Case Study Week 6: Fair Use and OCW

Describe one scenario which you currently experience in which copyright is a factor in the use of learning materials. What is the relevant copyright law in your jurisdiction? Are there any relevant exceptions? Does the law hinder or assist you to obtain access? How could this scenario be improved by open educational resources? Are there any obstacles to using OER’s?  If so, please describe them, along with proposed solutions or work-arounds.

Scenario

Maria works in the faculty technology support office of a US-based institution and provides OpenCourseWare support. She helps professors convert their traditional courses into OpenCourseWare (OCW) courses. In addition to digitizing, designing, and assembling the layout of the OCW course, Maria also does a copyright check for each piece of course content in order to determine which materials can be included in the OCW version of the course and which cannot.

Maria has been working with Professor Crabb, who has recently decided to put his Cognition and Instruction course on the school’s OCW site. Maria discovers that a journal article used to illustrate the various aspects of meta-cognition is copyrighted by the publisher. Professor Crabb explains that he has always claimed fair use when making photocopies of the article. He feels that it illustrates an important point, and he doesn’t want to remove the article from the OCW course.

Questions on scenario:

1. Why might materials used in a face-to-face course require a copyright check before uploading the content as an OpenCourseWare course?

2. What are the four factors of fair use? Does fair use apply to OCW when the materials are made publicly available, such as in an OCW site? Why or why not?

3. What possible solutions or work arounds can Maria offer Professor Crabb?

4. Professor Crabb also wants to use an image for the course that is licensed CC-BY-NC-SA, but he insists on making his whole course CC-BY because he has been told it will be easier for others to reuse. How might you resolve this issue?

Responses:

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