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Copyright and Monash Professional Development Education Courses: Copyright and Licensing

A guide for academic staff.

Providing materials for short courses

If a course is being made available to non-Monash students there are different copyright and licensing rules that apply. Short courses and professional development students are generally not considered Monash students. See Monash Professional Development Education Policy 1.7 'Individuals registered in a Monash PDE program are referred to as PDE participants. Participants are members of the Monash learning community, but are not students of Monash University as defined by the Monash University (Council) Regulations' and Professional Development Education Procedures 6.6 'A participant is not an enrolled student of Monash University on the basis of their registration in a PDE program. PDE participants are not subject to Monash regulations, policies and procedures that relate to students. They do not have student access to facilities and services, including a Monash ID card, Monash IT account, Library or learning resources that are licensed for enrolled students only (see Copyright Compliance Policy). Participants may be provided limited access to some services (e.g. Library) as required'

This means that you cannot use Monash subscription journals and ebooks, such as online journals that you access through the Monash Library. You also cannot rely on the Educational copyright licence (or Copyright Agency licence) for using materials without permission, as this also is likely only to apply to enrolled Monash students.

For example, the types of copyright material that you can use without permission would be:

  • Completely original Monash material can be used. However, if this material includes third party (other people's) work then you would need permission for that part.
  • Material which has been made available for re-use by the copyright owner can be used, provided you adhere to the terms of the licence.
    • e.g. Creative Commons material that doesn't allow derivatives. This means you must use the material as is and not alter it
  • Material which is out of copyright can be used. However, if the course will be accessed from overseas, you also need to consider duration of copyright in the country where it will be accessed.

The types of copyright material that cannot be used without permission would be:

  • Material licensed for non-commercial use only can't be used, as selling short courses could be considered commercial use.
  • Licenced materials such as electronic journals and ebooks, which require login access through the library, cannot be supplied to course participants who are not Monash students or staff.
  • Normal educational licences and exceptions don't apply. The 10% or one chapter or one article per issue of a journal cannot be relied on. You need a licence or permission to use this content for a short course.

If you wish to reproduce other material to which Monash does not own copyright, you will need to seek permission from the copyright owner.

Copyright in course materials

  • Monash owns copyright in any course or teaching materials that you create as a staff member at Monash.
  • As an academic, you have a licence to use the work for teaching and research purposes. However, this does not include materials you have published eg in a textbook. These will usually be owned by the publisher. You would need to check your author agreement to see what rights you retain. See Monash owned resources section for more information.
  • Students generally own copyright in material they create at Monash. If you want to include student work in your course materials, you should get written permission from the student.

Crediting and acknowledgement

All third party copyright material used in the course needs to be properly cited. If you are creating videos, you need to consider captions and end credits as part of the timing and design of the video. Citations should be included as part of the learning object, so that if it is reused elsewhere, the credits travel with the object.

  • Creative commons licensed material will always require acknowledgement and a link to the licence that is used under. For example:

"Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco [name of image with link to it]" by tvol [name of photographer/creator with link to their page] is licensed under CC BY 2.0 [name of licence and link to terms]