Copyright Compliance Sloan-C Workshop

I recently took a SLOAN-C course on copyright compliance taught by Linda Enghagen, J.D. She presented copyright decisions for instructors as two main sets of considerations. First, she presents rules regarding use of copyrighted material. These are formulaic in that they are fairly straight forward for determining the legal boundaries of using material. Second she presents considerations based on fair use laws, which are not formulaic. Legal decisions for fair use are based on weighing the evidence across four guidelines and making a judgment about whether copyright has been violated. She also stated an important reminder to instructors that although we have good intentions for helping people and society, such intentions or noble causes are not a legal defense; the law is the law. As usual, ignorance is not an excuse either, as Enghagen said, professors (people who have to be intelligent) may have a tough time convincing a judge that they were not smart enough to know the law.

Enghagen pointed out that copyright protects ideas after they are expressed in tangible form regardless of whether they’ve been registered with the government. Thus, if somebody else made it, you should consider it to be copyrighted unless it is a specific type of unprotected material.

Enghagen did a good job showing how Fair Use and the TEACH act can allow copyrighted material to be used without permission or pay IF it is used for a specific purpose and in a manner consistent with those indicated by the Fair Use or TEACH act. There is a fair amount of information available about Fair Use, so I won’t say more about that here. The TEACH (Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization) Act was established in 2002 to bring copyright law in distance education more in line with copyright law for classroom education. It only applies to distance education. It is worth becoming familiar (or refreshing yourself) with the specifics of Fair Use and the TEACH act because they may permit you to do more than you thought you were allowed to do, but they may also have some obligations that you might not have considered. For example, institutions implementing the TEACH act should provide a “notice to students that materials used in connection with the course may be subject to copyright violation.” I will probably start putting this in my syllabi. I also learned from discussions in the course that the copyrighted images I use from the Internet in my Power Point presentations should be covered by Fair Use, but need to cite where I got them.

I also learned from the course discussions some considerations about the type of materials to which you should/shouldn’t link from your course site. “Deep linking” is a concern here, which may be trademark infringement if it confuses users about which site they are at. Deep linking can also be illegal if it allows users to bypass a site’s advertisements or other ways of earning revenue.

The workshop gave me some new knowledge, refreshed my understanding, and gave me some new issues to think about. As I increasingly distribute material via new channels, it will be good for me to stay current in these issues so that I don’t cross lines that I shouldn’t and that I take better advantage of the freedoms I do have.

Facilitating Online Discussions and Collaboration

I recently took a SLOAN-C course from John Thompson, who has been teaching online courses for many years and has published a number of articles on best practices for online collaboration and discussion. I'll post my thoughts on two of them here. You can find more in Thompson's Power Point slides at the following link:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsdttsn.wikispaces.com%2Ffile%2Fview%2FThompson_ImprovingOnlineDiscussions.ppt&rct=j&q=john%20thompson%20online%20practices&ei=tWrmTeXFKKn10gH6zNjlCg&usg=AFQjCNEJuXGZ3RDH6C3jVKDEnixlsezrQA&sig2=ACAzm6viQqm8nsWQQDqsqw&cad=rja

Two strategies to improve engagement in online discussions are building a sense of community and requiring participation. Building a sense of community involves many facets stemming from a sense of presence, involvement, and connection between instructor and students and the students with one another. A few of the benefits of building a community include more motivation for learning, better contributions from students and thus better course content (students learn from one another), and the development of personal learning networks that students can use to continue learning after the course is over.

To implement the strategy of building a community, the instructor can start with an ice-breaker discussion, in which students provide some personal information about themselves. This allows students to get a better sense of who their classmates are, to see them as people who are interesting and who may have common interests or potential for furthering a relationship. Another way to implement the strategy is to keep an active presence as an instructor (Shea et al. 2005). When the instructor shows that the discussion is important or interesting, students may be more likely to do so as well. Also, the instructor is the one person with whom all the students have a relationship for the class. As such, the instructor can bring students together on a topic, or help them feel like they belong. The instructor also sets the tone or culture of the community, so the instructor’s involvement should be strategic in helping the discussion to grow and move in the best direction. Finding the appropriate balance of instructor vs. student participation is important, too.

Building community is effective for improving engagement for a number of reasons. One is that as students feel like they belong to an active group, they will likely have more desire to become part of the action. A second reason is that as students find others with whom they can relate, they may form discussions and learning networks that are relevant to their own interests, and that relevance can encourage more engagement.

The second strategy, requiring participation, is fairly straightforward. As mentioned in the online presentation, all students benefit from extrinsic motivation. A way to implement this is to make discussion participation part of the course grade. State this at the beginning of the course, making clear what the expectations are. There should be a minimum level of participation, and a grading rubric is helpful to show that higher level thought is expected, rather than merely stating opinion. Making the discussion mandatory is effective for improving engagement in a number of ways. For example, it immediately makes the discussion practical and useful for achieving immediate goals (e.g., passing the course). It also can be the little push required to prime the pump of more intrinsic motivation. Once students get into discussions, they may get caught up in defending points, seeing how others will respond, finding out who is right, and so on.