The first choice a realtalk@MIT participant makes is whether to participate in the program via Option A (which involves small-group conversations that feature no technology, and no voice recordings or transcriptions) or Option B (which involves small-group conversations using the Fora app and featuring the full suite of recording, transcription, sensemaking, and sharing described below). 

If a participant chooses Option A, they have no further decisions to make about their level of participation or the visibility of their comments; their conversations will be off-the-record and involve no technology.

Participants who choose Option B consent to having their conversations recorded and transcribed so that they may elevate one another’s stories for cross-community listening. These recordings and transcriptions (“Conversation Records”) may be visible to and audible by other Program participants and realtalk@MIT Program facilitators, toward the goal of helping participants to hear and be heard, an overall goal of the program; the realtalk@MIT Program, and its incorporation of the Cortico Fora app (see above), are not designed to keep communications strictly private, but rather to help participants share their thoughts at various levels of visibility. Participants have options to decide on the extent of their participation and the visibility of their comments and Conversation Records as they proceed. (See below, “How exactly does consent work?” and Your Voice.)

When a conversation is recorded, the Conversation Record (recording plus transcript) gets uploaded to a conversation platform developed and implemented by Cortico, a non-profit closely affiliated with CCC that is supporting realtalk@MIT.

Participants who choose Option B, the version of realtalk@MIT that includes recordings/transcriptions and the technical capabilities they make possible, will see throughout the process a handful of follow-on choices to make their Conversation Records or portions thereof visible to different groups of people, from small groups, to larger cohorts, to the full MIT community, to the public at large.

For the first-year undergraduate and new graduate students orientation projects, for example, everyone who agrees to participate in the recorded version (Option B) of a specific small-group conversation – plus the realtalk@MIT program team and a limited number of Cortico/Fora technical staff – will be able to access the recordings and transcripts of the conversation they participated in.

Option B users may also:

• Opt into a research program – entirely optional and independent of participation in Option B more generally
• Opt to have their small-group highlights shared beyond the small-group conversation to all first-year participants — on a per-comment/highlight basis, via the app 
• Opt to have their small-group highlights shared to the whole MIT community — also on a per-comment/highlight basis, via the app
• Be invited on a 1-1 basis to share their highlights and comments publicly, in which case participants will have the choice whether to consent to that additional level of sharing (If you choose to make your conversation record or portions of it fully public, via the Cortico app or other means, they may be made available to journalists, public officials, researchers, other participants and partners in the project, and eventually the general public, at the discretion of the realtalk@MIT Program facilitators.)  

Other realtalk@MIT conversation projects (e.g., among student, staff, faculty groups) may have different access policies – with the degree of data visibility and access varying according to the goals of the group and the project. Those policies will be made available per-program via their related webpages and support materials and/or via the Cortico Fora app.

For further information on conversation records (audio recordings and text transcriptions) and your options, please see the realtalk@MIT FAQ, Your Voice at realtalk@MIT, the Cortico / Fora app terms of use and privacy policy, and the options presented to you in the Cortico/Fora app.

Reminder: The process of setting up your Cortico/Fora account will present you with an option to agree to your voice being recorded and transcribed as part of the realtalk@MIT experience. If you do not agree to your voice being recorded and transcribed, you can instead choose to participate in the version of realtalk@MIT that does not involve recordings or transcriptions, or you can choose not to participate in the realtalk@MIT program altogether. See Your Voice for more information.

All realtalk@MIT participants are also required to honor and abide by all applicable MIT policies and practices, including 

• MIT Values Statement
• MIT Mind and Hand Handbook
• realtalk@MIT Resources

Anything you post, upload, share, store, or otherwise provide through the realtalk@MIT Program, including without limitations recordings and transcriptions of your voice, is your “User Submission”. Some User Submissions may be viewable by or otherwise accessible to other users. These User Submissions include records (audio recordings and text transcriptions) of the conversations you have as part of the realtalk@MIT program. You are solely responsible for all User Submissions you contribute to the realtalk@MIT Program. You agree that all User Submissions submitted by you will be in compliance with all applicable laws, rules, and regulations, as well as these Policies.

A key element of realtalk@MIT is maintaining mutual respect among participants for each other’s preferences for sharing, or restricting, expression. While realtalk@MIT is intended to facilitate listening and being heard, and to encourage sharing of expression, as opposed to keeping it strictly private, the Program also features different levels of sharing and intimacy of communications among different kinds and sizes of conversations and other actions. Some kinds of comments, conversation records, and highlights require, for example, a fellow participant’s explicit consent to be shared to a group larger than one where it originated or is currently visible from, or to the general public.

It is important for all users to honor and abide by these preferences and consents, so we require that you not share Content, User Submissions (defined above), or other information outside of the realtalk@MIT program without the explicit permission of the other participants involved and the permission of the realtalk@MIT facilitators. (For example, intentionally or carelessly sharing realtalk@MIT text archives or conversation records beyond their designated space on the Cortico app, or against the preferences or expectations of another user, is against realtalk@MIT policies.)

