Skip to main content

Teaching and Learning Open Access Procedure

On this page

Purpose | Scope | Principles | Procedure statements | Roles and responsibilities | Definitions | Approval information | Version history | References

Related documents

1. Purpose

1.1 The Teaching and Learning Open Access Procedure (the procedure) outlines the process for: 

  1. making UTS course and educational materials open access, and 
  2. sharing course and educational materials within UTS. 

1.2 This procedure should be read in conjunction with the Open Access Policy (the policy).

2. Scope

2.1 The procedure applies to all those under the scope of the policy. 

2.2 The procedure applies to all course and educational materials and open educational resources under the scope of the policy. 

2.3 The following are out of scope of this procedure: 

  1. research outputs (refer Research Open Access Procedure) 
  2. non-digital outputs, and 
  3. material outside of the scope of the Intellectual Property Policy.

3. Principles

3.1 The principles outlined in the policy apply for this procedure. 

3.2 UTS is committed to delivering public good and broad societal benefit and supports the principles of open access as part of its strategy of producing high-quality teaching and learning with community and global impact.

4. Procedure statements

4.1 The procedure provides UTS authors with a practical framework to achieve UTS’s aim to share its scholarship as widely as possible, enabling open, equitable, worldwide access. 

Publishing open educational resources (OER) 

4.2 Where possible, authors are encouraged to publish course and educational materials as open educational resources (defined in the policy) to ensure they are: 

  1. in the public domain, or 
  2. licensed to permit free and perpetual access, re-use, repurpose, adaptation and redistribution by others. 

4.3 When publishing course and educational materials, UTS strongly recommends publication via an appropriate discipline repository or website to ensure discovery and use. 

4.4 The Intellectual Property Policy contains provisions on the ownership of intellectual property created by staff. To publish materials as OER, authors must ensure they have the necessary rights by: 

  1. obtaining written permission from the dean or director of their faculty, centre or unit (or their delegate), and 
  2. ensuring that the materials being shared do not infringe on any existing intellectual property rights, including copyrights or trademarks (for example, if including an image in a presentation, check the intellectual property of the image). 

4.5 To ensure any existing intellectual property rights are not infringed on, authors must: 

  1. have a licence or gain permission from third-party copyright holders to use their content for the OER purpose. 
  2. use materials that are already licensed under an open licence (such as Creative Commons), ensuring that they follow the licensing conditions, including compatibility between third-party content and the final OER. 
  3. acknowledge the author of any third-party copyright content and credit any creators or contributors to the OER. 
  4. apply an appropriate open licence (such as Creative Commons BY) to the OER that allows users to access, use and re-use the OER according to the licence conditions (refer Copyright and licensing for OER). 

4.6 Authors must comply with all applicable quality assurance processes required by the faculty or unit. 

4.7 Where possible, teaching resources released as OER should be published under an open licence, preferably a Creative Commons CC BY licence, with a copyright notice included as part of the licence indicating copyright is retained by UTS (refer Intellectual Property Policy). 

Example Creative Commons release text
This video is © University of Technology Sydney and is made available under a CC BY 4.0 International Licence. 

4.8 The author and title of any third-party copyright content included in the OER must be acknowledged, with the citation to include the copyright status and link to the work if these are known. 

Example third party inclusion text
Except where otherwise noted, this work is © University of Technology Sydney, and is made available under a CC BY 4.0 International Licence. The © Daily Bugle by P. Parker has been reproduced with permission and is not included within the aforementioned CC BY licence. 

4.9 The creators of and contributors to the OER should be credited.

4.10 Where multiple authors exist, clear agreement should be made regarding the intent to publish in line with the ownership rights outlined in the Intellectual Property Policy. 

4.11 UTS students retain all copyright to their works except in the scenarios described in statement 4.4 of the Intellectual Property Policy. 

4.12 If the OER is of joint authorship by one or more students and one or more staff or affiliates the provisions of statements 4.4 and 4.5 of this procedure apply. 

4.13 If the OER is of joint authorship comprising both internal and external contributors to UTS, the lead author, if affiliated with UTS, is responsible for ensuring that external collaborators have verified compatibility with the intellectual property policy of their respective institutions. 

Sharing course and educational materials within UTS 

4.14 While the sharing of course and educational materials within UTS is an important step in encouraging the practise of sharing content it is not equivalent to publishing OER. 

4.15 Sharing of course and educational materials is facilitated through the UTS digital ecosystem. The platforms outlined in table 4.15 allow authors to share various types of educational resources and Canvas resources. This is not an exhaustive list of resources that can be shared, and other formats may be available. 

Table 4.15 UTS platforms recommended for hosting shareable content 

PlatformsContent type
Canvas CommonsAnything that is developed in Canvas can be shared in Canvas Commons such as courses, modules, assignments, quizzes, discussions, pages, documents, videos, audio and images.
H5P shared repositoriesInteractive content such as presentations, videos, books and games (refer LX: Use the activity content type in H5P for more examples).
Kaltura shared repositoriesVideos (for example, lectures), interactive videos and video quizzes (refer Use Kaltura’s shared repository).
Microsoft Office 365 SharePointAnything that can be developed in SharePoint including text, video, audio and interactive content.

4.16 Course and educational materials shared within UTS should adhere to copyright requirements (refer UTS Library: Copyright advice).

5. Roles and responsibilities

5.1 Procedure owner: The Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education and Students) is responsible for enforcement of the procedure, ensuring that its principles and statements are observed.

5.2 Procedure contact: The Director, Scholarly Services is responsible for the day-to-day implementation of this procedure, acting as a primary point of contact for advice on fulfilling its provisions.

5.3 Implementation and governance roles: The UTS Library provides advice on publication, copyright and licensing, including Creative Common licences, fair dealing, and appropriate discipline repositories. 

The LX.lab provides support with authoring, publication and promotion of open access educational resources.

6. Definitions

The definitions outlined in the policy apply for this procedure. The following definitions are in addition to those definitions. Definitions in the singular include the plural meaning of the word. 

Course and educational material is defined in the Intellectual Property Policy. 

Discipline repository means a platform that collects, organises, and shares educational materials specific to a particular academic discipline or subject area. Examples of open educational resources disciplinary repositories include MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching), OER Commons, AMSER (Applied Math and Science Education Repository), COERLL (Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning), CORA (Cork Open Research Archive) and NOBA Psychology Collection Resources. 

Public domain refers to material in which copyright has expired and is considered in the public domain (refer Australian Copyright Council: Duration of Copyright). 

Third party copyright means any material or content included in a work which is not the work of the author and which the author does not hold copyright over. Third party copyright work included in another work (such as in an open educational resource) must be clearly identified and acknowledged, and the author must have permission to reproduce the third party copyright work whether by consent of the copyright owner or as permitted by a licence or under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cwlth).