Wooclap Data Retention Policy

Information about data retention in Wooclap at the University.

Purpose and overview

Wooclap is the University’s centrally supported electronic voting system used to poll, interact and engage with participants during a synchronous in-class, online or hybrid teaching activity or event. 

The University must comply with data protection legislation by regularly deleting personal data it no longer requires.1 In Wooclap, this mainly relates to personal data held about users and user activity.  The Wooclap Service will use a defined process to delete that data.    

This policy has been developed in line with the University’s account expiry policy and student records retention schedule.

 

University user account expiry

The Wooclap user account archival and deletion policy will be based on the account expiry policy, which gives the following periods before account deletion:

 

Account Type 

Expiry Period (Days) 

Suspension Period (Days) 

Total (days) 

Total (months) 

Taught student 

150 

30 

180 

6 

Research student 

240 

30 

270 

8 

Staff 

30 

90 

120 

4 

Visitors 

N/A 

30 

30 

1 

 

Typically, access to services is maintained during the account expiry period.  Users lose access to services during the account suspension period.

 

User account retention

A manual process will be run annually to achieve the following outcomes;

  • Users with a ‘Suspended’ staff, visitor or student affiliation won’t be able to log into Wooclap.  Their Wooclap activity (Events/Questions/Questionnaires etc.) will not be deleted at this point and will remain within the system.  The user’s Wooclap account will remain in this ‘suspended’ state until the user’s affiliation is set to ‘deleted’ or is re-activated. Should the affiliation be re-activated from suspension during this period, the user will be able to access their content again, just as before the suspension.

 

  • Delete user account information on Wooclap completely, once a users Wooclap account has been suspended for 12 months.

     

Content retention

 

  • Once Presenter accounts are deleted in Wooclap, the following user created content will also be deleted: 

Events 

Questions 

Questionnaires 

Folders 

Participant Results 

Uploaded Presentations  (If Events are shared, they are not deleted, and other Collaborators will still be able to access content) 

 

  • Participant Event answers are anonymised and not deleted when Participants are deleted from Wooclap. 

 

  • LTI content accessed from the Learn VLE will be deleted as per VLE retention policy. 

     

This policy is effective from 1st Jan 2025.   

The Learning, Teaching and Web Services section is responsible for maintenance and review of this policy.  The contact officer for the policy is Mark Findlay, Technology Enhanced Learning Team Manager (Mark.Findlay@ed.ac.uk).   

Amendments: (none) 

Next review due: Summer 2026 

 

If you require this document in an alternative format, please email [Mark.Findlay@ed.ac.uk]. 

Related policies, procedures, guidelines and regulations:  This policy has been developed in line with the University’s Account Expiry Policy and Student records retention schedule.

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