TCDpolls - Terms of Use

Who can use this service to create Polls with a Creator role?

1.    Academic teaching, Research and Administration Staff

Trinity Staff members who have IT computer accounts can use this service as they are assigned a creator role to seek engagement on topics from a participant audience. Staff can use the service for as long as Trinity has a valid licence for the service.

2.    Teaching Assistants

Teaching Assistants (who are also usually postgraduates) who have IT computer accounts are assigned a creator role, who as part of their role in supporting the teaching or research function of a Department or School can use this service based on their Academic Staff member (Sponsor\Supervisor who the teaching Assistant reports to) submitting a request on their behalf via the online form.

Teaching Assistant Usage Duration and Yearly Renewal

Teaching Assistants are permitted to use the service for a duration of 1 year. At the end of each academic year, IT Services will remove access to this service for teaching assistants who were granted access during the current academic year.

If there is a requirement to use the service beyond the one academic year, the academic staff member will need to submit a new request for the teaching assistant to have access restored for another year.

Who cannot use this service to create Polls as a Creator role?

1.    Students

This service is not available to undergraduate or postgraduates who have no defined role in supporting the teaching and research function of the University. 

Students are allowed to respond to Polls created by Staff using this service with a Participant role.

2.    Trinity Visitors/Public

Any visitor who does not have a Trinity IT computer account cannot use this service.

What can this service be used for?

This service allows signed in users with creator rights to create 1. Polls with questions using Powerpoint or the TCDpolls web portal (TCDpolls.tcd.ie), 2. Short classroom feedback surveys and 3. Question and Answer sessions which audience participants can respond to. This service can be used for supporting the teaching and research activities of the University.

Where can this service be used?

This service is an online based service so it can be used any where there is network connectivity with the user’s computer or device and the audience participants’ network devices, such as University theater and seminar class locations, from your university office or from home office, anyway where there is network connectivity.

How can this service be used?

Creators can create and run polls via Powerpoint or the TCDpolls web portal, can create short classroom surveys and question and answer sessions to create a session id which the audience respondents can use to connect to the Poll to respond to the questions being asked from their own devices.

When can this service be used?

This service is available 24/7 365 days of the year once the creator and audience participants have internet access.

Data Protection - Specific Personally identifiable Information (PII)

Anonymous Polls

The TCDpolls service allows anonymous poll sessions (set as the default) where unidentified audience participants respond to the questions.

Identified Polls

The TCDpolls service also allows identified audience participant polls, surveys and questions and answer sessions where specific personally identifiable information such as firstname, lastname and email address would be recorded in the poll results and downloadable poll reports for identified polls. Both Staff Creators and Teaching Assistants must be cognisant of this fact.

Purpose Limitation

The PII information should be only used for the purpose for which it was designed for, to confirm who provided what poll answer to what question in identified polls, surveys and Q+A sessions, it should not be used for any other purpose. This is known as purpose limitation under GDPR data Protection.

Data Minimisation

This service should not be used to collect any further personally identifiable information or any special personally identifiable information of audience participants.

Storage Limitation

The personally identifiable information of audience participants should only be kept for as long as its purpose requires.

Confidentiality and Security

The personally identifiable information of audience participants should not be shared with third party persons.

Responsibility of the Academic Staff member (Sponsor) who supervises a Teaching Assistant

Accountability

For Teaching Assistants, who are assisting an Academic with teaching, lab tutorials etc, the Academic staff member must take responsibility to ensure that any teaching assistant is aware of their teaching related responsibilities when using this service.

Users must adhere to the relevant college policies as follows

1. The IT and Network Code of Conduct at https://www.tcd.ie/about/policies/it_and_network_code_of_conduct.php
2. The IT Security Policy at https://www.tcd.ie/ITSecurity/policies/
3. The Data Protection Policy at https://www.tcd.ie/dataprotection/assets/docs/dataprotectionpolicy/Data-Protection-Policy-16122020sep23.pdf
4. The Cloud IT Security policy at  https://www.tcd.ie/about/policies/assets/pdf/Cloud-Policy-2014-final.pdf

Data Protection Training

The academic staff member must ensure that the teaching assistant has completed and passed the Data Protection online module within Blackboard referenced on https://www.tcd.ie/dataprotection/training/

Integrity and Confidentiality

The Academic staff member should clearly outline what the TCDpolls service should be used for to the teaching assistant, as the teaching assistant will usually be a postgraduate who has duel roles, being a postgraduate student and also a part-time teaching assistant, so some guidance is required at the outset before the use of the TCDpolls service, to ensure that integrity and confidentiality of audience participants’ responses and personally identifiable information is maintained.