OER, Open Pedagogy, and Open Licenses
(and copyright basics for teachers)
September 26, 2018
Outline
Definitions
Open Educational Resources
Teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. (Hewlett Foundation).
OER is always:
Open/Free License
A free license or open license is a license agreement which contains conditions permitted to the user from the holder on a specific list of uses for his or her work. Without a special license, these uses are prohibited by the laws of copyright (Wikipedia, “Free license”)
Open Pedagogy
A set of teaching and learning practices only possible in the context of the free access and permissions characteristic of open educational resources.
Definitions
Copyright
Copyright applies to works of original authorship, which means works that are unique and not a copy of someone else’s work, and most of the time requires fixation in a tangible medium (written down, recorded, saved to your computer, etc.).
Copyright law establishes the basic terms of use that apply automatically to these original works. These terms give the creator or owner of copyright certain exclusive rights while also recognizing that users have certain rights to use these works without the need for a license or permission.
The rationale for copyright is both utilitarian and moral.
Fair Use
Reproducing copyrighted material for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright, given these conditions:
The 5 R’s of OER
�
The original 4, and the ones most teacher creators think about.
A practical concern: sometimes things get lost.
OER and textbook costs
A major motivator for the adoption of OER is the cost of commercial textbooks.
Martin, M., Belikov, O., Hilton III, J., Wiley, D., & Fischer, L. (2017). Analysis of Student and Faculty Perceptions of Textbook Costs in Higher Education. Open Praxis, 9(1), 79-91.
But it isn’t only about cost.
“When we allow the false notion that OER are free textbooks to prevail, this is what we get. Publishers can compete with free textbooks by making their more-restrictive-than-all-right-reserved offerings 70% more affordable. And they have ten billion annual incentives to keep the conversation centered on the problems their business models are capable of solving.”�- David Wiley, Nov. 2017
Teacher Agency
Why are there so many composition textbooks? Macmillian sells 44 handbooks alone. For the most part, they all say the same thing. We only assign commercial textbooks out of convenience and inertia.
Licensing Course Materials
Context
Advantages
If your course materials are openly licensed and freely available, students will have no reason to pay for access through Course Hero.
Benefits of Open Licensing
Syllabus
Handouts and Notes
Videos and Media
Syllabus content is already shared and remixed. If we openly license them, the process would be more efficient and transparent. Students who want access to all faculty syllabi would be pleased, transfer equivalency decisions would be easier.
�Licensing and sharing documents in a structured way ensures that useful content is never lost. How many times have you found a good resource on the copier? Licensing would allow collaboration and enrichment rather than simple covert copying.
�Licensing would encourage sharing access to source material. Teachers could adapt and customize multimedia content instead of just using it and telling students to ignore the random person narrating the video.
Open Pedagogy
Using OER the same way we used commercial textbooks misses the point. It’s like driving an airplane down the road. Yes, the airplane has wheels and is capable of driving down on the road (provided the road is wide enough). But the point of an airplane is to fly at hundreds of miles per hour – not to drive. Driving an airplane around, simply because driving is how we always traveled in the past, squanders the huge potential of the airplane. (David Wiley)
Disposable Assignments are assignments that students complain about doing and faculty complain about grading. They’re assignments that add no value to the world – after a student spends three hours creating it, a teacher spends 30 minutes grading it, and then the student throws it away. Not only do these assignments add no value to the world, they actually suck value out of the world.
Why not involve students in the production and recycling of knowledge? Instead of asking them to read OER, why not help them make OER?
What are some ways you can start incorporating open pedagogy?
Copyright and Student Work
Students own the copyright for any work created for your class by default.
However, “University of Mississippi faculty, staff, postdoctoral fellows and postdoctoral associates and students, as a condition of employment or admission to the University, agree to grant the University a free nonexclusive right to use any work that they create in connection with their employment or matriculation at the University for instructional purposes” (UM Policy 10000023).
Permission/Release is not required for:
Fair Use for Teachers
Multiple copies (not to exceed in any event more than one copy per pupil in a course) may be made by or for the teacher giving the course for classroom use or discussion, provided that he copying meets the tests of brevity and spontaneity, meets the cumulative effect test as defined below, and each copy includes a notice of copyright.
Brevity | Spontaneity | Cumulative Effect | Notwithstanding |
Articles and Books: a complete article, story or essay of less than 2,500 words, or an excerpt from any work of not more than 1,000 words or 10% of the work. Everything else: 10% has historically been a good rule of thumb, but courts have recently moved away from it. Basically, if you are copying the “essence” of a work, it’s not fair use. | The copying is at the instance and inspiration of the individual teacher, and the inspiration and decision to use the work was “in the moment” (i.e. the night before class). | Copying of the material is for only one course and not more than one short poem, article, story, essay or two excerpts may be copied from the same author, nor more than three from the same collective work or periodical volume during one class term. There shall not be more than nine instances of such multiple copying for one course during one class term. | Copying cannot: - substitute anthologies, compilations or collective works. - include “consumable” works (exercises, handouts, etc). - substitute for the purchase of books, publishers’ reprints or periodicals. - be directed by higher authority. - be repeated with respect to the same item by the same teacher from term to term. |
DWR Copyright Policy