Say Hello and Share Your Summer Goals in Open Pedagogy

Hi Suri. I found another Italian resource that recently came online:
Italian-language ancillaries in the form of vocabulary, grammar, and culture activities. OER Italian 101 (First Semester Open Educational Resources 2.0) is available in Canvas Commons. If the provided link does not work, please search “ASCCC” in Canvas Commons to find all ASCCC OERI resources.

Howdy Open Pedagogy Summer Adventurers- we’ve enjoyed reading intros, seeing pets, bread, and hearing of your projects. Off to a great start!

We hope you keep returning to participate, respond, sl questions, share your progress over the summer. If you want to get more updates on what’s happening we plan to do messaging to those who self join our CCCOER Open PD group (and yes, you can check out anytime you want).

If you have not gotten the sense, I like posting here :wink: Feel free to drown me out with your own posts.

I am attempting to get things going with those who expressed in interest in learning about or using H5P. The first “activity” is asking you to “look before you cook”– to follow a few suggestions to find existing H5P interactive content and share back what catches your eye.

You will be able to find all of the activities in the Interactivity Open Ped Summer games via Topics tagged interactivity-opsa

H5P anyone?

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Hi everyone!

I’m a bit late to this, but my name is Aimee Huard. I am the department chair of Social Science at Great Bay Community College in Portsmouth NH.

I’m more familiar with open access resources than pedagogy, so I’m interested in learning more. My goals for the summer are more about learning about the types of options available that I can bring back to the 40-50 instructors I oversee than anything concrete. I just had a baby two months ago, so I’m more in the passive consumption stage and identifying future projects/goals than having something established. CCCOER has always given me great resources and things to think about, so I am looking forward to more!

Welcome Aimee, there is no “late” in this format. We are hoping for an experience where interested people can join in at any time.

Are you looking for what you can share to Great Bay faculty to understand and take on open pedagogy approaches? As you know CCCOER does this well and @wakimsu has started a resources strand. And @amandataintor put out a call for ideas on training and support approaches for faculty.

We hope to start more topics related to communicating Open Pedagogy and developing ideas for what we call “small scale” type projects, activities that are doable for those new to the practice.

Feel free to ask specific questions anywhere, as time allows for being a new parent, congrats on that. We are glad you came by.

Hi Suzannae,

Thank you so much. I am actually the lead and co-author of that project that was funded by the CCC OER-I!

I’m hoping that this next project I am working on has a much bigger emphasis on culture, and to that end, I am trying to figure out how I can incorporate authentic materials into my own OER that I will create.

My main question is how do I ensure that all authentic texts and media (that I do not create and that are not OER) that I incorporate into my Italian OER Project do not infringe upon copyright? I want to use text from webpages, songs, videos, video clips, images of art, pages from books, poems,news articles, podcasts and more. Can I integrate any of these media into my OER for solely educational purposes as long as I give credit and cite my sources without asking for permission? Or do I need to ask for permission for every use of media to be incorporated into my OER? Is there any difference in the answer if the media comes from the US or if the media is from Italy?

I met with a librarian last week to begin this discussion on copyright and OER creation and I am still working on trying to figure this out.

Hi Suzanne! I wrote another post to your same message just to be able to give a little bit more background for clarity. I hope it’s helpful. Here goes…

Hi. I am looking for help and support from people who have experience or knowledge about creating OER and incorporating authentic materials by other creators (that most likely do not have creative commons licensing) into their work. First, I will give a brief synopsis of an OER creation project I am working on this year (not a remix or modification of current OER) and then, I will share my question regarding copyright and OER creation.

I am working on a project this year in which I plan to design and create accessible and culturally responsive Open Educational Resource Learning Modules for the subject area of Italian that will focus on culture and proficiency. The learning modules that I plan to create in Canvas and ultimately share on Canvas Commons will be multi-modal and rich with cultural and linguistic content and authentic texts, such as images of art, websites, podcasts, videos, songs, poems, film clips, shorts, short stories and excerpts from novels, as well as instructor-created videos and instructor-created student projects.

