Student workshop on Copyright, Fair use, & Creative Commons
Lindsey Gumb
Draw your favorite animal (and license it)!
Introductory Information
Renewable assignments[1] have the potential to engage and empower our students as authors in new and exciting ways, but it’s really important that they understand their rights in such scenarios. This annotated lesson plan will hopefully provide you with a foundation of the kinds of conversations you will want to engage your students in when asking them to consider openly licensing their intellectual property as part of an open pedagogy project. It is highly detailed with the knowledge that many librarians these days are being asked to provide workshops and one-shot instruction sessions with little or no prior knowledge or training. It’s my hope that this resource might give these folks a little more confidence in engaging students with meaningful questions and context. By no means do you need to use all of the discussion prompts. I have simply found that they work for me and my teaching style! To see the instructor’s note, simply click the text to expand, but again, by no means do you need to use that content either. If you’re teaching remotely, you can also access a virtual version of this lesson plan to use via Zoom and Google Slides!
- Target audience: Undergraduate or graduate students creating public-facing multimodal projects
- Goal: To familiarize students with the basics of intellectual property, copyright, Creative Commons licenses, and locating open resources to use for open-pedagogy projects.
- Accompanying assignment: Varies
- Setting: In-person or virtually
- Time: 50 – 80 minutes (if there is more time available, provide space for questions and show them how to search for openly-licensed content on the web)
- To bring: lesson plan, scrap paper, licenses to cut out, extra writing utensils, lecture slides
Learning Outcomes
Students will have the knowledge to:
- Explain and identify major differences between copyright and Creative Commons licenses
- Explain the benefits and considerations of sharing work with Creative Commons licenses
- Explain the difference between citations and attributions and construct attributions for openly-licensed content
- Draft basic alt-text for an image and explain why it’s essential when creating online learning objects
- Locate images that are copyright-free or have an open license (if time allows)
Lesson Introduction
Usually, I ask the faculty member to give a brief introduction/reminder of the assignment at hand, and then I jump in and explain how this assignment will require the students to consider concepts possibly unfamiliar to them like intellectual property, copyright, Creative Commons licensing, and author’s rights – all of which will be essential to their success. Making this connection right in the beginning has helped grab their attention!
Activity:
Pass out scrap paper and prompt each student to draw their favorite animal (or be creative and make one up – artistic ability or vision is not necessary here!). I also tell students that if they really don’t want to draw something, they are free to write something like a short poem (Haiku, anyone?). Tell students to give their drawing/poem a title, and to sign their creation. Tell them that they can choose to use a pseudonym or “anonymous” instead of their actual name if they’d prefer to. I tell students they have 3-5 minutes to complete this prompt.
Pause for questions, and then it’s time to circle back to the drawings! Next, encourage the students to think about what they just learned and ask them to select a CC licenses and/or alt license and paperclip it to their drawing.
Now, ask students to use the TASL formula to construct an attribution for their work.
After licenses are affixed and attributions are constructed, ask students to each pass their scrap paper creation to a neighbor. It doesn’t matter who gets what, as long as everyone has someone else’s paper. Have them imagine that the image before them was found in a Google image search, and they have to determine how they can or cannot use the intellectual property that’s in front of them. This will require them to look at and interpret their license and attribution. (I let them chat with a neighbor for help.) Once they have an understanding of the terms of the license, I ask them “If your license allows for it, make your own adaptation of this animal/poem.”
If you have time, you can point students to common open resources to find multimedia content that will be helpful for their assignments. In this case, I’d probably point them to image repositories like Unsplash, Google Images, and Flickr. I’d also walk them through how to filter results to display CC-licensed content!
Finally, wrap up the session by reflecting on the major concepts covered, such as intellectual property, copyright, open licenses, and author’s rights. Ask follow-up questions or open the floor to any lingering questions students may have. Remind them that you’ve covered a lot of new information and that you’re available for follow-up consultations. It’s really helpful here if you can collaborate with the faculty member to have them reinforce the content covered in today’s session in their homework or in-class assignments. For example, they could ask their students to do an in-class activity that requires students to find x amount of images to include in their [open ped project] using the resources covered in the library session or write a reflection post about a time when either someone used their IP without permission or perhaps they used someone else’s without permission. Finally, you can provide them with a licensing handout to help them as they work to become open scholars.
- A renewable, or non-disposable assignment is one that has the potential to be built upon in future semesters with the application of a Creative Commons or similar open license. Renewable assignments have value beyond the confines of a classroom and semester. ↵