Student workshop on Copyright, Fair use, & Creative Commons
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 u