Tag Archives: Online Courses

Another Open, Open Education Course

1 Reply

I am going to try it again. I just signed up as a “non-credit student” in EC&I 831: Social Media & Open Education offered online by Dr. Alec Couros and the University of Regina.

The course runs from September 15th to December 8th, 2009, and the website invites us all to join in, even if it’s just to view the weekly lectures (live but recorded in Elluminate). Those of us just jumping in are also encouraged to post comments on other students’ blogs and respond to the weekly sessions on our own blogs. It was my (admittedly limited) participation in another open course, one offered by David Wiley through BYU, that required me to start this blog.

Except for the use of Elluminate, it looks like the majority of the course will be delivered via GoogleDocs, Delicious, YouTube, wikispaces, etc. The session topic information is already posted with the list of guest speakers – including George Siemens, Stephen Downes, and Dean Shareski.

One more thing, the Elluminate sessions will be on Tuesdays at 7pm… in Saskatchewan… I need to find a map.

See you there?

Can we post this in the course?

3 Replies

Working as an instructional designer in a higher education setting to develop online courses, I find myself answering this question on a pretty regular basis. Deciding what is “Fair Use” can get complicated. What is okay to make available or present in a traditional classroom, may not be okay to post online. The act of adding it to a course website  is distribution and can violate the copyright of a document, presentation, video, recording…. Earlier this year I found a document that helps.

ARL’s Know Your Copy Rights website offers a helpful brochure subtitled: Using works in your teaching – What You Can Do: Tips for faculty and teaching assistants in higher education. This is a user-friendly, six page document that provides the essential information about using material in courses – face-to-face and online. Four factors are outlined to help you make a decision about using copyrighted works without permission. In brief:

  1. Purpose and character of the material – nonprofit, educational use? restricted access to students?
  2. Nature of the copyrighted material – published, out-of-print?
  3. Amount of the material used – part or entire work?
  4. Market effect of the material – is the material for sale?

The last page provides an easy matrix to assist you. I have urged faculty and course developers alike to review this if there are any questions at all. There are many shades of gray here, but the legal-speak is at a bare minimum. The author(s) are trying to assist those of us out here making these kinds of decisions without the benefit of a law degree.

This is a brochure of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), published in 2007. Thank you, ARL, for making this available for re-use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License!