My main question (for now) is how do I ensure that all authentic texts and media (that I will not be creating and that are not OER) that I incorporate into my Italian OER learning modules do not infringe upon copyright? I want to use text from webpages, songs, videos, video clips, images of art, pages from books, poems, news articles, podcasts and more. Can I integrate any of these media into my OER for solely educational purposes as long as I give credit and cite my sources without asking for permission? Or do I need to ask for permission for every use of media to be incorporated into my OER? Does each type of media work the same way or does the answer change for some of the media I have noted above? Is there any difference in the answer if the media comes from the US or if the media is from Italy? If anyone has any experience or knowledge about this, would you please share your expertise? Thank you!

Finally, I just wanted to add that I am beginning to understand Open Pedagogy, and I will keep my mind open as to how I can best ensure collaborative pedagogical practices with an emphasis on student creation into my materials.

Unless the content is explicitly licensed for re-use, you are going to be in the area likely of needing to seek permission. The question is when you describe wanting to use “authentic texts and media” are you talking about in their entirety? If you are inserting someone else’s work into yours, you are making a copy.

Just giving credit is not OER. If it is copyright, then reuse in another publication is not allowed without permission.

It gets greyer if you are using an excerpt. There is no issue of copyright in academic writing to include a quoted section from a published work if is cited. This might put you in the grey area of fair use, and no matter what formulas you read of how much you can copy, it’s not really protection. It means you have the right to defend your use in court.

If it was me, I would aim to use content which exists at stable links and aim to have the work embedded in my own. In my OER work, I would set the context, provide an activity or as task, and send the learner out to view. Yes, there is the risk of broken links, but you are not risking being hit with a copyright infringement.

Definitely double check this with your librarian, this is just my opinion.

But to me, anything you include inside your OER should be (a) explicitly licensed for reuse; or (b) used with written permissions; or (c) created yourself.

Oh and by random, I found this related OER

Congratulations on being accepted for an OERI grant through the ASCCC. Shagun (who I think is your facilitator) will be able to help you with these questions. The short version is - “it’s complicated”…VERY complicated, unfortunately. The even shorter version is - it’s likely that you will not be able to use these resources.

Using “all rights reserved” works (that is, copyrighted works that don’t have a CC license) is only allowable if your use falls under “fair use”. There aren’t clear guidelines for fair use, so it’d difficult to make a clean yes-or-no decision. One additional consideration is that if you are creating a resource to be shared, then many of the “classroom use” aspects no longer apply (because it’s being used for purposes other than just your personal classroom).

UMN has a helpful fair use guide but I would encourage you to reach out to your campus librarians, or Shagun (as the project facilitator) to work through each item.

Well said, Suzanne! I also rely often on the Stanford Fair Use site and the summary of the four factors indicates that it provides a means for you to spend a lot of time and money in course for a judge to decide.

Unfortunately, the only way to get a definitive answer on whether a particular use is a fair use is to have it resolved in federal court. Judges use four factors to resolve fair use disputes, as discussed in detail below. It’s important to understand that these factors are only guidelines that courts are free to adapt to particular situations on a case‑by‑case basis. In other words, a judge has a great deal of freedom when making a fair use determination, so the outcome in any given case can be hard to predict.

I would question any assertion that some percentage of the whole is legal under fair use.

Also from Surian’s question:

Is there any difference in the answer if the media comes from the US or if the media is from Italy?

Checking my IANAL hat if the content is licensed under a Creative Commons license, it applies internationally. There are more gradients when it comes to public domain, as countries have different laws about when and how something passes into the public domain.

But someone please fact check me there!

Thank you, Alan!

I will be looking at that OER text that you sent me more closely. I really appreciate your and Suzanne’s feedback!

Regarding your question about “authentic texts,” what I mean by that is any text that is written or spoken in Italian for an Italian speaking audience and not created for classroom or second language acquisition purposes. You asked if I want to use media in its entirety. My answer is perhaps sometimes but not always. Truth is, I haven’t selected the texts or media yet because I am trying to understand what I can use in my materials without infringing on copyright. Let me give you an example of something that I created for my class last semester and that I would like to further develop, but that I am not sure I could include in OER due to copyright or not. I went to an Italian museum website and selected a page of artwork (Botticelli’s Nascita di Venere in this case) and created a video using Camtasia and Youtube in which I showed students how I navigated the museum website and found a painting; then I described the painting using vocabulary words that I wanted my students to be able to understand and later use in their own video assignments based on their own exploration of the museum website. The OER I intend to create will be housed in Canvas, and I (in this case) do not understand if I can do a screenshot video of the museum website like this or even just create a video with a background of their photo of Botticcelli’s art and then license my video and assignment with Creative Commons licensing. I met with a librarian, but we were both not 100% sure. This is just one example.

