Student: means a person who is a prospective student, who has applied to enrol, or a person who is enrolled at the University.
Employee: means an individual employed by the University and for the purposes of this Policy extends to current and past employees of the University.
At Auckland University of Technology (AUT), our mission is great graduates and our vision is to be a university known for the desirability of our contemporary education built on our commitments to creating exceptional learning experiences, discovery and application of knowledge for wellbeing and prosperity, responding to our place in the world, building our position as New Zealand’s university of technology, and being a place where people love to work and learn.
We cannot achieve our mission without collecting and processing information about our prospective, current and former students, and about our donors.
This privacy statement explains AUT’s practice in relation to the privacy of personal information in accordance with the provisions of the Privacy Act 2020, the Public Records Act 2005 and the Official Information Act 1982. It covers: why we collect, how we collect, what we collect, who has access, how we use your information, how we share, how we manage your information , and your rights to access and correct your information we hold.
To achieve our mission and carry out our functions and activities as a university, AUT must collect, use, store, and disclose personal information relating to prospective, current and former students, as well as our university friends (alumni, donors and guests (parents, whānau, secondary school contacts, agents)). AUT’s functions and activities include but are not limited to
In some cases, collection of your personal information is required under New Zealand law (including the Education and Training Act 2020 and the Children’s Act 2014 for example). Without your personal information, we may not be able to enrol support you in your consideration to study, application or enrolment as a student, or provide services and benefits to you.
Where possible personal information is obtained directly from individuals, or from their nominated agent(s). Data is collected when you provide it to us directly, like when you apply to study through our website or when you connect with one of our AUT employees.
Additionally, information may be obtained or verified through a third party such as a relevant government or education agencies, including the New Zealand National Student Index.
If you are a participant in a research project being managed by the AUT, you can read more about how your personal information may be used and shared in the Participant Information Sheet provided to you by the researcher. Please note, however, that the general information in this statement applies.
Our normal university operations are things that we legally need to do to conduct our day-to-day business and fulfil our obligations as a public sector provider, as well as the work we do to create exceptional experiences for our students. The data we collect is different depending on your enquiry, application, enrolment status or how you interact with us.
General information collected from prospects, applicants, students, alumni, donors and visitors/guests may include:
As a visitor to the website we may collect personal data and click through data. The AUT App also collects information that you provide, and this is treated differently. Details on what type of data we collect when visiting our websites and apps can be found in the Web Privacy and Security Statement.
As a prospective AUT student applicant or current student, we may need to collect more information from you regarding your studies, demographics and preferences. The relevant information is important and necessary for us to support you in the consideration period, process your application to study, and use our facilities and services.
Information may include and is not limited to:
Other data includes any information needed to respond to your interest in AUT, complete your enrolment or fulfil tasks related to your studies and includes agreements made with third parties for services associated with the University and our partners, like applications to Studylink to help cover course fees.
This includes all information you provide on all types of application forms, like scholarship applications or application enquiries, AUT accommodation applications, your involvement with specific services that the University offers, your participation in student life, or any other way you decide to provide information to us.
We collect and process personal information about our alumni (former students) for the primary purpose of connecting with you with University and other alumni. The relevant information is important to meet our legitimate interests, including in making sure we can maintain our community with our alumni and promote university services and events.
We do not rely on consent to communicate with our alumni, as we believe this community is integral to the success of the University. However, you can opt out of these communications at any time by clicking unsubscribe in the footer of an AUT email, or by emailing alumni@aut.ac.nz.
The information we collect about alumni
The personal information we collect about you as alumni is initially that which you provided as a student and may include:
In addition, we may also collect the following information about you:
How we use your information
We will use your personal information to:
How we share your information
We may share your information with:
If we need to share your information with a third party that is overseas, we will ensure that this complies with principle 12 of the Privacy Act. If the third party is not located in a country that has comparable privacy laws to ours, we will require them to agree to protect your information to New Zealand standards.
