Scholar is a separate, read-only app that sits beside Blackboard. It reads the course to help students study and never writes back. What follows is the posture, not a data-processing agreement.
No hedging. Where something is enforced in code, we say so. Where it's a strong behavior we guide but don't hard-gate, we say that too.
Scholar reads course content, syllabi, assignments, and grades through the Blackboard REST API, and never writes back. No posts, no grade changes, no edits.
Enforced in codeAll of Scholar's AI runs under Blackboard's SOC 2 umbrella, through enterprise, non-trainable accounts (like Amazon Bedrock). Student data never trains a model — and there's no ad tech on a tool that reads a gradebook.
Non-trainable · SOC 2 umbrellaScholar is designed to operate as a school official under FERPA through your existing Blackboard agreement. Students accept the Terms of Use and Privacy Statement on first use.
School-official basisScholar syncs only what a student can already see — hidden, locked, or unreleased content never comes through. And when a release rule can't be evaluated, Scholar will not ingest that content.
Enforced in codeWhen Scholar answers from the course, it names the source it used. And when an answer goes beyond the course, Scholar is built to say so — not to dress it up as course material.
Built into the productProvisioned by the institution, visible to the institution, and pausable at any time: an institution-approved tool, not another student-account app.
Institution-controlledBuilt to WCAG 2.2 AA and Blackboard's accessibility statement, designed to substantially align with Section 508.
WCAG 2.2 AAFor messages that signal distress, Scholar responds with care and steers students toward real support, gently and immediately. It's not a clinician, and doesn't pretend to be.
Built into the productScholar is built to help students study — not to police them. It supplements your academic-integrity policy; it doesn't replace it, and it doesn't try to be a detector.
Faculty and admins don't see individual student activity — that's a deliberate design choice, not a v1 gap. What the institution gets is an aggregate end-of-term readout: usage, mastery gains, persistence, and reported value across the cohort.
What Scholar never does
Monitor, score, or report individual students; flag or accuse; or expose one student's activity to faculty or another student.
We'd rather tell you exactly where the line sits than let a review find it later.
Enforced vs. guided — where the line sits
Read-only is architectural — enforced in code, true in every case: there is no write path. Course grounding, citation, Socratic-leaning, and won't ghost-write your paper are strong, deliberate product behaviors: they hold in practice, but they're prompt-guided, and we won't dress them up as unbreakable guarantees.
Students are using AI either way — and your syllabi, slides, and assignments are going with them, into tools nobody vetted. Scholar is the version that runs inside the Blackboard ecosystem: read-only, non-trainable, FERPA on a school-official basis, and governable by you. Send us to your security review, your integrity office, or your accessibility team — we'll answer the hard questions.
Tell us who you are and we'll take it from there.
We'll route it through your Blackboard account team and follow up if it's a fit.