ePortfolios for staff

The contents of an ePortfolio are protected by copyright. Individuals usually own the copyright to works that they create. It may, however, be an infringement of copyright to upload (and thereby communicate) the works of others in an ePortfolio. This would include background music, decorative images, literary excerpts, or by-products of academic activities (e.g., someone else's photographs, maps, diagrams, charts etc, someone else's musical composition that the individual performed, someone else's performance of a student's composition, etc.). Under Australian copyright law, ePortfolio owners are responsible for any copyright infringements such as, reproducing and communicating copyrighted materials that belong to others.

While a student is studying and the ePortfolio is being used for assessment and the permissions limited to staff, assessors and students, the student is protected by the fair dealing for study and research provisions of the Act and may use a reasonable portion of someone else's work. However, these provisions do not apply once they have completed their course and any copyright materials will need to be removed. Staff should refer to the ePortfolios for Students page.

Staff wishing to use ePortfolios in their teaching must ensure that any teaching materials, such as readings, are loaded into MyReadings as per the University copyright policy.

Adapted with permission from James Cook University's ePortfolios & Copyright guide.