Instructor Terms

When you sign up to become an instructor on the Cottontree.Academy platform (“Services”), you agree to abide by these Instructor Terms (“Terms”). These Terms cover details about the aspects of the Cottontree.Academy platform relevant to instructors and are incorporated by reference into our Terms of Use, the general terms that govern your use of our Services.

 

Instructor Obligations

You need an account for most activities on our platform, including to purchase and access content or to submit content for publication. As an instructor, you are responsible for all content that you post, including lectures, quizzes, coding exercises, practice tests, assignments, resources, answers, course landing page content, labs, assessments, and announcements (“Submitted Content”).

You represent and warrant that:

  • you will provide and maintain accurate account information;
  • you own or have the necessary licenses, rights, consents, permissions, and authority to authorise Cotton Tree Academy to use your Submitted Content as specified in these Terms and the Terms of Use;
  • your Submitted Content will not infringe or misappropriate any third party’s intellectual property rights;
  • you have the required qualifications, credentials, and expertise (including education, training, knowledge, and skill sets) to teach and offer the services that you offer through your Submitted Content and use of the Services; and
  • you will ensure a quality of service that corresponds with the standards of your industry and instruction services in general.

You warrant that you will not:

  • post or provide any inappropriate, offensive, racist, hateful, sexist, pornographic, false, misleading, incorrect, infringing, defamatory or libelous content or information;
  • post or transmit any unsolicited or unauthorised advertising, promotional materials, junk mail, spam, or any other form of solicitation (commercial or otherwise) through the Services or to any user;
  • use the Services for business other than providing tutoring, teaching, and instructional services to students;
  • engage in any activity that would require us to obtain licenses from or pay royalties to any third party, including the need to pay royalties for the public performance of a musical work or sound recording;
  • frame or embed the Services (such as to embed a free version of a course) or otherwise circumvent the Services;
  • impersonate another person or gain unauthorised access to another person’s account;
  • interfere with or otherwise prevent other instructors from providing their services or content; or
  • abuse Cotton Tree Academy resources, including support services.

 

 

License to Cotton Tree Academy

You grant Cotton Tree Academy the rights detailed in the Terms of Use to offer, market, and otherwise exploit your Submitted Content. This includes the right to add captions or otherwise modify Submitted Content to ensure accessibility. You also authorise Cotton Tree Academy to sublicense these rights to your Submitted Content to third parties, including to students directly and through third parties such as resellers, distributors, affiliate sites, deal sites, and paid advertising on third-party platforms.

Unless otherwise agreed, you have the right to remove all or any portion of your Submitted Content from the Services at any time. Except as otherwise agreed, Cotton Tree Academy’s right to sublicense the rights in this section will terminate with respect to new users 60 days after the Submitted Content’s removal. However, (1) rights given to students before the Submitted Content’s removal will continue in accordance with the terms of those licenses (including any grants of lifetime access) and (2) Cotton Tree Academy’s right to use such Submitted Content for marketing purposes shall survive termination.

We may record and use all or any part of your Submitted Content for quality control and for delivering, marketing, promoting, demonstrating, or operating the Services. You grant Cotton Tree Academy permission to use your name, likeness, voice, and image in connection with offering, delivering, marketing, promoting, demonstrating, and selling the Services, your Submitted Content, or Cotton Tree Academy’s content, and you waive any rights of privacy, publicity, or other rights of a similar nature, to the extent permissible under applicable law.

 

 

Trust & Safety

Trust & Safety Policies

You agree to abide by Cotton Tree Academy’s Trust & Safety policies Restricted Topics policy, and other content quality standards or policies prescribed byCotton Tree Academy from time to time. You should check these policies periodically to ensure that you comply with any updates to them. You understand that your use of the Services is subject toCotton Tree Academy’s approval, which we may grant or deny at our sole discretion.

We reserve the right to remove content, suspend payouts, and/or ban instructors for any reason at any time, without prior notice, including in cases where:

  • an instructor or content does not comply with our policies or legal terms (including the Terms of Use);
  • content falls below our quality standards or has a negative impact on the student experience;
  • an instructor engages in behaviour that might reflect unfavourably on Cotton Tree Academy or bring Cotton Tree Academy into public disrepute, contempt, scandal, or ridicule;
  • an instructor engages the services of a marketer or other business partner who violates Cotton Tree Academy’s policies;
  • an instructor uses the Services in a way that constitutes unfair competition, such as promotion of their off-site business in a way that violates Cotton Tree Academy’s policies; or
  • as determined by Cotton Tree Academy in its sole discretion.

 

Relationship to Other Users

You agree to pay the fees for content that you purchase, and you authorise us to charge your debit or credit card or process other meanInstructors don’t have a direct contractual relationship with students, so the only information you’ll receive about students is what is provided to you through the Services. You agree that you will not use the data you receive for any purpose other than providing your services to those students on the Cotton Tree Academy platform, and that you won’t solicit additional personal data or store students’ personal data outside the Cotton Tree Academy platform. You agree to indemnify Cotton Tree Academy against any claims arising from your use of students’ personal data.

 

Anti-Piracy Efforts

We partner with anti-piracy vendors to help protect your content from unauthorised use. To enable this protection, you hereby appoint Cotton Tree Academy and our anti-piracy vendors as your agents for the purpose of enforcing copyrights for each of your content, through notice and takedown processes (under applicable copyright laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and for other efforts to enforce those rights. You grant Cotton Tree Academy and our anti-piracy vendors primary authority to file notices on your behalf to enforce your copyright interests.

You agree that Cotton Tree Academy and our anti-piracy vendors will retain the above rights unless you revoke them by sending an email to piracy@cottontree.academy with the subject line: “Revoke Anti-Piracy Protection Rights” from the email address associated with your account. Any revocation of rights will be effective 48 hours after we receive it.

 

Trademarks

While you are a published instructor and subject to the requirements below, you may use our trademarks where we authorise you to do so.

You must:

  • only use the images of our trademarks that we make available to you, as detailed in any guidelines we may publish;
  • only use our trademarks in connection with the promotion and sale of your Submitted Content available on the Cottontree.Academy platform or your participation on our platform; and
  • immediately comply if we request that you discontinue use.

You must not:

  • use our trademarks in a misleading or disparaging way;
  • use our trademarks in a way that implies that we endorse, sponsor, or approve of your Submitted Content or services; or
  • use our trademarks in a way that violates applicable law or in connection with an obscene, indecent, or unlawful topic or material.

 

Deleting Your Account

To delete your instructor account, you can send a written request to terminate-account@cottontree.academy. We’ll use commercially reasonable efforts to make any remaining scheduled payments that are owed to you before deleting your account. You understand that if students have previously enroled in your Submitted Content, your name and that Submitted Content may remain accessible to those students after your account is deleted.

 

 

Miscellaneous Legal Terms

Updating These Terms

From time to time, we may update these Terms to clarify our practices or to reflect new or different practices (such as when we add new features), and Cotton Tree Academy reserves the right in its sole discretion to modify and/or make changes to these Terms at any time. If we make any material change, we will notify you using prominent means such as by email notice sent to the email address specified in your account or by posting a notice through our Services. Modifications will become effective on the day they are posted unless stated otherwise.

Your continued use of our Services after changes become effective shall mean that you accept those changes. Any revised Terms shall supersede all previous Terms.

 

Relationship Between Us

You and we agree that no joint venture, partnership, employment, contractor, or agency relationship exists between us.