Another example that I have not yet worked on but might want to do is, let’s say, I find a clip of a news story from an Italian news source. Can I create a video where I include their video and then talk about it. Maybe summarize it, or have students notice words or expressions or elements of a news story?

Or maybe I’d like to share a commercial of a product with this class and analyze the transcript of the commercial and ask students to identify what values or behaviors are emphasized in it.

These are just some ideas.

Just to clarify, I think what you are saying is that I can contact each of the content creators in the above cases (the Uffizi Museum, the news station, the company) and ask them if I can embed their video or transcript or text into language learning materials that will be shared with the educational community for no financial gain. Is that right? OR another thing you suggest, if I am understanding correctly, is that you are saying that I can create all the activities that revolve around this text and then add a link to the activity that asks students to view the video or the web page, but to not include the transcript in my own OER, is that right?

I also hear that you are saying that it may be problematic to use an excerpt from let’s say a recent novel or a poem from a book of poetry into my OER because although it might be a tiny percentage of the entire book, you would be sharing it with a lot of people. (?)

I’d be totally happy to meet with you to discuss this if that is easier for you too! Just let me know.

Thank you for taking the time to help me!

Surian

Hi Suzanne,

Thanks again for your response! I appreciate it so much. And thanks for the congratulations! It was a great experience to work on that project and to help create ancillaries for a low-cost Italian textbook. We moved from a $175 textbook to a $35 one, which really helped reduce financial barriers while simultaneously being able to fulfill our course objectives.

I know! It is SO complicated! I met for two hours with our really wonderful librarian who focuses on OER, and we both left with a lot of questions. Since we are both involved in learning more about OER this summer, we said we would reach out to our colleagues and see what we could learn and share again with each other in July. I am enrolled in a CARLA Summer Institute in July that focuses on Using Target Language Texts to Improve Communication, and I will share my questions about using authentic texts in OER there as well.

As I am writing, I am realizing that I don’t know what works are “all right reserved” or not. For example, I know most books, movies and songs are. But are video clips of the news stories “all rights reserved”? Podcasts? All webpages or just some? I feel a little embarrassed asking these questions, like I “should know.” But I don’t.

I hear what you are saying about how once I create OER it is no longer for solely my “classroom use.” It’s open to anyone. And that this may have consequences on whether or not something qualifies as fair use.

I briefly looked at the UMN Fair Use Guide, and will look at it more closely, although there is a message stating the page will close or “be retired” this month. I will also learn more about fair use through Equity and Open Education Faculty Cohort, a resource I learned about by attending the CCCOER Webinar: Models for Transforming Classrooms to be Equitable and Antiracist.

Thank you so much for your help and support, Suzanne.

Surian

Hi Surian. I’m happy to meet with you and Shagun to discuss the details of your situation. But, let me address the general ideas here, since I think they will be helpful for many folks.

Two caveats:

  1. I am not a lawyer and can’t give you a definitive answer. This is based on my best understanding as a layperson.

  2. Fair use is really complicated, so a definitive answer to your question doesn’t exist. That is, we will never get to 100% sure because fair use is messy.

You are correct that asking the content creators is always the best approach, but that can be difficult (and isn’t always going to get a response). Creating an external link to the activity does not solve the issue because you are still creating the activity, so it’s still yours.

The museum is a great example of something that I think would like fall into the gray area that is probably fair use. I would feel fairly comfortable using this because:

  1. It is transformative (in my mind) because you are changing the overall purpose of the original work. That is, no one who was looking to use the museum website for its intended purpose, would use your video instead.

  2. You are recording a video from a freely available and publicly visible site. If you had paid for a subscription to a private area of the museum’s website - that would be more problematic.

  3. You are not causing financial harm to the copyright holder. You are not taking away traffic from their site. In fact, you are adding to it because you are then asking students to go to the site for the rest of the assignment.

For the new video clipping - many of the same ideas apply. The difference here is that you are not then asking students to go to the site and do anything with the rest of their works. So, this takes away from the case for fair use.

