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Instructors

Collaborator Terms

Invitations, what you can edit, your share and how it is paid, what you own, and how a collaboration ends.

Last updated on October 25, 2026.

A collaborator is someone an instructor invites to help build a course. Nothing starts until you accept the invitation in the Instructor Dashboard, and accepting is agreeing to these terms. You keep the copyright in what you add and license it to the course for good; you get Lifetime Access to the course free; if the instructor sets you a share, it is a percentage of each sale, cleared after 14 days and paid out automatically from $20. The instructor can change your role, share or access at any time, and either of you can end it.

This summary is for orientation only. The sections below are the operative terms.

1. Scope and acceptance

These terms are between you and ACADA L.L.C., a Tennessee limited liability company (ACADA, we), and cover every course on acada.ac you work on as a collaborator. You accept them when you accept an invitation in the Instructor Dashboard; the invitation shows the role, what you would be able to edit and your share before you do. They sit on top of the Terms of Service, and the Course Content Policy, Community Guidelines, Acceptable Use Policy and Academic Integrity policy apply to your work on the course as they apply to the instructor's. The instructor's own contract with us is the Instructor Agreement; these terms do not make you a party to it.

2. Who can be a collaborator

You can be invited if you are 18 or older, enrolled in the course, and hold one account in your own name under the Account & Identity policy. An instructor cannot invite themselves, or a second account of their own. A course can have several collaborators, each with their own role, permissions and share.

3. Invitations

  • Invited, not appointed. The instructor invites you and names your role. Until you accept, you have no edit access, earn nothing, and are not named on the course.
  • Accepting. You accept or decline in the Instructor Dashboard. You must still be enrolled in the course when you accept. Accepting is your agreement to these terms, we record it, and it starts the role at once.
  • Withdrawing. The instructor can withdraw an invitation before you answer. Declining or withdrawing ends it there; nothing shows on the course.

4. What you get

  • The course, free. When you accept, your enrolment becomes Lifetime Access at no cost, on the terms in the Purchases, Refunds & Subscriptions policy. A monthly subscription you were paying is cancelled that day; what you paid before is not refunded. This access stays yours after your role ends.
  • A role and a name. The instructor chooses your role name and can change it at any time. When you are credited, it shows in the course room, on the course page and in your portfolio.
  • Credit. The instructor decides whether collaborators are credited publicly. You can also choose not to be named, in the Instructor Dashboard, at any time; you are credited only when you both allow it. Credit ends when the role ends.
  • A share, if the instructor sets one. Section 6.

5. What you can do

Your edit access starts at nothing. The instructor grants what you may touch: which modules or lessons, which kinds of block, whether you can add or delete blocks, and whether you can edit the course's settings or its onboarding questionnaire. The instructor can widen or narrow it at any time, and it is enforced when you save. Collaborators cannot publish, price, retire or delete a course, invite other collaborators, or change who owns it. On a published course, you can make the draft lessons you are allowed to edit visible to students.

6. Your share

  • What it is. A percentage of what each student pays for the course, set by the instructor between 0% and 65% in steps of 5%. It comes out of the instructor's part of the split in Instructor Earnings & Payouts, never out of ours. So does any affiliate commission the instructor has switched on for that course, and the two together can never exceed 65% of a sale, so the instructor always keeps at least 5% of it. An instructor who has promised collaborators 50% can offer an affiliate at most 15%, and the other way round.
  • When it is earned. On every charge for the course made while you are on it: a first purchase, each monthly renewal, the charge at the end of a trial, an upgrade, a repurchase, and a bundle that includes the course, on the course's part of the bundle price. Each is credited at the rate in force that day. A change to your rate, and the end of your role, apply from the next charge onwards, never backwards.
  • Clearing. A credit clears 14 days after the charge, the same hold as instructors and affiliates. Until then it shows in the Instructor Dashboard as clearing.
  • Refunds and chargebacks. When a payment is refunded or charged back, your share of it is taken back out and nets against what you are owed; a partial refund takes back the same part of your share. A chargeback the bank decides in our favour is restored to you.
  • Your own purchases. Buying the course yourself, or having someone buy it for you, to earn a share is fraud under the Fraud & Scams policy.
  • No affiliate commission. You do not earn affiliate commission on a course you collaborate on; you are paid from it already.

