Understanding the GDPR

University of Groningen offer quality courses and the 'Understanding GDPR' was no exception.

I recommend it to anyone who is involved in a business in the EU or who deals with the EU as well as anyone involved with any organisation in the Union or transferring data between their organisation and the European Union. If you are involved in any non-profit or NGO especially involving rights of individuals, this will be similarly useful.

It very clearly lays out the obligations of both Data Controllers and Data Processors. These obligations are all encompassing so there are very few people working today who are not affected by these regulations.

In fact even if you are not working if you are a Data Subject and that is practically inescapable in this digital age, and your personal and sensitive details are stored in a database somewhere, the GDPR regulations were made for your security and protection so the course is a great way to learn about your rights and ensure they are not abused.

If you are starting out in a degree or other form of learning for a future career, the opportunities around GDPR should be huge. If you are already in the world of work, I can't see how this will not help you on your CV.

'Understanding the GDPR' course explains the fundamentals of GDPR very well. It covers topics such as Privacy and data protection, key data protection roles, principles, rights of data subjects, restriction of rights, obligations of controllers and processors, supervisory authorities, and liabilities/penalties.

After covering a topic through video lectures and articles, the quizes use real-life examples to reinforce the concepts. The fellow learners, coming from varied background, provide multiple perspectives during online discussion of questions.

I would highly recommend this course to learn fundamentals of GDPR. A related course about GDPR in healthcare (titled 'Protecting Health Data in the Modern Age') by University of Groningen on Futurelearn is also very useful.

Thank you very much University of Groningen and FutureLearn for developing very informative courses at just right time.

I currently work for a UK Government department and part of my job is understanding the current Data Protection Act (1998) but I had heard that the new GDPR legislation was coming into force on May 28th 2018 and so I eagerly signed up for this course. Although a little confusing to navigate at first, once I had it 'under my belt' it became as easy as pie.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the course and I have benefited greatly from it. The first week was very much geared to familiarisation and week 2 (in my opinion) to reinforcing what the whole concept of GDPR means but weeks 3 & 4 'really go for it' and I found the whole thing both useful, enlightening and educational.

This course is certainly a 'must do' for anyone involved with data and I would like to commend the team who put this whole package together as they have done a fantastic job!

I am really satisfied from the course and the material given. Overall, I find it very comprehensive, very informative and well-structured. I highly recomment it to everyone who is interested in GDPR, either personally or profesionally. The tests and discussions help the student to develop his/her critical thinking and to apply the GDPR articles in study- cases.

On the other side, there could be some improvements. The improvements are meant in a very positive way. For example, some lessons are pretty much the same with the transcript of the video which, in the end, discouraged me to do both. Also, in the third week, some lessons were not as informative as usual and many students, including myself, found the test quite hard to answer.

Many thanks to STeP Research Group.

There is no need to have a legal background to understand the course, which has a lot of content and enables to understand the principles and what to do in an organization to meet the requirements.
At the same time, people with good understanding and legal background and working in implementing the necessary steps for being compliant to the GDPR are attending the course, and the comments are very helpful and insightful, completing the learning.
I believed that it was important to understand what is the GDPR and the impact in an organization and took the course for my own understanding, not being in any responsibility role in regards to the GDPR, and this understanding will certainly help me in my daily work, indirectly.