Library & Cultural Services: COVE Studio: Home

Getting started with COVE Studio

If you are interested in using COVE Studio within your teaching and want to learn more about the platform, please contact us.

A quick overview of the steps to get started are:

Sign in to COVE Studio with your University of Essex log-in.
Create a new project for your module.
Request or add the documents that you would like to share for collaborative annotation.
- Please see the information below about content and copyright.
- All resources that students are asked to read for their modules should also be added to the online reading list.
Create new assignments for your students.
Share the project with your students.

Uploading content and copyright

Many of the resources that you may want to use in your teaching will be subject to copyright. It is important to ensure that you use copyrighted works fairly, making use of licences and following best practice. See our copyright pages for more information about copyright for learning, teaching, and research.

The information below explains how you can share content on COVE Studio with copyright in mind. If you would like advice about using a particular resource, please just get in touch with us.

Access to COVE Studio is restricted to University of Essex registered users only, and access to your module project can be by invitation only. This is an important point when sharing content under the terms of various licences or copyright exceptions. Any content that you share on COVE Studio should not be shared publicly.

Book chapters and journal articles
If you would like to use content from published books and journals, please complete our form to request access to COVE Studio. Once your request has been fulfilled, we will provide you with a copy of the material that you can upload to COVE Studio.

All copies are made under the terms of our CLA Licence, which allows us to provide access to either 10% of a publication or 1 chapter/article (whichever is greater). Institutional reporting of scans made under the terms of this licence is managed through our digitisation service, so it is important that you submit a request for this content and do not upload it yourself.

Open access and creative commons licences
If you would like to use a resource that has been published open access and/or under a creative commons licence, you should always check exactly which licence has been applied to the work. It is good practice, and often a requirement, to provide attribution to the author when sharing their work.

Module documents
If you have created a document or content specifically for the module, and this is not published or licensed elsewhere, you should be free to share it with your students.

COVE provides a database of primary texts that they have made available for anyone to use.

Please be aware that many of these texts have been shared as they are in the public domain under the terms of US copyright law. Before using this content, you should consider whether they are suitable for use under UK copyright law. A useful resource is the IPO's copyright notice on duration of copyright in the UK.

In some cases, content has been made available with permission of the copyright owner, and this should be specified at the top of the document.

If you are unsure about the status of content that has been made available through COVE's database, please contact us and we can investigate this for you.

Images are classed as 'artistic works' that are covered by copyright. We do not hold a specific licence that covers copying of images for education.

If you would like to upload an image to COVE Studio for collaborative annotation, you may want to consider:

Can you use an image that you have created and hold the copyright of, or material that is out of copyright?
Is there a suitable image that has been made available under a licence that allows for re-use (e.g., creative commons licence)? See our pages on finding and sharing content online for examples of where you can find open resources. Always check the licence and make sure your use is in line with its terms and restrictions.
If the only suitable image is a copyrighted work, can it be shared under the "illustration for instruction" copyright exception (CDPA section 32)? This exception allows the sharing of copyrighted works (including images) for teaching, where the use is fair. Determining 'fair dealing' will always be done on a case-by-case basis. Some important considerations are to only use as much of the work as is necessary for your purpose and to provide suitable attribution to the copyright owner.

It is important that you exact due diligence to ensure that the image can be used for the required purpose. Whenever using an image, be sure to provide attribution to the copyright holder(s).

For images of artwork, it is recommended that you provide an attribution that recognises both the copyright holder of the digital image and the copyright holder of the artwork (e.g., artist or estate).

See our pages on copyright for learning, teaching and research to learn more about fair dealing and managing risks of copyright infringement.

When sharing any copyrighted material with students, it is best practice - and often a requirement - to provide attribution to the copyright owner. For content on COVE Studio, you can provide an attribution by:

Including a cover sheet in the uploaded copy (e.g., all copies made under the terms of the CLA licence and provided to you by the Library will include a cover sheet).
Adding a public note or annotation with a full reference to the work. This needs to be done after you have added the document to the module project.