Of course, we also expect all realtalk@MIT participants to honor and abide by all applicable laws and regulations as well. 

We reserve the right to remove any content from the realtalk@MIT Program at any time, for any reason (including, but not limited to, if someone alleges you contributed content in violation of these Policies), in our sole discretion, and without notice.

There are three steps in the realtalk@MIT process: 

1] Talk: Share your voice with a small group of peers, in person or virtual.

Participants are organized into small-group conversations (~60-90 minutes, in person or on video, with recorded audio) among people with common bonds or experiences, such as first-year students, dormmates, affinity groups, or affiliate groups. Participants can choose a version of these small-group conversations that does not include recordings, transcriptions, or any technology (Option A), or they can opt in to the version of these small-group conversations that includes recordings, transcriptions, and other Fora app features (Option B). (See above, Your Voice, for more information on these two Options.) The conversations are led by trained MIT community members who encourage sharing personal experiences over opinions, which research shows increases empathy, respect, and trust.

2] Understand: Leverage human-led, technology-assisted methods to identify patterns and highlight key comments from across all conversations.

Post-conversation, participants who have opted into recording actively review the recording and transcript on Cortico’s Fora app to highlight key comments from their own small-group conversation. When a participant’s comment is highlighted, that participant receives a notification offering them the option to further share that highlight to their larger realtalk cohort (e.g., all participating first-years, or all participating new grad students), or the full MIT community, or to keep it at its current level of visibility (the small-group conversation).

In the future, trained realtalk “community sensemakers” will use AI tools to find themes across these highlights, surfacing commonalities between people and their experiences that might otherwise go unnoticed. Cortico, realtalk@MIT’s technology service provider, uses only AI tools that have an explicit policy forbidding data harvesting.

3] Share: Hear audio medleys of voices from across the MIT community, and explore patterns and insights from a growing collection of conversation highlights.

Community members will be able to access output from community sensemaking – e.g., themes and representative highlights emerging from a growing collection of conversations – in a variety of formats, including thematic/topical audio medleys, online voice portals, interactive installations, and data visualizations.

The first choice a realtalk@MIT participant makes is whether to participate in the program via Option A (which involves small-group conversations that feature no technology, and no voice recordings or transcriptions) or Option B (which involves small-group conversations using the Fora app and featuring the full suite of recording, transcription, sensemaking, and sharing described below). If a participant chooses Option A, they have no further decisions to make about their level of participation or the visibility of their comments; their conversations will be off-the-record and involve no technology. 

If a participation chooses Option B, they will have options to decide on the extent of participation and the visibility of their comments, as follows:

1. (Optional) Consent to participate and be recorded: Consent to participate and be recorded: Participants can choose to opt into the version of realtalk@MIT in which their small-group conversations are recorded and transcribed as part of a project – e.g., the first-year undergraduate orientation. This consent allows other participants in the small-group to hear audio and see transcripts of that small-group recorded conversation, and also enables human-steered AI and data visualization tools to surface patterns and themes across their stories and reflections.
2. (Optional) Consent to allow collected data to be used by CCC for research purposes: Those who agree to participate can give their additional consent to allow speech recordings, transcripts, app interaction data, and demographic information generated from realtalk@MIT conversations to be utilized to understand interaction patterns, assess impact, and enhance future tools and methods of the realtalk@MIT program.
3. (Optional per highlight) Consent to share recorded highlights: Post-conversation, participants then review an AI-generated transcript of what has been shared, highlighting any excerpts that would be especially meaningful and valuable for others to hear. The platform will request a specific consent from the speaker of a given highlight to share more widely. The participant can choose to make this highlight accessible by anyone in their realtalk@MIT (eg, first-year student participants, new grad students) or by anyone in the MIT community. If they do not consent to either of those further options to share, the highlight will not be shared beyond the small-group conversation participants and a limited number of realtalk@MIT and Cortico/Fora administrators.

In order to display your User Submissions on the realtalk@MIT Program, and to allow participants to interact with them, you grant us certain rights in those User Submissions (see below for more information). 

By submitting User Submissions through the realtalk@MIT Program, you grant the realtalk@MIT Program a worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free, sublicensable license to use, edit, modify, truncate, aggregate, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, perform, and otherwise fully exploit the User Submissions in connection with the realtalk@MIT Program and improving the realtalk@MIT Program, and for other MIT purposes, in accordance with the consents you have provided regarding Your Voice.

As noted above, to participate in realtalk@MIT, you may be required to sign up for a Cortico account, governed by its own Policies of use and privacy policy found in the Cortico Fora app, which acts as the third-party technological interface for realtalk@MIT, and here. You may be asked to connect your MIT log-in credentials to your Cortico account. This means that your activity in the realtalk@MIT program – your expression, your data, your conversation records, etc. – will be associated with your MIT email address and log-in. 