Donations from our alumni make a real impact on our ability to retain our excellence in teaching, learning and research. We collect and process personal information about potential and actual donors for the primary purpose of soliciting and processing donations and to stay in touch with donors.
The relevant information is important to meet our legitimate interests, including in making sure we can maintain our funding and our high educational standards. We do not rely on consent to communicate with our donors, as we believe this community is integral to the success of the University. However, you can opt out of donor communications at any time by emailing foundation@aut.ac.nz or call 09 921 9234.
We may carry out research to assess your likely ability and willingness to make donations or gifts to the University so that we can better tailor our fundraising approaches or requests. This research, which is sometimes known as prospect research, may include collecting and storing information about you that is publicly available as well as information that you have provided to us. We may carry out this research ourselves or we may use a third party. If we use a third party, we will ensure that your information is held confidentially, with appropriate security safeguards and only used in accordance with our strict instructions. If you would not like us to carry out the above activities in relation to you, please email foundation@aut.ac.nz or call 09 921 9234.
The personal information we collect about you as a potential or actual donor will include:
In addition, we may also collect information about your:
How we use your information
We will use your personal information to:
How we share your information
We may share your information with:
If we need to share your information with a third party that is overseas, we will ensure that this complies with principle 12 of the Privacy Act. If the third party is not located in a country that has comparable privacy laws to ours, we will require them to agree to protect your information to New Zealand standards.
As a physical or virtual guest to the University, you may have to provide some personal information for statistical purposes or for safety, tracking, and security reasons.
As well as general information mentioned previously, we may also ask for more information such as:
AUT takes great care with the data collected. Information will be stored on University files and database(s) and all practicable security measures will be maintained.
Students are issued a unique identifier in different AUT systems of record. For prospective students this unique identifier will be associated with an email address; however, for applicants, enrolled students and alumni the unique identifier is used in conjunction with a secondary means of identification or password/PIN to manage and protect their own personal information.
Data is kept for as long as we need it to fulfil university obligations. We are required under New Zealand law to retain information in accordance with the Public Records Act 2005.
Enrolled students at AUT may wish to engage with the Student Medical Centre and access the Counselling service. Students have the right to request information held about them or request corrections to that information.
AUT’s Student Medical Centre and Counselling service take care to ensure that health and counselling information is always managed in accordance with the Health Information Privacy Code. Electronic records held by these services remain confidential & accessible to those granted with specific access rights.
We make sure that students’ information is used and shared only in ways that support their health and wellbeing, or the health and wellbeing of other members of the AUT community. Where additional support is recommended and with the individual's consent, information may be shared with others at AUT.
AUT Student Medical Centre is a member of a Primary Health Organisation (PHO). The PHO collects individual data to apply funding and measure clinical outcomes aligned with NZ health authorities. The practice does not share students' consultation notes.
If you have any concerns about the collection, use or disclosure of your health information, please email counselling@aut.ac.nz.
In alignment with our core values and to fulfil our obligations as a university, AUT staff members and other personnel within the University or within agencies under contract to the University will have access to students’ personal information.
If you are a student, we will share your information (including information relating to your health and wellbeing) with appropriate staff members if we are concerned about your engagement, academic progress, behaviour, safety, security, or wellbeing (or the safety, security, or wellbeing of others) under the Education (Pastoral Care of Tertiary and International Learners) Code of Practice 2021. Appropriate staff members could include, for example, Student Hub, Disability Services, Student Accommodation (including staff employed in our Student Accommodation facilities), The Office of Māori Advancement, Office of Pacific Advancement, relevant teaching staff, and specialist student support teams.
We will use your personal information to:
Further details on what type of data we collect when visiting our websites and apps can be found in the Web Privacy and Security Statement.
