have given at any time

If/when you provide us with Personal Data on our websites, this is done on an entirely voluntary basis. If you choose not to provide the requested information, various customer benefits may not be available to you.

WIDA Secure Portal Accounts

To access and amend your Personal Data on the WIDA Secure Portal (portal.wida.us) at any time, log on to your account and edit your “My Account Info.”

WIDA News eNewsletter

You may manage your WIDA e-newsletter subscriptions by subscribing or unsubscribing at any time on our News page. If you have any difficulties managing your newsletter preferences, please contact us at help@wida.us.

Cookies

All new visitors to the public-facing WIDA website (wida.wisc.edu) have the option to accept or deny cookies. If you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our services. If you wish to delete cookies within your browser, please see your browser's privacy settings. You can also use the Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Add-on to disable tracking by Google Analytics. For more information about cookies, please visit the All About Cookies website.

Contact Information

WIDA is part of the University of Wisconsin – Madison. WIDA is housed in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) in the School of Education.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy and/or the practices or the use of this site, please email us at privacy@wida.us or send postal mail to:

WIDA at Wisconsin Center for Education Research
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Attn: WIDA Data Privacy
1025 West Johnson Street
Madison, WI 53706-1706

Changes

This Privacy Policy is subject to change at any time. We encourage users to regularly review the Privacy Policy for any changes. We will post notice at the top of our Privacy Policy if we make any changes.