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Assessments and exams

Exams

You can use any amount of a literary, dramatic, written musical composition, musical sound recordings or artistic work in an exam paper if it forms part of the question. This only applies to exams and take home exams, not practice exams or study aids.

If you want to use content in a practice exam or study aid, you must follow the same rules for using content in class and unit sites.

Film, TV and non-musical sound recordings can only be used for exams if they are broadcast copies recorded from TV or radio, are Creative Commons, or are in the public domain.

Sharing assessment tasks online

Students should never upload practice exams, current exams, or assessment questions to essay writing sites. They are advised that uploading copies of exam and essay questions is a copyright infringement.

This is illegal and we can take action to have the content removed. Contact the Copyright Office with the following information:

  • The URL (or URLs) where the essay question(s)/exam is being made available
  • Screenshots of where the essay question/exam originally appears (i.e. in your unit site)
  • The URL where the essay question/exam originally appears (i.e. the URL for the part of your unit site where the question/exam sits)
  • Any further information you may have, such as if a student has posted something in social media that may implicate them as being connected with uploading the material.

The Copyright Office will commence the removal request promptly, but it can take days or weeks before content is removed.

Sharing assessments during internships

In addition to our standard licensing, Work Integrated Learning students can:

  • share a copy of any assessment output with a workplace or business participating in the Deakin assessment
  • share a copy of bibliographies or reference lists of source documents consulted

They cannot:

  • share Deakin login credentials with an external party
  • download or access Deakin resources on behalf of the third party business or individual
  • quote or excerpt from Deakin Library resources in a manner that could be deemed beyond reasonable
  • republish, repackage, resell or create a derivative work for profit

Can a lecturer use student work as an example?

Students own the copyright in their essays, assessments and lecture notes, and will share copyright with other students for collaborative work.

However, the Copyright Act allows teachers to use unpublished material without needing permission from the creator or copyright owner for teaching purposes.

It is still best practice to seek consent from the student before using their work, and ensure the student is not identifiable by their work that you use.

Get in touch

The Copyright Team provides copyright help to everyone within Deakin. We manage Deakin University copyright and external requests to use University works.