Instructor Terms

These Instructor Terms were updated on January 30, 2021.

The objective of the GeoRGB Community (GRC) is to provide to our users (students and instructors) the best experience when doing online courses.

GRC use the website https://giscourse.online (the GRC platform) as a learning and teaching platform, for the users.

When a user signs up to become an instructor on the GRC platform, the instructor agrees to the Instructor Terms, the Terms of Use and the Privacy policy.

All the instructors warrant that they have no restrictions under Canada law to provide online services. People with restrictions under Canada law to provide services online are not allowed to be registered in the GRC platform.

The instructors and GRC agree that no joint venture, partnership, employment, contractor, or agency relationship exists between them. 

1. The Instructor Responsibilities

The instructors are responsible for all the content they publish or post in the GRC platform.

The instructors will provide accurate account information.

The instructors own or have the license, rights, consents, permissions and authority of the all content (text, audio, music, etc.) that they publish or post in the GRC platform.

Instructors’ content will not infringe or misappropriate any third party’s intellectual property rights.

The instructors have documents that verify that they have the qualifications to teach in the GRC platform.

The instructors are not allowed to publish or post any content that GRC can consider to be inappropriate or goes against the law (offensive, racist, hateful, sexist, pornographic, incorrect, infringing, false, misleading, defamatory, etc.)

The instructors are not allowed to use the GRC platform services other than providing tutoring, teaching, and services to students.    

2. GRC’s Sublicense

The instructors grant GRC the rights to offer, market, and exploit the instructors’ submitted content, and to sublicense it to students in the GRC platform. The instructors also authorize GRC to share their content in other media with the goal of promoting their content.

The instructors have the right to remove all or any portion of their submitted content in the GRC platform. Once an instructor decides to remove a course, the enrollment option in the course will be closed immediately. The instructors agree to leave the content of the course in the GRC platform for at least 90 days after they decide to remove the course, in order to give the students an extra time to finish the course. An announcement on the course page will indicate the date when the course will be removed definitely.     

GRC has no exclusivity on the instructors’ courses, meaning that the instructors can publish their courses in any other platform for online courses.

GRC has the right to evaluate the instructors’ content to quality control. Content that does not cover the quality standards of video and audio cannot be published in the GRC platform.

The instructors grant GRC permission to use their name, picture, portrait, likeness and voice with the goal of promoting, offering, delivering, marketing, selling, etc. the content summited by the instructors, and the instructors waive any rights of privacy, or other rights related with the same/similar nature, to the extent permissible under applicable law.

3. Instructor Behavior and Content Copyright

The instructors understand that the use of the GRC platform and its services associated are subjected to GRC’s approval; therefore, GRC may grant or deny the access to the GRC platform or its services at its sole discretion.

GRC reserve the right to remove any content, suspend payouts, and/or ban instructors for any reason at any time, without prior notice. Some of the reasons can be associate to non-compliance of GRC’s policies or legal terms, courses that does not cover the quality standard, negative impact on students’ experiences, inappropriate or inadequate instructor behavior, etc. or under the GRC criteria.

The GRC platform allows the instructors to add a co-instructor to their courses. The instructors agree that the co-instructor will have access and authorization to some aspects of the course, even to modify it and interact with their students. GRC does not provide any advice or mediation between the relation instructor/co-instructor, as well as neither, mediates in the revenue sharing they establish for the courses sold.

The instructors will only have the necessary student information to teach the course, no additional personal information from the student will be provided. The instructors agree that they will not use provided student data for purposes other than teaching in the GRC platform, as well as, the instructors will not ask for extra students’ personal information and will not store any personal data from the students outside of the GRC platform.

GRC do not have the tools to fight against piracy. If an instructor knows that a content has a violation of author rights in our platform, the instructor has to notify immediately the infraction to admin@giscourse.online and the GRC team will take steps to remove the content, revoke any GRC account, and ban the offender from accessing the GRC platform for life.

The instructors are free to take their own legal actions to protect their content in the event that their content suffers from copyright infringement on the GRC platform. However, GRC will not provide any legal advice.

