Research Guides: NECC Open Educational Resources (OER): Open Licensing & Copyright

What is an Open License?

Open licenses give you the power of the 5 Rs, as defined by Dr. David Wiley on his site www.opencontent.org :

1. Retain the content
2. Redistribute the content
3. Reuse the content
4. Revise the content
5. Remix the content

The most widely recognized open license is a Creative Commons license.

The preferred Creative Commons license is CC BY, which represents a Creative Commons Attribution license. This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. It is the most accommodating license offered.
Visit Creative Commons website for more information on the other types of licenses and how you may use them.

Magnifying glass over a clipboard

Fair Use is an exemption that allows for limited use of copyrighted materials for educational purposes.

What is Fair Use? Description of what Fair Use is from Maricopa Community College.
Thinking Through Fair Use
Online tool from the University of Minnesota that allows you to conduct a four-factor review of a resource.
Fair Use Analysis
Checklist from the Purdue University Copyright Office that can help you determine Fair Use.

* Infographic from Foter.com. Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, Professor25.

Creative Commons - License Chooser
This Creative Commons tool will help you chose the license best for your work.
Finding Open Educational Resources
From CITNECC, a training that help you develop a framework for finding free and open resources, identify learning objectives and keywords for your course and locate repositories and search engines for finding OER.
Identify ways in which to keep track of and evaluate your content.
Learn about copyright on YouTube
"The rules of copyright are an important part of what makes YouTube work for creators. You can find general information about what copyright law is here, along with more advanced topics like fair use and Creative Commons."
Open Attribution Builder
This is a tool to help you build attributions. Click the About box to learn more. As you fill out the form, the app automatically generates the attribution.
Open Washington- Learn OER
"This course walks you through techniques to incorporate Open Educational Resources (OER) into your teaching practice. The course will cover the fundamental aspects of OER including open licensing and public domain."