How DeckMate handles data
This page describes how DeckMate works today so teachers, students, and families can see what is kept. It is product documentation — not a privacy policy, terms of service, or legal advice. If your school or district has data requirements, check them with your school.
Students
Students in a class have a DeckMate account. DeckMate keeps:
- Their first and last name, the username they chose, and a scrambled (hashed) version of their password — never the password itself.
- Which classes they belong to.
- Their work: answers, scores, tries, teacher grades and written feedback.
- When they last signed in, and when they last worked on each assignment — so teachers can tell “logged in” from “actually worked.”
- Spoken answers, when a deck asks for one: the audio recording is kept for 50 days after it was recorded, then the audio is deleted. The grade and feedback stay.
A student who opens one assignment with an assignment code gives only a name. That name and their work are kept with that assignment; it is not a full account.
Signed-in students stay signed in on their device for up to a year. When a browser comes back, DeckMate asks “Continue as …?” so a shared device doesn't file work under the wrong student.
DeckMate does not currently offer students a self-serve way to delete their account.
Teachers
Teachers sign in through a separate sign-in service (Clerk). Teachers can see their own classes' rosters, work and grades, and can export grades to a CSV file at any time. Teachers can end a student's membership in a class; their past work in that class is kept.
Classes over time
- Active. Assigning, grading, reopening an assignment, or a student working keeps a class active. Just looking at grades does not.
- Archives soon. With no activity for 36 days, the teacher sees a warning that the class will be archived.
- Archived. After 50 days with no activity a class is archived: students can no longer see it and its join code stops working. Assignments, attempts, grades and feedback are all kept, and the teacher can open it, export it, or restore it.
- Deleted. DeckMate never deletes a class on its own. A teacher can delete an archived class permanently; that removes its roster, assignments, attempts, grades, feedback and recordings. Students' accounts are not deleted.
What DeckMate is not
DeckMate is for practice. It is not your school's official gradebook or student information system — export the results when you need them somewhere else.