ScholarStudio ยท Feedback Refinery
Terms & Conditions
These Terms & Conditions govern your use of Feedback Refinery, a ScholarStudio service. By using Feedback Refinery, you agree to these terms. If you use the service on behalf of a university, employer or other organisation, you are also responsible for complying with that organisation's requirements.
1. What Feedback Refinery does
Feedback Refinery is a teaching and supervision support tool. It can retrieve comments from Google Docs, access linked audio feedback, transcribe audio, refine written or spoken feedback using artificial intelligence, analyse feedback patterns, maintain a history of document-processing runs, and write user-approved comments back to Google Docs.
2. Accounts and Google permissions
Some functions require a signed-in Feedback Refinery account and explicit Google Drive authorisation. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your accounts and for using only Google files and information that you are entitled to access.
Google authorisation does not give ScholarStudio unrestricted access to your Drive. The application requests access for the functions it provides, and Google continues to enforce the permissions associated with your account and files.
3. Your responsibility for student and institutional information
You must have an appropriate basis and, where required, permission to process any student work, feedback, recordings, personal information or confidential institutional material submitted to Feedback Refinery. You are responsible for complying with applicable law, research or teaching ethics requirements, contractual duties, and your institution's information-governance policies.
Do not upload or process material where your institution or another binding rule prohibits the use of external cloud or AI services.
4. AI-generated material must be reviewed
AI-generated text and transcriptions can contain mistakes, omissions or changes in emphasis. Feedback Refinery is intended to support, not replace, the supervisor's academic judgement. You remain responsible for reviewing generated material before relying on it or writing it back to a student's document.
You should pay particular attention to whether the refined comment accurately represents your intended evaluation, disciplinary terminology, degree of certainty and practical advice.
5. Write-back actions
Feedback Refinery may modify a Google document only when a user invokes a write-back function. You are responsible for checking the proposed output and selecting the correct source document before authorising write-back.
6. Acceptable use
You may not use Feedback Refinery to:
- access material without authorisation;
- violate privacy, copyright, confidentiality or other legal rights;
- misrepresent AI-generated material as independently verified fact;
- circumvent security, authentication, rate limits or access controls;
- interfere with the service or use it in a way that materially harms other users or providers.
7. Ownership and licence to process
You retain whatever rights you hold in the material you submit. You grant ScholarStudio the limited permission necessary to process that material for the functions you request, including transmission to service providers required to provide those functions.
ScholarStudio retains rights in the Feedback Refinery software, interface, branding and original service materials, subject to any third-party licences that apply.
8. Third-party services
Feedback Refinery depends on third-party services, including Google and OpenAI. Their availability, security controls, technical limits and terms can change independently of ScholarStudio. Use of those services may also be subject to terms between you or your institution and the relevant provider.
9. Availability and changes
ScholarStudio may update, add, remove or modify Feedback Refinery features as the service develops. We may suspend access where necessary for maintenance, security, legal compliance, abuse prevention or changes imposed by a service provider.
10. No guarantee of academic or technical outcomes
Feedback Refinery is provided as a support tool. ScholarStudio does not guarantee that AI output will be error-free, that a transcription will be complete, that a third-party integration will always be available, or that use of the tool will satisfy a particular institution's academic, privacy or regulatory requirements.
11. Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, ScholarStudio is not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential loss arising from reliance on AI output, user-authorised changes to documents, loss of access to third-party services, or use of the service contrary to these terms. Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.
12. Privacy
The Feedback Refinery Privacy Policy explains how information is accessed, processed, stored and shared, including the use of Google APIs, Firebase and OpenAI.
13. Suspension or termination
ScholarStudio may suspend or terminate access where a user materially breaches these terms, creates a security risk, uses the service unlawfully, or where continued provision is no longer technically or legally feasible. Users may stop using the service at any time.
14. Governing law
Unless mandatory law requires otherwise, these terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa. Any dispute will remain subject to rights and remedies that cannot be excluded under applicable law.
15. Changes to these terms
ScholarStudio may revise these terms when the service or its legal and technical environment changes. The effective date above will identify the current published version. Material changes may require renewed acceptance where appropriate.
16. Contact
Questions about these terms can be directed to ScholarStudio through the contact information published at scholarstudio.org.