7. Payouts

  • Automatic. Every day, if your cleared balance is at least $20 and your payout method is ready, we create a payout for the whole balance and send it the same day. You can raise your minimum in the Instructor Dashboard, not lower it. There is nothing to request.
  • Methods. Stripe Connect in the country of your bank account, chosen when you connect, under Stripe's Connected Account Agreement. Outside the United States, PayPal as well, once you have confirmed in the Instructor Dashboard that you are not a US person and do not live in the United States; PayPal is not available to US collaborators.
  • Arriving, failing, fees and taxes. The same as for instructors, in sections 7 to 9 of Instructor Earnings & Payouts: usually 1 to 3 business days to arrive; a failed payout is emailed the same day and the amount returns to your balance; we pay in US dollars and cover the cost of sending; receiving and conversion fees are yours; what we pay you is yours to declare, we do not withhold tax unless the law obliges us to, and any form US law requires comes through Stripe.
  • If Stripe pauses your account. Automatic payouts to it pause until it is resolved; your balance keeps accruing.

8. What you add to the course

You own it. The copyright in what you write, record or upload stays yours. While the course is published, you may use the ACADA name and logo to say that you work on a course here, on the terms in the Trademark policy.

You license it to the course. By adding it, you give the instructor a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free licence to use, edit and keep it as part of that course, and to license it onward to ACADA and to students on the terms of the Instructor Agreement. The licence survives the end of your role, however it ends, and a version of the course that carries your work stays live. It covers that course only: the instructor may not lift your work into another course without your agreement.

You promise it is yours to add. You have the rights you need for everything you add, it copies nobody's work, and what it says is true. Claims that it does not are handled under the Copyright & DMCA policy.

9. Responsibility

  • The instructor answers for the course. To ACADA and to students, the course is the instructor's, and the promises in the Instructor Agreement are theirs to keep.
  • You answer for what you add. Your contributions must meet the Course Content Policy and Academic Integrity policy, and your conduct the Community Guidelines and Acceptable Use Policy.
  • Students' data. Whatever you see of the course's students, such as who is in its room and what they post there, is there so that you can do your part. Use it for nothing else: no exporting it, no contact lists, no marketing to them outside ACADA.
  • Payments stay on ACADA. You may not take payment for the course, or for any part of it, outside ACADA, or steer its students to pay elsewhere.
  • Independence. You are not our employee, agent or partner, and not the instructor's either through these terms. What the two of you agree beyond these terms is between you.

10. Changes and ending

  • The instructor's call. The instructor can change your role name, your permissions or your share, including to zero, or remove you, at any time and without notice. What you have already earned stays yours, apart from a later refund or chargeback of the charge it came from.
  • Leaving. You can leave any course from the Instructor Dashboard at any time. The instructor is told.
  • What ends. Removal or leaving ends your edit access and your public credit at once. Your free access to the course, everything credited to you up to that day (still subject to refunds and chargebacks of those charges), and the licence in section 8 continue. Nothing is earned on later charges.
  • When the course closes. If the instructor retires the course, closes their account, or we remove the course, you earn on every charge up to its closing, and you keep the access and download right a lifetime student has under the Purchases, Refunds & Subscriptions policy. A course never passes to a collaborator.
  • Your account. If you close your account, whatever you are owed is paid out first, with no minimum, as it clears, on the terms in the Account & Identity policy.
  • By us. If you break these terms or a policy they include, we follow the Account Enforcement & Appeals policy: a written warning, then restrictions, then closure. A collaborator role is ended at once for fraud, stolen work, or misusing students' data. The course itself is the instructor's to put right.

11. Disputes with an instructor

We pay what the ledger says, and that record is final. Every credit is recorded at the rate in force on the day of the charge: you see each one, with its rate, under Credit History in Collaboration earnings, and the instructor sees each charge's collaborator share on their Revenue screen. A disagreement about what the rate should have been, about credit, or about anything the two of you agreed beyond these terms is between you and the instructor; we do not arbitrate it. We act only where a policy is broken.

12. Responsibility and liability

You are responsible for what you add and what you do on the course. If someone brings a claim against us because of it, you cover what it costs us to deal with it, including reasonable legal costs, and you help us handle it. The limits of our liability to you are set out in the Terms of Service, and nothing here takes away a right the law where you live gives you.

13. Changes to these terms

When we change these terms, we change the date shown at the top. If a change adds an obligation, changes what you are paid, or changes the licence, we post a notice in the app at least 14 days before it takes effect and email every collaborator. If you do not accept a change, leave your collaborations before it takes effect.

14. Governing law and contact

The law that governs these terms, and how a dispute with us is resolved, are set out in the Terms of Service. Questions go to support@acada.ac.

15. Related policies