The information described in the Cortico/Fora privacy policy is collected and managed by realtalk@MIT as a client of Cortico services and data processing. As with the Conversation Records (voice recordings and transcriptions) described above, this information will be used only as described in these policies and the realtalk@MIT FAQ to make the realtalk@MIT program possible. Also, as noted above, there is an entirely optional and separate option to consent to participate in a special research protocol in addition to the realtalk@MIT program itself, the terms of which you can review separately here and via the Cortico app user experience.

Reminder: While participants may elect to use a pseudonym in lieu of their name when they set up their profile on the realtalk platform, it is important to keep in mind that a) a person may be identified from their voice even if they choose to use a pseudonym, and b)  realtalk@MIT participant’s MIT credentials (e.g. your MIT email address) may be required to create and maintain a Cortico/Fora app account.

Do I have to be recorded?

No. If you don’t want to participate in recording/transcriptions, sensemaking, curated voice medleys, and the like, then please choose Option A, the “no tech” option, or consider just sitting out the realtalk@MIT program in general. 

If you choose Option B, which involves the Fora App software, you are choosing to have your voice recorded as part of the program for others in the MIT community to hear.

Who can see/hear my voice recordings if I choose the Option B/recordings route?

By default, only other participants in your small group conversation – and a limited number of realtalk@MIT program facilitators and Fora app/Cortico staff, to help make the overall program and software work at its best.

You will have the option, with your consent, to further share portions of your voice recordings and transcripts with: 

• All other participants in your cohort (e.g., all other first-years’ small-group conversations, or all participants in new grad students’ small-group conversations) – via a notice and consent feature in the app, on a comment-by-comment basis 
• The whole MIT community – via a notice and consent feature in the app, on a comment-by-comment basis  
• The general public – realtalk program managers might ask your permission 1-1 to share your contributions even beyond MIT itself (e.g. on MIT’s website, or in a podcast, or in other public outlets)

Will participant identities be shared? Can participants remain anonymous?

By default, a realtalk@MIT participant’s conversation records (audio recording and transcriptions) and highlights will be attributed to them through a matching process (non-biometric), involving conversation facilitators, after the conversation records are created. 

Participants may elect to use a pseudonym in lieu of their name when they set up their profile on the realtalk platform. It is important to keep in mind, however, that a person may be identified from their voice even if they choose to use a pseudonym. A voice anonymization option is expected to be added in 2025. Reminder: Participants who choose Option A – the no tech / no recording version of realtalk@MIT – will not have their conversations recorded or transcribed.

It is also important to remember that, as described above, a realtalk@MIT participant’s MIT credentials (e.g. your MIT email address) may be required to create a Cortico / Fora app account, which means that your participation on realtalk will not be anonymous as a general matter, though you may choose a pseudonym for the purpose of attributing a quote / highlight or for your profile display name. For more details, read more at Your Voice.

What if I share something I want to delete later?

If a participant says something during a conversation they wish they hadn’t, the realtalk@MIT program team will work with the participant to redact a portion of the conversation record. Participants who would like to request a redaction should contact realtalk@mit.edu, specifying what they like to remove (to the best of their memory) and provide details on which conversation they were in. 

But remember: The point of realtalk@MIT is to hear and be heard, and not to keep your expression strictly private, so it’s helpful to keep that in mind as you consider what to say during the recorded and transcribed conversations. Considered, genuine reflections and expression are welcome; truly intimate or private thoughts are best reserved for other settings.

How are voice records and transcripts stored?

The information described in the Cortico/Fora privacy policy is collected and managed by realtalk@MIT as a client of Cortico services and data processing. As with the Conversation Records (voice recordings and transcriptions) described above, this information will be used only as described in these policies and the realtalk@MIT FAQ to make the realtalk@MIT program possible.

Cortico/Fora follows industry standard security practices, such as limiting employee access to data, encrypting data at rest and in transit, maintaining disaster recovery and change management programs, regularly updating and patching operating systems and applications, and only using AI tools that have an explicit policy forbidding data harvesting.

Does realtalk@MIT use the audio recordings to create voice-recognition capabilities?

No. If you opt into the version of realtalk@MIT that includes recording and transcriptions, those Conversation Records will be used only to make the realtalk@MIT program as described here possible, and in line with your follow-on sharing consents, if any.

We regularly make improvements to the realtalk@MIT Program, so we reserve the right to change these Policies along with it. Policies may vary across different projects within the general realtalk@MIT Program. We may suspend or discontinue any part of the realtalk@MIT Program, or we may introduce new features or impose limits on certain features or restrict access to parts or all of the realtalk@MIT Program.

In any event, we will continue to honor consents / preferences about how your voice recordings and transcriptions are shared (or not) over time.