Privacy policy
This website privacy policy describes how The PR Academy MENA protects and makes use of the information you give us. It covers the following:
If you are asked to provide information, it will only be used in the ways described in this privacy policy.
Introduction
We gather and use certain information about individuals in order to provide products and services and to enable certain functions on these websites. We also collect information to better understand how visitors use the websites and to present timely, relevant information to them.
What data we gather
We may collect the followig information:
- Name and job title
- Contact information including email address and phone number
- Demographic information, such as postcode, preferences and interests
- Website usage data
- Other information relevant to client enquiries
- Other information pertaining to special offers and surveys
- Recent employment history
- Any special support you need with your studies.
Collecting this data helps us understand what you are looking for from the company, enabling us to deliver improved products and services. We may have to collect it to meet the requirements of the awarding bodies we work with.
Specifically, we may use data:
- For our own internal records
- To help ensure you select the course that is right for you and that you meet any eligibility criteria set out by the awarding body
- To improve the products and services we provide
- To contact you in response to a specific enquiry
- To customise the website for you
- To contact you via email, telephone or mail for market research reasons
To ensure we are providing the support you need with your studies.
We use Administrate (getadministrate.com) as our database and your information is held here. Only PR Academy admin team members can access it.
If your employer is paying for the course, we collect and hold their name and invoicing address so that we can raise an invoice. We hold the information for future invoicing should they send students to us in the future. This is held in Administrate.
CIPR Courses
A bit more detail about Chartered Institute of Public Relation (CIPR) courses:
- The CIPR asks us to collect data from you and pass it to them so that they can register you as a student, provide you with a student number and set you up on their database to record your result.
- We collect this data from you at enrolment and pass it to the CIPR via Dropbox (this may change in 2020 to a direct upload to a new CIPR teaching centre portal).
- We may collect your employment history to check that you meet the eligibility for the course. We keep this information on your record so that if we are audited by the CIPR we can show that students we enrolled met the entry criteria for the course.
- If it appears that you do not meet the eligibility criteria set by the CIPR, you can get in touch by phone or email to discuss whether the course is right for you and if so, continue with the enrolment.
- We keep submitted assignments for about six months after the final CIPR exam board for your course. (The CIPR as the awarding body can always provide your record.)
- We put all CIPR assignments through Turnitin plagiarism software http://turnitinuk.com/. No names are used, papers are only identifiable by the candidate number. We are obliged to do this by the CIPR.
The PR Academy MENA: www. tpra.me
Enrolment on courses is via the PR Academy website, the site is managed by Unseen Works : http://www.unseenworks.ae/
We gather information about how people use our The PR Academy MENA website. Please see section on Cookies below.
We have a chat facility. We use Zendesk, which was previously called Zopim, to provide this. You can request a copy of your chat at the end of the conversation. The transcripts come in to us by email and go into Administrate so that we can get back to you about any further queries and tie it all together if you enrol on a course. Find out more about Zendesk here: https://www.zopim.com/
If you enquire about a course with us either by email, phone, website or downloading a course brochure, we will keep you updated about our courses under the basis of Legitimate Interest. You can unsubscribe at any time from the link in the footer or by emailing courses@pracademy.co.uk and requesting to be unsubscribed.
If you opt in to our email newsletter for our free guides, toolkits and insights, we will email you under the basis of Consent. You can unsubscribe at any time from the link in the footer or by emailing courses@pracademy.co.uk and requesting to be unsubscribed.
Online learning centre: pronlinecourses.com
All our students have access to our online learning centre. When you have enrolled and paid for a course, we add you. We enter your name and email address and provide you with a password which you need to change on first log in.
If you join our free MOOC course, you will enrol directly on the online learning centre and enter your own details.
Our online learning centre uses Moodle software and is hosted by Synergy Learning who are based in Northern Ireland, https://www.synergy-learning.com/. Moodle provides us with data about your activity on the site – when you log in, what pages you view etc.
We may use this to look for trends in how people are engaging with content and it is useful if anything goes wrong when you are trying to upload work to a deadline. It shows us the most recent IP address that you logged in from.
The course pages stay available for two years (shorter courses) or three years (longer courses). After this time, the courses are deleted together with all the content. We remove you from the Moodle platform.
For some very short courses these timescales may vary and we will always message you to give you notice when we are going to delete a course.
Your course tutor/s and the PR Academy team have access to the online learning centre but this access is restricted according to role.
Cookies and how we use them
What is a cookie?
A cookie is a small file placed on your computer’s hard drive. It enables our website to identify your computer as you view different pages on our website.
Cookies allow websites and applications to store your preferences in order to present content, options or functions that are specific to you. They also enable us to see information like how many people use the website and what pages they tend to visit.
How we use cookies
We may use cookies to:
- Analyse our web traffic using an analytics package. Aggregated usage data helps us improve the website structure, design, content and functions.
- Identify whether you are signed in to our website. A cookie allows us to check whether you are signed in to the site.
- Test content on our website. For example, 50% of our users might see one piece of content, the other 50% a different piece of content.
- Store information about your preferences. The website can then present you with information you will find more relevant and interesting.
- To recognise when you return to our website. We may show your relevant content, or provide functionality you used previously.
- Cookies do not provide us with access to your computer or any information about you, other than that which you choose to share with us.
Controlling cookies
You can use your web browser’s cookie settings to determine how our website uses cookies. If you do not want our website to store cookies on your computer or device, you should set your web browser to refuse cookies.
However, please note that doing this may affect how our websites function. Some pages and services may become unavailable to you.
Unless you have changed your browser to refuse cookies, our websites will issue cookies when you visit it.
Controlling information about you
If you have a query or a complaint:
Send an email to: courses@tpra.me
The PR Academy MENA Head of Communications is the point of contact for everything to do with data.
We will never lease, distribute or sell your personal information to third parties unless we have your permission or the law requires us to. (Please note point above about information that we pass to the CIPR.)
Any personal information we hold about you is stored and processed under our data protection policy, in line with the Data Protection Act.
Our policy is to hold as little data as possible in as few places as possible and to always ensure that wherever it is held, it is secure. We are fussy about the systems suppliers that we work with because we want to ensure that they take their responsibilities about data seriously too.
Links from our site
Our website may contain links to other websites. Please note that we have no control of websites outside our domains. If you provide information to a website to which we link, we are not responsible for its protection and privacy.
Always be wary when submitting data to websites. Read the site’s data protection and privacy policies fully.
Other things to know
We never write down, collect or keep credit card information. We use Stripe to process payments.
If you contact us about a course we will respond to that query and keep in touch proactively for 18 months to see if you still want to study. We know from experience it sometimes takes a long time to get everything organised to join a course. You can let us know at any time if you don’t want to be contacted.
This policy is updated from time to time. The latest version is published on this page.
This website privacy policy was updated on 8 July 2021.