Data Use

What gets sent for automated grading

When you click “Start grading”, Gradency:

1. Renders your answer-key PDF + each student’s exam PDF as images at 75 DPI / 1024 px max.
2. Sends a system prompt + your rubric + the answer-key images + one student’s exam images to our automated grading subsystem.
3. Receives back a per-question score breakdown and feedback text.
4. Stores the score + feedback in our database, attached to the student’s grade record.

What does NOT get sent

• The student’s name (only their internal ID is referenced).
• The student’s email address.
• Your account credentials.
• Other students’ exams (each grading call is per-student).

If you use Teach the grader, the grading request also contains short excerpts of your corrections and of the grader’s feedback on other papers of the same exam — text only, with student names removed.

If double-check mode is turned on, the same content is also sent to a second grading model.

Automated grading data handling

Our grading subsystem operates under the provider’s contractual data-processing terms. Content may be retained for a short period (typically up to 30 days) for abuse monitoring and operational reliability, after which it is purged. The list of specific sub-processors is available to institutions and on request to data subjects via our contact page.

Caching

To reduce cost, Gradency caches the static portion of each grading request (the system prompt + your answer key + rubric) for the duration of a grading batch (typically 1 hour). Gradency stores only an opaque cache identifier — never the cached content itself.

Token-usage logs

For each grading call we record the number of input tokens, output tokens, cache hits/creations, and resulting cost in our database. This is used for cost accounting and the admin dashboard. The prompt content itself is not stored beyond the request lifetime.

Backups

Database backups are kept for a limited period for disaster recovery and are purged within 90 days; ask us for current details.

Deletion

When you delete a student, course, or your entire account:

• Database rows are deleted immediately (cascading through grades, objections, token-usage records).
• Uploaded PDFs in our file storage are deleted immediately.
• Backups containing your data are purged on the normal backup-rotation cycle (see Backups above).
• Sub-processor abuse-monitoring caches purge per their retention windows (typically up to 30 days).
• Deleting your account gives you a signed erasure certificate listing what was erased; anyone holding it can check it at /erasure-certificate.
• Separately, scanned exam PDFs can be deleted automatically after a period chosen in Settings → Privacy & data (off unless set); grades and feedback are kept.

Questions

Use our contact page.