Guidelines

A collection of guidelines that describe acceptable use of the course barometers by students, staff and the faculty.

Background and Reasons

The barometers are designed to be a place where students can express their opinions and experience with courses offered by Webfuse. The purpose behind providing such a place is so that Webfuse can have a better idea of the student experience so negative experiences can be addressed and positive experiences duplicated.

While most barometer contributions have been acceptable a couple have raised potential legal difficulties. In particular some have been very direct, critical attacks on individuals. Such attacks are potentially defamatory and can be very problematic.

These guidelines are being created to help students and staff understand what is acceptable and what is not.

Legal Obligations

The Webfuse webserver is based in Australia and thus Australian laws and regulations apply, particularly the Broadcasting Services Act. The following is a discussion of those laws. Individuals should be aware that they are subject to State and Commonwealth legislation and regulations, as well as CQU's internal policies and regulations, when posting comments on the barometers. Individuals should also be aware that defamation law also applies when posting comments.

The author of this document is not a lawyer and this is NOT legal advice

1. There is no "right of freedom of speech" in Australia except in relation to political speech.
2. You can be sued for defamation if you make a barometer contribution that could lead a reasonable person to have a lower opinion of the reputation or honour of the person whom you discuss in your contribution.
3. The Broadcasting Services Act provides a statutory defence for Internet Content Hosts against suits for subsidiary publication of defamatory materials. This means that any person who has a problem with a barometer contribution can ask for it to be removed. If they wish to know the identity of the author they can apply for a court order requiring Webfuse to hand over any and all information that could be used to identify the author.

What happens if the rules are broken

If a comment is deemed to be in breach of the relevant legislation or regulations the content of the comment will be replaced with a message explaining why. The feeling reported by the comment will remain but the problematic textual comment will be removed.

Student Anonymity

The faculty will make no attempt to discover the identity of the person who made a particular barometer contribution for its own purposes.

However, the faculty and CQU must comply with any court orders resulting from legal action that may require it to provide all information available about the identity of the author of a barometer contribution.

Expectation of Change

The faculty and its staff will continually improve the service provided to students. These improvements will draw on a wide range of input including the course barometers.

However, some things cannot change immediately. For example

• Changing assessment during term is strongly frowned upon and should happen rarely.
• Changing the time and location of a class is often difficult given the limited availability of rooms.

Public Forum and Standard of Language

The barometers are open, public forums. Normal standards of the language apply. Profanity or swearing should not be considered acceptable. Students should be aware that State and Commonwealth racial vilification legislation applies to posted comments. Students should also be aware of CQU's policy regarding the use of non-sexist and non-discriminatory language, available at http://www.cqu.edu.au/documents/unipol/just_language.htm

Direct attacks and statement of facts

All contributions should limit themselves to statements about the situation and not direct attacks.

Potentially acceptable contributions include

I almost fell asleep due to the monotone delivery of the lecturer.

It is week 4 and I have still been unable to find details about the assessment for this course.

I had difficulties understanding the tutors explanations on some topics.

Unacceptable contributions include

The sexist pig of lecturer turned the entire class off due to his behaviour

The Timbuktu tutor is a waste of space. He obviously has no qualifications and if he does he must have picked them up off the back of a truck.

The tutor appeared to be drunk

As a guide, consider what your reaction if the barometer comment you are about to post was written about you and posted into a forum where anyone could view it. How would you feel?