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3.1 At-Home

Define open educational resources
Distinguish between openly licensed, public domain, and all rights reserved copyrighted resources

Estimated time to complete: 30 minutes

There are many OER Definitions created by a variety of organizations and foundations.

OER Definition 1

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are teaching, learning, and research resources released under an open license that permits their free use and repurposing by others. OERs can be textbooks, full courses, lesson plans, videos, tests, software, or any other tool, material, or technique that supports access to knowledge. -by Hewlett Foundation

OER Definition 2

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. -by UNESCO

In this module, you will learn about open licenses and the public domain.

These videos provide overviews of OER its significance in education.

The video from "Why Open Matters" by Opa Bukola is licensed under CC BY 4.0

The video from "Password: OER" by Laura Rachfalski is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Have you ever found a resource on the Internet that was perfect for your course? Most likely you have. The web makes it easy for educators to share resources with other educators around the world. But what then? Did you review the terms of use? If no terms of use were available did you contact the author to request permission? Or did you determine that your use was allowed under Fair Use guidelines? Keep in mind that you need to consider these questions every time you want to use a copyrighted work.

All creative works have a form of legal protection known as copyright. Copyright is established when a work appears in a "fixed, tangible form" and it gives the author certain, but not unlimited, rights to their work. This is what is known as "all rights reserved." Under certain circumstances, you can use a copyrighted work without seeking permission if your use falls within the guidelines provided under Fair Use. Determining fair use can be tricky, however, since there are no hard and fast rules. Infringing on someone's copyright opens you up to legal liability and financial damages.

Wouldn't it be nice if the creators of teaching and learning resources somehow let you know “It's free to use and there are no strings attached" and "don't ask me for permission because I've already granted it"?

Open Educational Resources (OER) is the answer to that!

There are millions of open educational resources out there that are available for you to freely use without worrying about copyright infringement. These include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, videos, tests, software, games, learning objects, things to support access to knowledge.

The image "OERs Can Be from BCOER Librarians Poster" by BCOER is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Now that you understand more about what OER is and what it means for education, let's dig deeper. In order for a resource to be truly open, it should come with an open license or be in the public domain. What do the terms "open license" and "public domain" mean?

"Adam Ruins Everything - How Mickey Mouse Destroyed the Public Domain" by TruTV is licensed under YouTube standard license.

What is an open license?

An open license specifies the conditions for using a copyrighted work. It grants permissions and states restrictions. Broadly speaking, an open license is one that grants permission to access, re-use and redistribute a work with few or no restrictions (definition from Openedefinition.org).

"How to Use Open Educational Resources (OER)" image by Boyoung Chae and Christie Fierro

An open source license is a type of license for computer software which allows the source code to be used, modified, and shared under defined terms. Laulima is based on an open source software called Sakai. New Laulima features and updates are developed by in-house software developers or by the larger Sakai development community.

The open software movement was launched in 1983. Since then, a variety of open source licenses have been developed. In 1998, David Wiley coined the term "open content", and while targeted at the educational community, the use of the term quickly entered the vernacular of the Internet.

In 2001, inspired by the open source license movement, Larry Lessig and a group of educators, technologists, legal scholars, investors, entrepreneurs, and philanthropists gathered to develop a set of copyright licenses that would enable creators to easily share copyrighted works that were not software code. This group founded Creative Commons and released a set of flexible licenses for creative works. Creative Commons (CC) licenses bring clarity and simplicity to the sharing of materials, including educational resources, online.

In summary, there are many open licenses developed for different areas of knowledge. Creative Commons licenses are the most widely used copyright licenses for OER.

What is public domain?

A public domain work is a creative work that is not protected by copyright. This means it is free for you to use without permission. Works in the public domain are those in which the intellectual property rights have expired, were forfeited, or are inapplicable.

Generally, a work falls into the public domain for the following reasons:

Case 1: The term of copyright for the work has expired.

As a general rule, most works enter the public domain because of old age. This includes any work published in the United States before 1923 or works published before 1964 for which copyrights were not renewed (Renewal was a requirement for works published before 1978).

(Text in this paragraph is from The Public Domain by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University, CC-BY-NC).

Case 2: It never had copyright protection.

It never had copyright protection or its protection was lost. A smaller group of works fell into the public domain because they were published without a copyright notice, which was necessary for works published in the United States before March 1, 1989. Thus, if a work published before March 1, 1989, and did not carry a copyright notice, it is in the public domain.

Case 3: The work was explicitly donated to the public domain.

Some works are in the public domain because the owner has indicated a desire to give them to the public without copyright protection.

Case 4: The work is a work of the U.S. Government.

Works of the United States Government and various other governments are excluded from copyright law and may, therefore, be considered to be in the public domain in their respective countries (US Copyright Office). In the United States when copyrighted material (created by the federal government) is enacted into the law it enters the public domain. Thus, the building codes, when enacted, became a part of the public domain. Works produced by third-party contractors with the government may be protected under copyright law depending on the terms of the contract.

(Text in this paragraph is from Wikipedia, Public domain, CC-BY-SA.

What is the difference between public domain and open license?

It is important to understand the difference between public domain and open licenses. Both grant free access to the materials, but the scope and nature of use are completely different.

An open license clearly recognizes ownership of an intellectual property, whereas the intent of public domain is for the copyright holder to waive copyright ownership in the work. Therefore, users are required to attribute the work to the original authors for openly licensed materials, but not for those in the public domain.

In a way, public domain is the purest form of open/free, since no one owns or controls the material in any way.

(This sentence is from Public Domain, CC-BY).

This diagram shows the difference between public domain and open license.

This diagram shows the difference between public domain and open license. "How to Use Open Educational Resources (OER)" image by Boyoung Chae and Christie Fierro

Check Your Understanding

Be prepared to respond to these questions:

As an instructor, how do you manage the use of copyrighted (non-textbook) course materials in the classroom?
As an author of course materials (PowerPoints, modules, test questions), are you willing to openly license and share it with others or would you want others to ask for permission before using it?