Privacy policy

Lernie (operated by Chinasa) provides a learning platform to schools, colleges, universities and other organisations ("institutions").

For the courses, records and messages inside an institution's Lernie space, the institution decides what data is collected and why. It is the data controller and we process that data on its behalf, following its instructions.

For our own website, contact form, online sign-up, billing and support, Lernie is the data controller.

Depending on how you use Lernie, we collect:

• Account and profile details: name, email address, role (student, instructor, administrator), profile photo, preferred language, institution and department.
• Learning records: courses you teach or take, pages you complete, assignment submissions and uploaded files, quiz answers and scores, grades and feedback, grade disputes, attendance marks and your academic record.
• Communication: inbox messages and attachments, discussion posts and replies, announcements you've read and support conversations with our team.
• Exam integrity signals: when a quiz uses monitoring or the Lernie Lockdown app, we record time spent per question, navigation between questions, answer changes, tab or window switches and paste events, and calculate a risk indicator for the instructor. We do not record your camera, microphone or screen.
• Enquiries and sign-up: details you send through our contact form (name, email, phone, institution, role, country, message) and, when an institution buys a plan, the organisation name, administrator contact details, plan and billing history.
• Technical data: IP address when you sign in, the device type and notification token used for push notifications, sign-in times, records of administrative actions (audit logs) and error reports that help us fix problems.

Online payments are handled by our payment providers (such as Flutterwave, Paystack or Stripe). Card and bank details are entered on their secure pages and are never stored by Lernie. We keep the payment reference, amount, currency, date and the resulting invoice.

We use personal data to:

• provide the platform: run courses, deliver submissions, calculate and release grades, send the notifications you've chosen and keep timetables;
• keep accounts and assessments secure and fair, including detecting suspicious sign-ins and supporting exam integrity;
• answer enquiries and support requests;
• bill institutions and keep the financial records the law requires;
• understand how the platform is used in aggregate so we can improve it.

We never sell personal data, never use it for advertising and never build marketing profiles of students.

Where data protection laws require a legal basis, we rely on: the contract with your institution (to provide the service); our and your institution's legitimate interests in running a secure, fair and reliable platform; legal obligations (for example tax and accounting records); and your consent where we ask for it, such as optional notifications, which you can withdraw at any time.

When instructors use Lernie AI to draft courses or quiz questions, the course details and teaching materials they choose are sent to our AI provider (OpenAI) to generate a draft. Instructors review and edit everything before students see it.

We don't send student grades or submissions for AI course generation, and under our provider's API terms the data we send is not used to train their models.

Exam integrity indicators and late-submission penalties are calculated automatically, but they are only signals. Decisions about academic misconduct, grades and progression are always made by people at your institution. If you think a decision about you is wrong, contact your instructor or institution.

We share personal data only with:

• your institution and the staff it authorises;
• service providers who help us run Lernie, under contracts that require them to protect it: cloud hosting, file storage and delivery (Cloudflare), email delivery, push notifications and Google sign-in (Google/Firebase), AI drafting (OpenAI), payments (Flutterwave, Paystack, Stripe) and error monitoring (Sentry);
• authorities, when the law requires it and only to the extent required.

If Lernie is ever involved in a merger or acquisition, personal data would remain protected by this policy.

Some of our providers process data outside your country. When that happens we use providers that offer appropriate safeguards, such as standard contractual clauses or equivalent protections required by the applicable law.

We keep institution data for as long as the institution's account is active. When an institution leaves, it can export its data and we then delete or anonymise it within a reasonable period, unless the law requires us to keep some of it longer.

Sign-in sessions expire automatically. Contact enquiries and support conversations are kept while we need them to help you and then deleted on request. Invoices and payment records are kept for as long as tax and accounting laws require.

Many Lernie users are students, and some are under 18. Institutions are responsible for having the right to enrol them and for getting any parental or guardian consent their local law requires. We only use students' data to provide the learning service to their institution, never for advertising.

Depending on where you live, you can ask to access, correct, delete or export your personal data, object to or restrict how it's used, and withdraw consent you've given.

Because institutions control student and staff records, please contact your institution first; we'll help them respond. For data we control, such as enquiries, sign-up and billing, contact us directly.

You can also complain to your data protection authority, for example the Nigeria Data Protection Commission, Kenya's Office of the Data Protection Commissioner, South Africa's Information Regulator or your local authority in the UK or EU.

We protect data with industry-standard measures, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), hashed passwords, short-lived sign-in sessions, role-based access, strict separation between institutions and audit logs of administrative actions. No system is perfectly secure, so if we become aware of a breach that affects your data we will inform your institution, and you or the authorities where required, without undue delay.

Lernie only uses what it needs to work: a sign-in session kept in your browser, a cookie that remembers you're signed in, your language and your light or dark theme. We don't use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

We'll update this page when our practices change and tell institutions about significant changes before they take effect.

Questions or requests about privacy? Use the contact form and choose "Something else", and we'll reply within one business day.