Copyright and teaching

Knowing when and how to use copyright material for teaching


The use of third-party copyright material for educational purposes is permitted through special statutory and voluntary education licences and exceptions within the Copyright Act 1968. Different licences and exceptions apply depending on how the material is being used and whether you are using:

Sharing learning material with students

Published learning material and readings - such as journal articles, ebooks and scanned book chapters - should only be accessed by students using OneSearch, or within the Learning Management System via Unit Readings.

Do not provide access to copyright material by uploading it to other systems such as Dropbox, MS Teams, or sending it via email. Students should be reminded not to share copyrighted material with others beyond the LMS.

Entire copies of journal articles or other resources (like case law) from subscription databases, such as ProQuest or LexisNexis, cannot be shared directly as uploads to the LMS, nor can they be included in print unit/course readers. You must use Unit Readings to provide a copyright compliant link to the reading. 

Print unit readers should only contain:

  • Material that you have developed and own the copyright in (e.g. original lab manuals; lecture notes)
  • Copyright-free, open access or openly licensed material (e.g. open access articles with Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY licences).

Please see the Copyright at UWA webpage for information on how to locate open access, openly licensed resources for teaching.

The Librarian Support Team can help you to locate or obtain course materials that can be shared with students via Unit Readings. 

Licences

Assisting persons with a disability

Text works

Different copyright limits apply depending on the original material type – a print book, an ebook or a website. Before including copyright material in your PowerPoint presentations, or uploading copyright material to your LMS unit, check the copyright compliance guidelines for the LMS (at the bottom of this page).

Artistic works

An artistic work may be an image, photo, drawing, graph, table, or figure.

Multimedia and presentations

Broadcasts

Video works

Music and sound recordings

Learning Management System

Information on this page has been adapted with permission from the University of Sydney. This information is provided as general information only and is not intended to be comprehensive.

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