For anything you have purchased (such as a book of poetry, or an online subscription to something) - the case for fair use becomes pretty weak. In those examples, the authors can make a reasonable case that you are taking away their profits (and therefore livelihood). I would not feel comfortable using something like that.

However, I am not a lawyer and this does not constitute legal advise. I am just using these three examples as a way to outline the thought process that would go into thinking about these questions.

You should also take a look at the fair use sites Alan and I linked to. Those will help guide you through the same thought process. If anyone else has thoughts about this, feel free to jump in. “Deciding fair use via crowdsourcing” is a good approach :wink:

Great question about “all rights reserved”! This one’s easier to answer :relieved: - also, don’t feel embarrassed about asking. These things are really complicated (and not something we generally learn in our education).

Anything that is created in a “fixed” format can be copyrighted. And, copyright doesn’t require any actions on the creator’s part to be “all rights reserved”. So, as soon as anyone creates a book, movie, song, instructions, etc. it is “all rights reserved” unless they put a CC license on it. Then, while they still hold the copyright, but have released some of the rights to the public.

Ciao Surian,

I of course second the insights of Suzanne and Alan, as well as the cautions around people like us who are not lawyers not giving legal advice.

I did want to recommend the Best Practices in Fair Use for Open Educational Resources which was written by lawyers – copyright lawyers, in fact – specifically for the OER community. I’ve been to several webinars by the authors of that report, and I think it would be fair to say that they are much more aggressive about using all-rights-reserved, copyrighted materials inside OER than I had ever been before.

Per di piu, Surian, sono italiano (o, meglio, sono americano pero ho acquistato la citadinanza italiana anni fa, e ho vissuto un bel po in italia…) ed ho tanti amici professori in italia. Forse potrei essere utile per te trovando testi autentici o collegandoti con professori italiani molto amichevoli …

Jonathan

Oh, and any time a live chat might be useful, I’d be delighted to do that!

Hello Everyone,

My name is Deb and I am a curriculum developer with the College of New Caledonia in Prince George, British Columbia. I am proud to be able to live and work on the unceded territory of the Lheidli T’enneh. I am interested in learning more about open pedagogy. For the summer I am working on writing an open textbook with two other team members and working on editing an open textbook to add H5P content to it.

I’m excited to spend part of the summer with you.

Hi Deb! I know you :wink:

Thanks for joining the adventure and I hope you jump in with questions, ideas as we try to take on our understanding and practices of open pedagogy.

We are running some ongoing activities around H5P, so please share and maybe help answer questions as they come in.

Thanks again for being adventurous with us.

Howdy Robin! I’m here to serve up H5P. We are doing bits at a time, you can choose when to dip in Topics tagged interactivity-opsa

Thank you for sharing that link to the Best Practices for Fair Use. I’ve also come to realize that I may be overly cautious. It always feel safer to say “no” but it can also inhibit the creativity that was the entire purpose of fair use. It’s a good balance to consider. A live chat about fair use would be fun! I’m not sure where to take that idea…Happy to hear ideas from anyone that would be interested in organizing this.

Ciao Gianni! Thank you so much for the link to Best Practices in Fair Use for OER. I have added this to my important list of resources and will continue to explore it and watch more videos. I have spent the last two weeks compiling a list of openly licensed materials (mostly Youtube videos and detailed descriptions of OER textbook content) and contacting the copyright departments of other all-rights-reserved content creators. I would love to be able to find some OER textbook and videos written in Italian that focus on a variety of academic topics.

Allora sì! Se mi potresti mettere in contatto con qualsiasi persona in Italia che abbia dell’esperienze con OER, ne sarei molto grata! So che c’è state una grande conferenza sull’educazione aperta a Milano alcuni anni fa, ma non sono riuscita a trovare molti libri OER in italiano (su diverse tematiche come psicologia, economia, sociologia ecc.) .

Sto provando a cercare una cosa simile a Khan Academy (ma in italiano) non solo sulla lingua italiana ma sull’antropologia, sulla psicologia, sulla letteratura, sull’ambiente ecc. Non se “un Khan Academy italiano” esista - forse no. Ma trovare alcune altre risorse come libri OER scritti in italiano su diverse tematiche accademiche sarebbe utilissimo! Grazie di avermi scritto. Se è più facile, possiamo anche parlare al telefono o su Zoom - oppure qui va bene. Grazie!