Lecturer & Institutional Use — Marking & Uploaded Submissions

1. Roles: Who Is Responsible for What

When a lecturer or supervisor uploads student submissions to a TeachMe marking batch, the students whose work is uploaded may not hold TeachMe accounts and have no direct relationship with us. In POPIA terms:

• The lecturer (and/or their institution) is the responsible party: they decide that the submissions will be processed for assessment, and they must be authorised to do so.
• TeachMe is an operator: we process the uploaded submissions solely on the lecturer's instructions, solely to support their marking, and for no other purpose.

Every marking batch requires the lecturer to confirm a processing declaration before any upload is possible. This declaration is recorded with a timestamp.

2. What We Do With Uploaded Submissions

• Each submission is assigned an anonymised code (e.g. SUB-001) and its file is renamed to that code in storage. Original filenames are retained but never displayed by default.
• Text is extracted from the file so it can be displayed in the marking workspace. An automated, best-effort redaction removes cover-page identity labels, email addresses and South African ID-number patterns from the extracted text. Redaction is best-effort and cannot guarantee removal of every identifying detail within the body of a document.
• Revealing a submission's original filename ("unmasking") is an explicit action by the lecturer and is logged every time.
• Uploaded submissions are never used to train AI models, never shared with third parties other than the operators described in our Privacy Policy, and never used for any purpose other than supporting the uploading lecturer's marking.

3. Retention and Deletion

• When a lecturer marks a batch as complete, a 60-day retention period begins.
• After 60 days, the uploaded files and all extracted submission text are automatically and permanently deleted, and original filenames are erased.
• The lecturer's own marking (scores, comments and feedback) is retained, as it is the lecturer's work product and contains the student's work only to the extent the lecturer quoted it.
• A lecturer may delete any submission, or an entire batch and all its files, at any time before then.

4. Students' Rights

If your work has been uploaded to TeachMe by your lecturer for marking, your POPIA rights (access, correction, deletion, objection) apply. Because your lecturer or institution is the responsible party for that processing, requests should be directed to them in the first instance. You may also contact us at privacy@teachme.org.za and we will assist, including by referring the request to the uploading lecturer and acting on their instruction or our legal obligations.

5. AI Assistance in Marking

Where TeachMe provides AI assistance with marking, the AI only ever drafts — suggested comments or indications for the lecturer to review. Every mark and every piece of feedback is decided, edited and finalised by the human marker. TeachMe does not perform autonomous grading, and any integrity-related observations the system surfaces are indications for the lecturer to verify, never verdicts.

6. Contact