The many great learning apps available in the App Store are an integral part of the teaching and learning experience in schools. By adopting ClassKit, your app will work with Schoolwork, a powerful iPad app for teachers and students to help keep track of assignments and student progress. You can help teachers discover assignable activities in your app, take students directly to the right activity with a single tap, and securely and privately share progress data with teachers to help them personalize instruction.
Integrating ClassKit into your app
ClassKit enables features in your education apps for iPad that can be used by educational institutions with Apple School Manager and Managed Apple IDs. Teachers assign activities in Schoolwork and your app reports student progress on these activities.
Define and display assignable content
You’ll need to label the content structure of your app so that teachers can find and assign it in Schoolwork. Content might include a hierarchy of math challenges and quizzes, coding concepts and exercises, or book chapters. When a student taps an assigned activity in Schoolwork, they are taken directly to the corresponding content in your app.
Report student progress
As students complete assigned activities, your app needs to record their progress and report it to ClassKit so teachers and students can view it in Schoolwork. The progress information your app can report includes time spent, start and end timers, percentage of completion, points earned, quiz scores, or a binary value (e.g.: yes/no, true/false, complete/incomplete).
With access to these insights across all of their apps, teachers can tailor instruction to individual student needs and students can take ownership of their learning.
Student privacy
ClassKit and Schoolwork are built with student privacy in mind. Schoolwork only receives and displays student progress data for activities a teacher explicitly assigns, and only when students use the Managed Apple ID that was created for them by their school on their device. If your app already uses a student account to enable certain features, ClassKit does not associate that account with the Managed Apple ID that the student uses.
Privacy requirements for apps using ClassKit
The ClassKit framework is used to privately and securely share student progress with teachers on activities assigned in school-managed environments and should be used only for educational purposes. Apps that use ClassKit are required to handle personal information in accordance with the Apple Developer Program License Agreement, the App Store Review Guidelines, and any laws that may apply. Below are a few aspects to which developers should pay particular attention.
Create a privacy policy and include it on your product page
Apps using ClassKit must include a privacy policy. Add the link to your privacy policy on your product page by entering the URL in App Store Connect. Schools will need to be able to review this information to ensure that your app complies with their local privacy requirements.
Do not include behavioral advertising in your app
Apps using ClassKit must not include behavioral advertising (i.e. the advertiser may not serve ads based on the user’s activity), and any contextual ads must be appropriate for young audiences. Remember that in some countries, children below a certain age may not be targeted with advertising, even if it’s not behavioral.
Comply with all laws restricting collection of personal information in apps used by children
Apps using ClassKit must comply with laws like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”), the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”), and any international equivalents. Do not use or share personally identifying information for any purpose other than the authorized educational service. In particular, do not use or sell the collected information to build personal profiles for behavioral advertising. Make sure this information is protected against unauthorized access or use by transmitting and storing data securely, and ensuring that any vendors with whom you might share this data follow the same security standards.
Getting started with Xcode
Download Xcode and iOS, and use these resources to support ClassKit in your iOS app.
Tools and SDK
Build your app with Xcode, which includes the ClassKit framework in the latest iOS SDK.
