Larysa Nadolny, Associate Professor in the School of Education and Human Computer Interaction, is a game-based learning researcher with extensive expertise in online teaching and learning. She teaches educational technology to undergraduate and graduate students, including copyright and fair use in teaching and learning. Dr. Nadolny integrates OER resources whenever possible in her coursework as a way to reduce costs for students and increase access to diverse digital material.
Fair Use and Copyright for Teacher OER
Digital media is a central part of K-12 teaching and learning. Unfortunately, teachers have many misconceptions about using copyrighted materials (Hobbs, 2010). At ISU, 250 future secondary teachers each year take introductory educational technology courses to learn about digital teaching and learning in the classroom. Undergraduate students discuss Fair Use and Copyright briefly and graduate students read a book and discuss. Each year, students comment that they wish they have more instruction about the complex and nuanced topic of fair use.
In discussing this issue with other faculty members, the same concern appears; faculty are not comfortable teaching copyright or have a fear of providing incorrect information. There is a need for high quality learning modules that can be used at Iowa State University and beyond the provide accurate and targeted information for teachers.
The objective of this project was to create an online learning module on fair use and copyright issues for K-12 educators. In this Canvas learning module, teachers and teacher educators can (1) review the laws and best practices of copyright and fair use and (2) apply those concepts to case studies in education. This module was funded by an Iowa State University Miller Open Education Grant to support open educational resources in higher education.
Module feature: Scaffolding of content
The progression of information is the same in each level. First, learners are presented with two pages of information. Each page is broken down into a question and answer format, focusing on common questions for each topic. The pages have links to explore and embedded videos to watch. The information is followed by a discussion board activity. This discussion board requires each learner to submit at least two posts meeting the criteria of the discussion board rubric. The level ends with a 10 question quiz covering key terms and concepts.
Module feature: Adaptive release of content
Teachers have a variety of backgrounds when it comes to copyright and fair use. To account for learner background knowledge, this module uses the mastery paths feature of Canvas. Using this feature, a pre assessment will determine which content is released to the learner. The content was designed in three levels of increasing difficulty and complexity.
The first level meets the learner "where they are", as students in a course using copyrighted materials. Having taught copyright to teachers for several years, I found that the complexities of fair use to be an overwhelming experience for novices. This first level takes a personal approach to copyright by focusing on creating course assignments using freely available materials. Level two and three scaffold this introductory experience by presenting the law of fair use as well as other relevant laws.
- Level 1 Copyright, Public Domain, Creative Commons Attribution
- Level 2 Fair Use (Four Factors), Classroom Use Exemption, Videos in the Classroom, Teaching Resources
- Level 3 Fair Use (Transformative Use), Open Educational Resources (OER), Other laws and scenarios (DMCA, TEACH Act, remix), More Teaching Resources