Games and Learning

To write or often read a digital firm’s terms of service or privacy policy one usually has to have a couple of post-graduate degrees under the belt. But Remind, a messaging tool that connects teachers to parents and students, has just come out with a set of both that are easy to read and understand.

The app needed to issue new terms and an updated privacy policy, but rather than simply pour out another dizzying array of legalese, the group spent the time to create an easy to follow explanation of what they changed and why.

The main body of the terms of service is fairly tradition, but still written in fairly clear language, along the right side of the page, though, is something you often don’t see, accompanying entries entitled, “What this is saying.”

Remind reports that teachers send more than 60 million messages a month via the tool.

Natalie Hartkopf is the Customer Support Manager at Remind and worked closely on this project from the start. She told us the decision to make a more understandable set of policies stems from “a few key values that led to this decision to update and “de-jargon” our terms. Simplicity, transparency and teacher-obsession. For us, decisions always stem from these core values. Will it be simpler, more clear and impactful for teachers? That was our motivation.”

The service, launched in 2011, has grown to involve more than 1 million teachers, with Remind saying that now one-in-five teachers use the service to message or send reminders to parents and students.

Because their business is built on communicating with students, Remind is keenly aware of its responsibilities under federal privacy laws like the Childrens Online Privacy and Protection Act, or COPPA. Their need to comply with those policies and awareness of the need for clear guidelines around how student information is gathered and tracked was important.

Founder Brett Kopff explained when they posted the new policies, “As Remind evolves to better serve the needs of teachers, students, and parents everywhere, we want to ensure our policies enable our users to improve education through simple and safe communication.“

Hartkopf agreed that it was particularly important for those dealing with minors to “ensure it was clear that we handle user information very carefully.”

We asked Hartkopf some additional questions about what it takes to craft clear and effective policies for sites and services that serve younger children.

gamesandlearning.org: Was it at all informed by your users who are mainly teachers?

Natalie Hatkopf: Of course, we’re always building for teachers so they were at the forefront of this work. We also collaborated with district administrators and other security advocates.

gamesandlearning.org: So how do you go about translating these legal documents? Do you have lawyers draft the policy? What about the “plain English” versions?

Natalie Hatkopf: We worked with our legal team to make sure that, as a company, we were defining our policies properly from a legal perspective, but then we pulled out the key details and wrote them in a way that made sense to us (non-legal minded folks!) and felt true to Remind.

gamesandlearning.org: Do you feel like people actually read these now or do you think they still just hit “Ok”?

We definitely hope everyone reads them. Understanding how a product is intended to be used and what a company does with your information is really important. We are hoping that our new format and summaries make our documents easier to digest.

Natalie Hatkopf, Remind

gamesandlearning.org: Do you think this kind of approach is more important given your audience and the community element of your service or is it something you think most producers should do?

Natalie Hatkopf: Companies should keep their audiences top of mind. Our teachers don’t often have a technical or a legal background, so it’s important to explain “what we do” and “why we do it” differently than other companies might feel is necessary. Teachers often have to explain Remind to others before getting started (students, parents, principals, etc.) so we want to make that as easy as possible.

gamesandlearning.org: How much time do you think you all spent working on these “plain English” versions?

Natalie Hatkopf: We started working on this project in the fall and launched the new terms on January 2, so we spent about three months on all phases of this project.

gamesandlearning.org: Have you gotten much feedback and if so, what has it been like?

Natalie Hatkopf: It is still new, but so far the response has been incredibly positive! We always feel a sense of accomplishment when we make teachers’ lives easier and improve communication. That is at the heart of all we do.