The instructors understand that, by publishing any type of content on the GRC platform, there is the potential of copyright infringement; therefore, the instructors post the content on the GRC platform at their own risk. The Instructors agree that they will not take any legal action against the GeoRGB Community in the event that their content had suffered from copyright infringement on the GRC platform.

4. Price of Courses

Courses in the GRC platform can be free or paid.

The prices of courses will be only shown in United States Dollars (USD).

The price of a course cannot be higher than 100 USD. If the instructors believe that the course value is higher than 100 USD, the instructors should divide the course in sub-courses and sell them separately.

The price of a course shown at the GRC platform has any Transaction Taxes included. 

GRC will collect and remit any Transaction Taxes to the competent tax authorities, in accordance with applicable law in Alberta, Canada.

5. Payment per Course Sold

When an instructor publishes a free course, the instructor will not receive any payment from the students enrolled in that course. However, free courses are the best way to show the community who you are and what are your knowledge and skills, and it will help to motivate students to get enrolled in your paid courses.

When an instructor publishes a paid course and a student purchases it, GRC will subtract any Transaction Taxes from the sold course, under the applicable law and remit those Transaction Taxes to the competent tax authorities.

GRC is using PayPal and Stripe as a payment method for the users purchase services in the GRC platform, these payment methods have a fee which will be subtracted from the price of the course.

The price of the course shown in the GRC platform is the gross price. The gross price is the price before deductions. The price after any deductions (Transaction Taxes, fees from PayPal or Stripe, and for sending and receiving money) is know as a net price.  From that net price, the instructor revenue share will be 80%, while GRC will receive the remaining 20%.

When refund money for a course has to be processed to a student or refund the money for any other circumstance, the instructor will not receive any money for the course sold. If the money is already sent to the instructor, GRC reserve the right of deducting the money from the next payment sent to the instructor or require the instructor to give the money back.

GRC makes all the instructor payments in USD regardless of the country where the course was purchased.

GRC will pay the instructors in USD through PayPal, this will be the only method to receive the payments. It means that the instructors must own a PayPal account in good standing and must keep GRC informed of the correct email associated with their PayPal accounts.

The minimum withdraw from the GRC platform is 80 USD.

The payments will be provided at the last day of each month and the payment will be in arrears. It means, that all the courses sold in January will be paid on 28th February. All the courses sold in February will be paid on 31th March, and so on.

 The instructors understand and agree that they are responsible for any taxes on their income.

GRC reserve the right not to pay out funds in the event of identified fraud, violations of intellectual property rights, or other violations of the law.    

6. Trademarks

The instructors are not authorized to use any trademarks of GRC, only authorized personnel can use them.

7. Standards of Quality on the Content

The instructors will provide video courses that have at least a video resolution of 720p (1280×720 px; also called HD ready or standard HD) and quality audio in stereo. GRC have the right to refuse any course if GRC consider that the quality of the video or audio is not good.

In order to cover the standards of quality on the GRC platform courses have:

• More than 30 minutes of content
• Content related to the environment with the main focus on GIS but other disciplines can be also acceptable, such as hydrology, geology, hydrogeology, forestry, hydrochemistry, biology, etc.
• HD video quality (720p or better)
• Audio in stereo and synchronized with the video
• Audio that is not annoying the students, such as loud music, inadequate music, construction noises, dog barking, etc.
• A complete course land page that includes: Course image in line with the content of the course, a video course introduction (optional), course title, course level, general description of the course (just one sentence), detailed description of the course, what the student will learn with the course, title of the lessons, requirements of the course, material includes, tags related to the course, target audience, complete instructor bio and profile picture (optional).
  
• A URL from YouTube or Vimeo, it means that the video lesson has to be first loaded in any of those platforms. The GRC platform only supports videos from YouTube or Vimeo.

8. Monetization on YouTube and Vimeo

Free video courses published on the GRC platform can be monetized on YouTube or Vimeo.

Paid video courses published on the GRC platform cannot be monetized on YouTube or Vimeo.

9. Updating Instructor Terms

These Instructor Terms were updated on January 30, 2021.