|
|
||||||
Copyright and Online Courses at St. Ambrose University
This page is intended to be a resource for SAU faculty on issues concerning the use of copyrighted works in classroom presentations and projects. It is not intended as legal advice and should not be construed as such. It will, we hope, point you in the right direction to find answers to your copyright questions. If you have further questions, please, contact us.
CIDT Fair Use Guidelines and Forms:
CIDT Fair Use Guidelines: This .pdf document is designed to guide the digitization and presentation of copyrighted materials in Blackboard online course websites, and has been adapted from the O'Keefe Library Electronic Reserve Standards.
CIDT Project Intake Form: This intake form will accompany projects submitted to CIDT to ensure compliance with Fair Use laws when material will be copied from analog to digital format for use in a Blackboard course website.
Sample Copyright Permission Request Letter (MS Word Document) and Copyright Permission Request Form (.pdf document)
The Latest News in U.S. Copyright Laws: TEACH -- the Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization Act:
Copyright vs. Fair Use: To review these terms as they are defined by the TEACH act, click on the term and a pop-up window will appear with its definition:
How does SAU
meet the requirements of Distance Education defined by TEACH?
The conditions which constitute
“distance education” in TEACH are specific. “Fair Use” only applies to
distance education when it meets these stipulations. Institutions and
instructors must be careful to adhere to this definition of distance
education to ensure that requirements for fair use are being met.
Blackboard course management software already in use at St. Ambrose
University already fulfills many of these requirements; the rest can be
met by prudent instructors adhering to many of the rules of copyright
already in effect in their traditional classrooms.
| Distance Education as
defined by TEACH: |
Institutional adherence
via Blackboard course management system at St. Ambrose University:
|
What an Instructor can do
to ensure compliance with TEACH: |
| Must occur in discrete installments only for students officially enrolled in the course. | Only students enrolled in a
certain course in Blackboard can gain access to that course.
|
Should any guest lecturers be invited into the course, ensure they know the proper use for the course and that they are trustworthy enough not to download and distribute copyrighted works. |
| Must occur within a confined span of time: students access each “session” within a set period of time and materials are not accessible to students beyond that time span; | Courses are only accessible
for a semester. Materials can be made “unavailable” to students once
they have fulfilled their purpose |
Instructors need only allow copyrighted content to be “available” to students for as long as it is absolutely necessary. If material will not be referred to again, make it “unavailable” once students are done using it. |
| Together, Blackboard administrators and online instructors can provide written and verbal notices to students stressing that, if they download and distribute any part of the course, they are in danger of violating U.S. copyright laws and will be held accountable. | ||
| All elements should be integrated into a cohesive, lecture-like package; | Course materials in Blackboard are naturally organized according to daily or weekly units, or topical units, according to the professor’s choice. | Make sure that copyrighted materials are only distributed to students within your Blackboard course, not directly from your website that is not password-protected. |
| Copyrighted materials must only be used in the context of “mediated instructional activities”, in portions or under conditions that are analogous to conventional teaching and lecture formats, and in the format of “reasonable and limited portions” comparable to that typically displayed in a live classroom. | Blackboard can house
power-point presentations, handouts, outlines, lecture notes, etc.,
that easily mirror what would be done in a traditional classroom.
Professors can create these, or they can be downloaded with
certain textbooks’ course cartridges. When a textbook is accompanied
by a course cartridge, all material is copyright-protected and
provided to the instructor with the permission of the publisher.
|
Ensure that copyrighted sources are properly cited according to APA or MLA style so that the work does not appear to be original. Wherever possible, send students to an external website containing the original work. Websites created by the copyright holder are displaying created materials as the creator intended, and so it does not infringe on copyright laws to send students to external websites. |
| Copyrighted materials may only be used in “reasonable and limited portions” comparable to that typically displayed in a live classroom. | It is not permissible to scan in and upload full or lengthy works for students to access throughout the semester. | A good rule is a single article from a journal, a single chapter from a book, or any rule you would use in class to copy handouts. When the student could instead buy the book, photocopying infringes on the market value of that work. |
| The institution is allowed to retain limited copies for limited use in the future; | Blackboard administrators can archive courses and all the materials contained therein once they have been used. Instructors can then determine whether or not to re-use materials in the future. The institution thus retains a copy for limited use but it is rendered unavailable to students. | Simply make your content “unavailable” after using it, rendering it inaccessible to students but able to be retained and accessed by yourself and by the administration for future use. |
- Other original materials produced for distance education may not be used without the author’s expressed permission;
- Performances or displays of copies “not lawfully made and acquired”, such as bootlegged copies or materials expressly denied fair use by their copyright notice, are impermissible;
- The extensive use of materials that would otherwise be bought by students: a majority of a literary work, textbook, video, cd recording, etc., the distribution of which would clearly infringe on the market value of the work, is impermissible;
-
For materials exclusively available through an online database
(ERIC, Lexus Nexus, etc. ), instead of uploading a copy yourself, steer
users to these databases through a live hyperlink within the course to
retrieve the materials from their original sources, thus not infringing on
any copyright laws.
Other
stipulations of the law:
Instructor oversight: TEACH mandates the participation of the instructor in planning and conducting the distance education program, so that the performance/ display of copyrighted works is directly at the disposal of the instructor.
Part of University system: Copyrighted materials must be transmitted “as an integral part of a class session offered as a regular part of the systematic, mediated instructional activities” of the institution (at SAU, through Blackboard courses only). Don’t make them available on personal or academic websites; post them within the course site only.
Related to course content: The copyrighted materials must be directly related to the content of the course as stipulated and monitored by the instructor. They should not fall beyond the scope of the learning objectives or serve a superfluous function, such as entertainment.
Converting audio/video materials from analog to digital format for use online:
-
The amount converted must be limited to the appropriate amount for performance or display,
-
A digital version of the work is not available to the institution
- When seeking
permission to use a copyrighted work, such as videos, CD Roms,
Powerpoint presentations, content outlines, or any materials available to
be downloaded from the publisher’s or textbook’s website, the following
steps should be taken unless the publisher states otherwise:
Step 1: The textbook corresponding to the
materials must be used on campus;
Step
2: The materials are accessible only on Blackboard, available by
password to students in only that course for which they are intended;
Step
3: Students are not charged additional fees to access the
materials;
Step 4: A letter is sent to the publisher requesting permission, describing intended use, and describing how the above requirements for use of materials (1-3) are being met.
Step 5: When using other media without permission, certain amounts of published work are available for “Fair Use” when used for educational purposes. Amounts of certain media available for fair use are described below:
| Media | Amount Allowable for Fair Use: |
| Motion media (video) | Up to 10% or three minutes, whichever is less |
| Textual Material | Up to 10% or 1000 words, whichever is less |
| Music, Lyrics, or Music Videos | Up to 10%, but no more than 30 seconds |
| Illustrations or Photographs | No more than five images from one artist; no more than 10% or 15 works from a collection |
| Numerical Data Sets or Databases | Up to 10% or 2500 fields, whichever is less |
Step 6: Whenever possible, provide links to websites containing copyrighted materials. These allow the student to directly access content placed online in the public domain by the corporate or individual owner of the copyright. The student is therefore “outside” the Blackboard course, in the public domain, and is viewing the copyrighted material as the copyright holder intended, and no infringement of copyright law has been committed.
