Gooru Community Guidelines

At Gooru, we envision a world in which the best education content, experts, and community come together to provide personalized learning experiences and positive learning outcomes to all students.

Guidelines from the Gooru Team:

Before we list our community standards, we would like to encourage you to keep a few ideas in mind as you contribute to the Gooru Community:

Share Content That Inspires Discovery

• Effective education resources usually provide information that is presented in a clear, easy-to-understand manner and delivers concepts in an interesting way.
• Great content prompts students to think and can serve as a jumping point for further exploration.

Label Your Content Accurately

• Make the content you add easier to find by titling and describing it accurately, and tying it to the most appropriate grade, course, or standard when possible.
• At the same time, if you discover content with tags that are egregiously inaccurate, we encourage you to flag the content , so we can look at it or add more appropriate tags.

Give Effective Content a Positive Rating

• When you discover content on Gooru that is especially effective or inspiring, give it a 5-star rating. We value the perspective and insight that you bring to the table.

In addition to the points listed above, we all have a shared responsibility to keep Gooru safe and effective for learners and instructors.

To learn about our community standards and how to report inappropriate content, continue reading below:

Educational Value

We encourage you to post content that is high in educational value and credible. As you share on Gooru, it helps to fully label the content with its academic context so that others can easily discover its educational value. Context is especially important when sharing resources that may be considered controversial or biased by others in the community.

Adult and Graphic Content

Always consider the learner as the primary consumer of content. Gooru strongly discourages the sharing of violence or gore that is primarily meant to shock, disgust, or is for sadistic purposes. We also hold a strict policy against the sharing of pornographic content on Gooru. Otherwise, if you’re sharing content that is especially mature or graphic, make sure that it is labeled as such and is balanced with educational value.

Bullying and Harassment

We do not tolerate content or posts in community spaces that bully or harass other users. We will review, and when appropriate, take action based on reports of abusive behavior on Gooru.

Hate Speech

We do not permit content that promotes hatred towards individuals or groups based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or medical condition. Any content displayed solely for the purpose of dehumanizing others based on the categories above will be removed.

Violence, Threats, and Self-Harm

We consider it a top priority to keep Gooru a safe space for everyone. As a member of this community, you may not credibly threaten others or organize acts of violence.  Organizations with a record of terrorist or violent criminal activity are not allowed to maintain a presence on our site. Additionally, content that encourages self-mutilation, drug abuse, eating disorders, or other criminal activities is not allowed on the site. We reserve the right to remove content and escalate to law enforcement when we detect a genuine risk of physical harm, or threat to individual or public safety.

Privacy

Our stance on privacy:

We make it a priority to keep the personal information you share with us safe. Here at Gooru, we believe that you own your usage data, and don’t share this with other organizations or people. We also comply with student privacy laws such as COPPA and FERPA.

Steps we recommend for keeping your personal information private:

To protect your own privacy, be careful not to display any private or confidential information such as passwords phone numbers, or addresses when sharing content on Gooru. Also, we ask you to respect the personal information and privacy of others that you collaborate with on the site. We recommend you refrain from posting content that displays social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, or other sensitive information that is not publicly accessible.

Security

We take the security of all users’ accounts seriously. Gooru does not tolerate content that uses fraud, deception, or exists solely for collecting personal information or other commercial purposes. When sharing content on Gooru, avoid adding websites that collect information or ask people to subscribe, pay, or share personal information.

Identity

By creating a Gooru account, you are affirming your identity. Gooru does not tolerate misrepresentation in any way, shape or form. You may not claim to be another person or use another person’s personal information to create an account. If we discover that you are misrepresenting yourself, we will suspend your account and privileges.

Intellectual Property

Gooru provides you with tools for discovering and sharing the Web’s best open education resources. With this in mind, we discourage the posting of materials that infringe on others’ copyrights, and any discussion that encourages infringing activities. Before you share content on Gooru, be sure that you have the right or permission to do so.

Reporting Abuse

Whenever you see a piece of content that appears to violate the standards listed above, you should report it to us. Here’s how to flag potentially abusive content:

1. Locate the flag tab. You can find the flag tab in the lower-right corner of the Gooru player when viewing a resource or collection. Click on the flag tab to report the content you are currently viewing.
2. Explain the issue. Please check the box that best represents why you are flagging the resource or collection, and provide us with some additional information to help us review the content.

However, while everything reported is reviewed according to our standards, reported content will not be removed if community standards have not been violated.

Also, remember that Gooru represents a diverse community of instructors and learners from around the globe. Each of us comes to this space with our own set of beliefs and sense of culture. If you find material here that does not violate our standards, but still seems disagreeable or not especially effective, we encourage you to give the content a poor rating.