In order to conduct our day to day business as a university and to fulfil our responsibilities under the Education and Training Act 2020 and other laws, some personal information we collect needs to be shared with authorised people or groups at AUT, with external organisations or with universities that provide services and information to us. For AUT Student Accommodation where there is a third-party owner, resident information may be shared with the owner for the purpose of financial management and facility maintenance. We will only use your data in the ways we state here. We would only share data outside of these guidelines if we are legally permitted to under the Privacy Act 2020.
Professional agencies include, but are not limited to:
Other agencies may include, but are not limited to:
Information provided to external agencies is either student-specific (typically name, date of birth, current contact details and academic/graduation details) or cohort-specific (aggregated or statistical information that does not identify individuals). We will only provide student-level information if absolutely necessary. Where possible, any information that we provide to outside agencies is aggregated or de-identified.
The University may only disclose personal information to an agency outside New Zealand if the receiving agency is subject to similar safeguards to those with Principle 12 of the Privacy Act. If a jurisdiction does not offer similar protections, then we will communicate this to you that the information may not be adequately protected and will seek your authorisation.
Data is only collected and used for the purposes we have stated to you. If information we collect is going to be used outside of our normal operations as a university or needs to be disclosed to a third-party agency other than in the routine ways described above, then we will communicate this to you and ask for permission.
Students and individuals have the right to request information held about them or request corrections to that information. In some cases, we may need to verify the changes and corrections in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020. If a student withholds information or provides incomplete, false or misleading information the University may decline or cancel the admission or enrolment and may withhold the academic record if its veracity cannot be confirmed.
Some information may not be able to be shared, such as data that holds details of other students, is incomplete or still in progress. If information is to be withheld, we will tell you why.
If you would like a copy of any personal information we hold about you, or ask for it to be corrected if you think it is wrong (and you are unable to update it yourself through a relevant online service), please email studenthub@aut.ac.nz or call 0800 AUT UNI (0800 288 864).
We may need to verify your identity or authority before responding to your request. You may need to provide specific details about the nature of your relationship with the University and the information you are seeking so that we can easily locate it for you. Once we’ve verified who you are we’ll respond to your request as soon as reasonably practicable and no later than 20 working days after we receive it.
Auckland University of Technology (AUT) has always analysed data collected routinely from students in order to improve how it operates. In recent years, the increasing amount of information generated by student interactions with online systems has seen the development of new analytics approaches, including learning analytics.
Learning analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about the progress of learners and the contexts in which learning takes place. It can improve the ways papers and programmes are developed, taught and assessed, and identify points on the student journey where individuals or groups of students may need additional support.
Examples of student engagement data include:
AUT brings together data from different data source systems in its Data Warehouse. AUT collects, uses, stores, and discloses personal information relating to students in accordance with the provisions of the Privacy Act.
Full details of privacy principles
All data selected for use in learning analytics is subject to data quality checks. These determine whether, for instance, the data is valid and the records are up to date.
Fields that could identify individual students such as email addresses or names are stored externally to the AUT Data Warehouse in the Data Vault. The Data Vault is a fully encrypted database with a number of access controls and security features and fulfils Principle 5 of the Privacy Act, which is designed to protect personal information from unauthorised use or disclosure.
Unfortunately, it is too administratively burdensome to have your data excluded. The University uses all student data to analyse patterns of behaviour. The analysis works on the dataset as a whole and does not identify an individual student by name or student ID number.
It is important to maintain a full dataset as any significant loss in student data could undermine the data validity of the predictive model.
Currently, AUT is only piloting the use of a learning analytics model based on student enrolment and study data. Student consent will be explicitly sought once the University begins to use student engagement data to provide targeted individualised learning and support interventions. Here, students are provided with the option to opt-out without attracting any negative consequences.
The potential adverse consequences of doing so will be clearly explained to students and they will retain the right to opt-in subsequently. Student consent for learning analytics interventions will be revised as the pilot project progresses.
If you have any concerns about the way we’ve collected or processed your personal information, let us know, so we can try to put the matter right. If we can’t resolve your concerns, you can also make a complaint to the Office of the NZ Privacy Commissioner by: