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Getting Started with OpenHawks

An Orientation Session for Grant Recipients

Mahrya Burnett, Scholarly Communications Librarian, mahrya-burnett@uiowa.edu

Personal introductions
Congratulations!
What we’ll be covering today

Project basics
Overview of OER basics
Talk about copyright - important to understand some basics about how OER relates to copyright and how it’s licensed.
Creative Commons licensing
How to find existing OER for your project (this may not be applicable for everyone. Even if you’ll be developing your OER from scratch, it’s good to have some examples of OER in your discipline so that you can get an idea of what’s possible)
Project management for OER - thinking of it as a project that has many steps. Planning and pacing will help so you don’t burn out. It can also help anticipate potential hurdles and think through them.
Accessibility and inclusivity
Authoring tools
The OpenHawks guide I had you read for today, as well as the slides from today’s presentation can be found on the OH website.

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Basic Project Progression

Receive funds from library

Sign MOU

Find collaborators and supporters

Learn about copyright, licensing, sourcing materials, creating OER in your field

Complete your project

Assess your project

This is a high-level outline that all the projects should follow.

Receive funds. Money comes from the Provost’s office primarily, but is paid through the Libraries. This goes to your college and then to department. Your financial officer should provide you with details about how the money will be distributed to you. If you haven’t received the funding by August, let me know. Special comp and summer stipend is subject to fringe. The Libraries are willing to authorize early payment of the comp if needed.
Walk through the MOU
Plan who you will work with. Some of you already have teams in place. Decide who will do what. Will you need to involve other people? Illustrators, editors, peer-reviewers, video production and editing? Identify the needs first and then think about who you will work with to get them met
If you’re not already familiar with OER, its conventions, the openly licensed work in your discipline, etc. you’ll have to become familiar. The guides I linked in my email will help with this, and we’ll go over the basics of OER today, but you may need to consult with OER experts in your field, librarians, other authors, etc. to really understand some of these topics.
Complete your project! This is the main one. Many of you had very ambitious timelines in your applications, and I would like to encourage everyone to take the time you need to get it right. We ask that these projects are completed with a calendar year, so roughly the summer of 2022. But sometimes things take longer than we expect, and so don’t get discouraged if it takes a bit longer.
After you start using your OER in class (or someone at UI is teaching with it), you’ll need to reflect on how well the resource worked with your students. Did it do what you hoped it would do? Did students meet the objectives of the course using this resource? You all had plans for assessment in your applications, but these are also flexible. We’re not looking for a lot of quantitative data on learning outcomes, since these are variables that are hard to isolate and correlate with OER use. Instead, we’re looking for you and your students’ thoughtful observations about how well you thought the OER worked in class. Then you can make those improvements and keep iterating over time. You don’t have to wait until the next edition to make changes!
Join the community! We can all learn from each other and help each other with these projects. The OER community loves to help each other, share resources, etc., in my experience.

Iowa OER listserv
SPARC-OER listserv
OTN listserv
#OER twitter

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What are OER, anyway?

“Open Educational Resources (OER)…are teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and which also carry legal permission for open use.”

SPARC

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Open = Free + Permissions

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What kind of permissions?

Image credit: 5Rs by Ellen September, CC-BY 2.0

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This is a broad definition for a reason

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What isn’t OER?

Library-licensed resources

(free to you, not open)

Most blogs and websites

(free but not always open)

Images from Google

(free but not always open – check for a license)

Open access monographs

(free and open, but may not be remixable)

Anything that isn’t BOTH free and open with 5R permissions

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Copyright Basics

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Why faculty should be aware of copyright

Not all educational use is fair use
Schools have been sued for copyright infringement (like recent cases in Ohio and California)
Using content in a fair, legal way is the right thing to do

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

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Obtaining copyright protection

Occurs automatically for works that meet these criteria:

Original work of authorship
Unique (some basic level of creativity) and not copying someone else’s work
Fixed in a tangible medium (even napkin doodles count!)

Watch Out! (doodle on a paper napkin) by Neil Tackaberry is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

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What is and is not eligible for copyright protection

Eligible for Protection

Literary works
Artistic works
Translations
Adaptations
Arrangements of music

Not Eligible for Protection

Facts
Ideas
Works purely functional in nature
For most countries, official legislative, administrative, or legal texts
In some countries: works created by government employees

pixabay image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images

is licensed under CC0

pixabay image by OpenIcons

is licensed under CC 0

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Copyright owner has the exclusive right to:

Make copies

Create derivatives

Distribute copies

Perform publicly

Display publicly

From Title 17, Chapter 1, §106, United States Code

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Copyright, collections, and adaptations

OER remixes and some creation projects may be collections (e.g., volume of essays) or adaptations (e.g., a translation)
Any new work you create is copyrightable, but the underlying work is also still copyrightable

That’s why you need to use openly licensed, public domain, or fair use works in your OER
If the source material isn’t licensed for re-use, you might run into trouble with U.S.C. Title 17, Chapter 1 §103:

“Protection…does not extend to any part of a compilation or derivative work if it uses pre-existing material unlawfully”

NOTE TO MAHRYA: I thought the info in the notes was more useful on the slide than the full text of section 103. Full text of section 103 is copied here in case you want to change it back.

OER remixes and some OER creation projects involve combining material from several sources into a whole. This can take the form of a collection (e.g. volume of essays) or an adaptation (a translation). Basket of eggs v. omelet

Any new work you create is copyrightable, but the underlying, existing work is also still copyrightable. That’s why for OER, it’s important only to use other openly licensed, public domain, or fair use works in your work. Otherwise, the source material may not be licensed for reuse and you might run into trouble with the second bullet point.

Copyright includes collections and adaptations
Protection, however, does not extend to any part of a compilation or derivative work if it uses pre-existing material unlawfully
The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work
The copyright of the new work is distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material
The copyright of the new work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material

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Copyright Protection: Limitations and Exceptions

Some countries provide limits to copyright, such as fair use and fair dealing
Exceptions allow for certain uses of works, like:

Criticism
Parody
Visually impaired access
More

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Four Factors of Fair Use

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes

the nature of the copyrighted work

the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole

the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work

Title 17, Chapter 1, §107, United States Code

One such exception is the Fair Use Doctrine. Fair use is one way to use copyrighted works under certain circumstances, for things like parody, journalism, and education. OER may rely on Fair Use at times, but mostly the material used in creating OER is licensed specially for reuse, so we don’t need to do an exhaustive four-factor analysis.

However, if you have copyrighted sources that you’d like to include in your OER, you should conduct a Fair Use analysis. It’s a misconception that all educational use is Fair Use. In order to determine whether your use is covered, you need to examine each factor and see if you have a strong case should someone challenge you. There aren’t really hard and fast metrics to use for determining whether your use meets the threshold for fair use. Each case unique.

Factor 1: Commercial v. non-profit, educational, journalistic, for parody, or accessibility

Factor 2: Factual v. creative. Mostly factual (i.e., textbooks) favors fair use

Factor 3: Smaller portions of the whole favor fair use. Exception for “heart of the work”

Factor 4: Will the new work compete financially with the old one? Will it impact the original author’s market potential

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Public Domain: Works Not Protected by Copyright

Works enter the public domain in one of four ways:

Copyright has expired
Creator did not comply with a formality to maintain copyright protection
Work was never eligible for copyright protection
Creator has waived their copyright and dedicated the work to the public domain

Works in the public domain

Can be used in almost any way
May be covered by copyright in another county
May be covered by moral rights or other intellectual property protections

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How to Use Copyrighted Material

Is there an open equivalent/near equivalent?

Use the open option instead

Is it considered fair use?

Use it and attribute appropriately

Seek permissions

YES

NO

YES

NO

Consider licensing implications for your own work

It’s always safer to use materials that are explicitly licensed for open use, so if there’s an open equivalent or something close, you should consider going that route. If you do find a particular piece of copyrighted content that you’d like to use, consider seeking permission from the copyright holder. The link embedded in the slide will take you to a website from Stanford about how to do it. There are many templates online that can be customized for your own use. The copyright holder may say yes, no, ask for compensation, or not respond.

If the response is negative, too expense, or a non-reply, you might consider whether the content can be used under Fair Use. Any copyrighted inserts retain their copyright and whatever license you apply to your OER does not include the insert.

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Creative Commons Licenses

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Benefits of open licenses include…

MORE PEOPLE SEE YOUR WORK

THE PRODUCT OF YOUR EFFORT LIVES LONGER

YOU CAN SHARE IT WITH OTHER PEOPLE

YOU CAN JOIN THE SCHOLARLY CONVERSATION

YOUR WORK CAN CONTRIBUTE TO FUTURE CLASSES

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Choosing a CC License

Attribution

Share-Alike

No-Derivative

Non-Commercial

Attribution

Share-Alike

Non-Commercial

No-Derivative

The 4 elements work together to tell people what they can do with your work.

The simple way to consider them is to use the Creative Commons License Generator.

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Mix and Match Elements

Four elements 🡺 Six Licenses

BY: Give credit and use for any purpose

BY-SA: Give credit and share adaptations under same license

BY-ND: Give credit and do not share adaptations

BY-NC: Give credit and use only noncommercially

BY-NC-SA: Give credit, use only noncommercially, and share adaptations under the same license

BY-NC-ND: Give credit, use only noncommercially, and do not share adaptations

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Consider future users

Less restrictive licenses (such as CC-BY) mean more flexibility for future users
You will always get credit for your work. Attribution is required with all CC licenses.
Make it easy for others to give you credit:

Provide sample attributions so future users can copy and paste them into their work.

“Go Open with Creative Commons” by Abbey Elder, CC BY-SA 4.0

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Remix Compatibility

CC License Compatibility Chart created by Kennisland at CC Wiki is licensed under CC0

Use this chart to select multiple appropriately licensed works to combine in an adaptation

CC License Compatibility Chart created by Kennisland at CC Wiki is licensed under CC0

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Finding OER

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Search and Discover

Most OER can be found in collections (i.e., repositories/repos), most of which can be searched individually or using a federated tool.

Large Clearinghouse Repos:

OER Commons (“Public Digital Library of OER”)
Merlot (Lessons, exercises, quizzes)
OpenLearn (Courses, videos)

Discipline-Specific Examples:

Open Courses

Textbook Repos:

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Search and Discover

Images

Creative Commons

Flickr

Google images (filter by usage rights)

Multimedia

OER Commons/Merlot

TED Talks

ccMixter (music)

OER Search Engines (all in one!)

Mason OER Metafinder (MOM)

OASIS Metasearch

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Managing OER Projects

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Project Phases

Research

Find and curate source materials. Identify gaps and needed content. Create an initial project plan and arrange for assistance.

Project Design

Identify existing OER. Decide how to address gaps, plot workflows and assign tasks, begin pre-writing.

Development

Existing content is modified, license-checked and made accessible. New content is created. Pieces are integrated into the final project and peer-reviewed.

Publication

Proper CC license is added to the work. Published, archived, and distributed to learners and to the OER community members

I’d like to start by breaking down a typical OER development project into some basic phases. Not every project will follow this pattern exactly, but most will involve elements of these four steps.

The research phase is the first part of the project, before you start writing or creating anything. During this phase, you identify the learning objectives that will be met with your OER, establish who your audience will be, outline the content of the OER and start collecting existing materials that you can use in your project. This is where you have to put into action some of what we’ve already talked about with understanding copyright status and how that affects what can be used in OER as source material. This is also the phase where you begin to identify gaps in existing content and figure out how you will address those gaps. Again, this is where the OER goalpost worksheet can be helpful for assigning tasks and setting deadlines.

The project design phase is not always completely distinct from the research phase. This is where you continue to hone in on what you’ll need to create or find. You may start plotting workflows, outline individual chapter or learning object content, assign individual pieces of content to project team members, and begin pre-writing.

The development phase is where the OER itself first begins to take shape. For chapters or modules where you’ve found existing source material to work with, you will be going through the content and making any necessary changes, updates, or local contextualization. You’ll also need to make sure you have all your source material in an editable format so that you can amend it. You’ll also need to make sure that each piece of source material is licensed appropriately for how you want to use it. In addition to working with existing material, this is where you’ll start drafting new content. You can always begin drafting your content in whatever type of word processing program you typically use and then migrate it into Pressbooks or whatever content development tools you’re using.

The final part of this phase is integrating the chapters or modules into a cohesive whole. You’ll have to harmonize different writing styles, make sure everything has been developed with accessibility and inclusion in mind, and that everything has a consistent look and feel. This is also when you’ll want to start sharing material with peer-reviewers. In many disciplines, faculty are used to reviewing manuscripts of various types. You can try reaching out to colleagues who teach similar content at other universities. It doesn’t have to be a double-blind process. In OER, the peer-review continues after the work has been published. Ideally, people will use your work and include reviews in Open Textbook Library, discuss it on OER listservs, etc. You can get valuable feedback through these processes.

Finally, when you feel like the work is ready to be released into the wild, you will need to apply a CC license to the new content you’ve developed. You’ll also need to make sure that the source material you’ve included is properly attributed and displays the proper licenses. There are lots of examples out there about what citation styles to use and how and where to display the licensing info. At this point, you’ll also want to work on a cover design and layout. As part of this grant, we’ll be hiring a graphic designer to help with this process. This person can design a cover for you and can hopefully help with layout, as well. Once all of this is done, you’ll publish the work. Each team has been assigned a location for where the projects will be published. The two UI projects will be published in Iowa Research Online, which the other projects will be published through ISU. Regardless of where your project is published, it will be preserved, cataloged, given a persistent link and DOI. We can then publicize the OER through the usual channels--add to our OER Commons group, upload in OTL, announce via the listservs, etc.

You should note that the grant period will be over before most of you reach the publication phase. This is expected. At the end of the grant period, you’ll submit your final progress report that will describe moving from the final steps of the development phase to the publication phase. We will continue to offer logistical support if needed after the grant period has ended.

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Production workflow from The OER Starter Kit by Abbey K. Elder is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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Project Planning for Re-Use

Interoperability:

Aim for modular, customizable content

Digital accessibility:

Build accessibility in from the start; ask for help!

Sustainability:

Plan for future updates

As you’re planning and outlining your content, it’s important to keep in mind that what you are creating a work that will hopefully be reused by others. You want to make your OER as easy to reuse as possible. So what are some considerations to keep in mind?

Interoperability - Making your work modular allows it to be used in a variety of different systems.Some questions to ask yourself: How easy will it be for downstream users to reuse a single chapter or module of content? Can they import single units of content into various authoring tools? Can they upload sections of content into an LMS? This functionality is fairly well-built into Pressbooks. You can import/export individual chapters. Pressbooks also makes its output available in different editable formats.

Digital accessibility - You’ll also want to create OER with accessibility in mind right from the start. We’ll talk in greater detail about accessibility in the next section of the presentation, but if you don’t know whether what you’re designing is accessible, you can always ask! There are people at all three institutions that can review your work for accessibility and make suggestions.

Sustainability - When a traditional textbook needs to be updated, a new edition is released. With OER, making updates is much easier. Some authors make adjustments each time they use the OER in class. Others make major revisions more periodically. You should give some thought to how often you will make updates and how you will communicate those updates to your users. You’ll also want to consider how downstream users will make updates and share them. Does the writing and other content lend itself to updates?

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ALMS Framework

ACCESS to editing tools: Offer in a format that can be edited with freely accessible tools.

1

LEVEL: Format should not require advanced technical expertise to revise content.

2

MEANINGFULLY EDITABLE: Offer in an editable format

3

SOURCE FILE ACCESS: Source file is accessible and editable

4

This material is an adaptation of Defining the "Open" in Open Content and Open Educational Resources, which was originally written by David Wiley and published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at http://opencontent.org/definition/

The ALMS Framework provides some guidelines for making sure your work is as usable as possible downstream.

Access to Editing Tools: Is the open content published in a format that can be revised or remixed using tools that are freely available and run on all major platforms (e.g., OpenOffice)
Level of Expertise Required: Is the open content published in a format that requires a minimum level of technical expertise to revise or remix (e.g., Word)?
Meaningfully Editable: Is the open content published in a manner making its content easy to revise or remix (e.g., a text file)
Source File Access: The source file is also accessible and editable. This one is a little confusing, so I’m going to read directly from the ALMS Framework paper “If one has not worked with extensively digital media, the notion of a source file may be foreign. A source file is the file that a programmer or developer edits and works with in order to produce a final product. In some cases the source files used by the original developer are the same files that the end-user will interact with. An example is an HTML file – the file the web developer works on is the very same file that a computer browser displays. This HTML file can be viewed by almost any web browser and copying it so that it can then be modified is relatively simple. For this reason, when you distribute an HTML file you are also providing access to the source-file because they are one and the same. In other cases, the file the developer edits and works on is compiled into a new file for distribution, and this file cannot be edited or altered. An example of this kind of media is a Flash file. In the case of Flash, source files are named something like filename.fla, while the file a web browser reads and displays is named something like filename.swf. In order to edit a Flash file the FLA (source) file is necessary. However, because web browsers do not understand FLA files, people rarely post them online. Some may intentionally publish files that are not self-sourced, like Flash files, because they do not want other Internet users altering their work. However, for those who want others to revise and remix their work, access to the source files should be provided.”

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Accessibility and Inclusivity

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Questions to Consider

What resources are available to support you in making your OER accessible and inclusive?

Are there any portions of your resource that may be especially challenging to make accessible? Consider graphs, charts, diagrams, and activities.

How will you support your team to learn more about accessibility practices?

What are some achievable steps you can take while authoring content to make your resource accessible?

These slides are adapted from “Accessibility and Inclusive Design” by Rebus Community, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Let’s start by considering these questions: [Ask audience]

Some answers: The Regents Primer and Pressbook help guide, online resources for inclusive design, local university offices (for UI: Digital Accessibility Office (https://itaccessibility.uiowa.edu/), Digital Media Captioning (https://itaccessibility.uiowa.edu/captioning), the DEI Style Guide (https://diversity.uiowa.edu/resources/dei-style-guide)
Audience examples
Read materials, attend workshops on campus, look at examples, learn about Pressbooks features that aid accessibility
Some answers: include alt tags and other metadata when using images or multimedia, include transcripts for video content, include diverse images and examples

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Universal Design

“A framework or mindset that is about providing options, choices, flexibility, and variety in how content is represented and how assessments are designed to create rich learning experiences for every student.”

-Universal Design with Personas, Penn State

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Organizing Content

Organizing content using headings allows for students using screen readers to navigate the page and helps a variety of learners break down and understand information.
Use only one Heading 1 per page.
Simply bolding or using a page break or line will not indicate to a screen reader that there is a new section.
See “Organizing Content” in the Accessibility Toolkit by BCcampus.

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Adding Links

All links must have text that describes the topic or purpose of the link
Whenever possible, use the text of the hyperlink to convey information as to what the link is about
Set links to open in the same window

In the examples below, the third option is most descriptive and accessible:

Click here for information on Rebus Community.
You can find more information about Rebus Community at https://www.rebus.community/.
Information about Rebus Community is available online.

See "Links” in the Accessibility Toolkit by BCcampus for more information.

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Alternative Text (alt-text)

Alt text should be included for images that serve a functional purpose (i.e., it is conveying content to students beyond the text).
Keep them concise - they should be no longer than 125 characters including spaces and punctuation
Occasionally, long descriptions may be needed for infographics or graphs
If an image is for decorative or design purposes, it does not need alt text. However, you should not leave an alt text space blank. Put in two quotations: “‘ This prompts the machine to read “Graphic” and move on.
You may have shorter alt text if the description is in the body of the text.

These slides are adapted from “Accessibility and Inclusive Design” by Rebus Community, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Alt-text is another important consideration. Every time you include an image in your OER, you should include metadata that describes the image for people who can’t see it or process it for some reason. You can think of images as falling into two basic categories - functional or decorative.

Functional images convey additional information beyond the text. These are things like tables and diagrams, maps, etc.You should always include alt-text for these types of images so that members of your audience don’t miss important data. These should be concise, if possible. If the image conveys a lot of information, or is particularly complex, you may need to use a long description instead.

Decorative images don’t need an alt tag, but to avoid confusing the screen readers, you should include an empty set of quotation marks.

If the image is already described in the text, your alt tags can be shorter

For those of you using Pressbooks, you are prompted to add this material when you add an image.

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Picking Inclusive Images

Select visuals that showcase a wide range of people
Avoid visuals that reinforce stereotypes - “good” stereotypes OR negative stigma
Remember that images of diverse folks can be used to illustrate any topic, not just info directly related to that community
Don’t forget to use diverse names in examples
Additional Resources for Diverse Images:

Stock photos: Unsplash, Pexels, Nappy, Broadly Gender Spectrum Collection, Disability Inclusive Stock Photography
Discipline-specific photos: Look at images in existing OER! Some creators will have created new images for their books, and licensed these openly for reuse.

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Tools and Assistance

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OER Authoring Tools

Pressbooks through UI – Institutional site license includes full functionality
Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or Libre Office, etc.
InkScape – Open tool to create and edit PDFs, vector drawing, and graphics
OER Commons Open Author – A text editor that allows you to create OER in the OER Commons platform
GitBook – A platform that uses GitHub to publish content in a book format

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Pressbooks at the University of Iowa

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Multimedia Production

Digital Editing Services and Tools List

SITA Program

Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio - UI Libraries

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OER Creation Guides

Burnett, M., Solomon, J., & Healy, H. (2019). Getting Started with Open Educational Resources. Iowa City, IA: UI Libraries.

Elder, A.K. (2019). The OER Starter Kit . Ames, IA: Iowa State University Digital Press.

Falldin, M. & Lauritsen, K. (n.d.). Authoring Open Textbooks. Minneapolis, MN: Open Textbook Network.

Cuillier, C., Hofer, A., Johnson, A., Labadorf, K., Lauritsen, K., Potter, P., Saunders, R., and Walz, A. (2016). Modifying An Open Textbook: What You Need to Know. Minneapolis, MN: Open Textbook Network.

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Getting Help

Schedule follow-ups. Do it! Don’t be shy!
From the Libraries: subject specialists, copyright resources, OER resources, citation and licensing help
From OTLT: SITA program, instructional design, Pressbooks help
From the OpenHawks community: online collaboration, threaded discussion, F2F workshops and meetings
From the greater OER community: Open Textbook Network Google Group, SPARC OER Google Group, OER Iowa

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Thank you

Mahrya Burnett

Scholarly Communications Librarian

Scholarly Impact Department, UI Libraries

Mahrya-burnett@uiowa.edu

uiowa.edu