A picture may be worth a thousand words but is it worth a copyright infringement?

While in some cases it may be fair for Research, Education and/or Private Study to copy images, it is important to remember that most images are protected by copyright.

Students and Instructors often use images as part of creating course content and completing assignments, in doing so they have a responsibility to act under copyright policy at RRC Polytech. In this  day and age people are willing to legally debate who owns a money selfie. Check out the video for more details on how a monkey sparked debate in the copyright world.

The Good:
There is a lot of content online intended to be reused.

The Bad:
There is a lot of content that isn’t intended to be reused and legally requires permission, and/or payment if you want to use it.

The Ugly:
It can be hard to tell what you can and can’t use and when you are getting yourself into copyright trouble.

How do we navigate copyright as students and educators when using images for education?

The library is here to help. Check out the Open Image Collections & Image Use Guide that can point you in the direction of images that are free to use, or have creative commons licenses, or general terms of use that allow reuse. This guide will also help you understand how to attribute images and connect you to resources about image citation in various styles.

How do we know if we can use an image?

Open Images are images that have an open license such as Creative Commons or that have fallen into the Public Domain that others can use in their creative works and/or in support of education.

“Check out the Open Image Collections & Image Use Guide“

Why do we need to know about open images?

When an image is created it is automatically protected by copyright, the creator of the image is automatically the copyright holder of that work. Unless the copyright is transferred under an employment agreement or the image rights are sold. This means that unless image creators or rights holders specifically indicate that individuals are able to use their content only the image creator or rights holder themselves has the exclusive rights to distribute, reproduce, create a derivative work (creating a ppt presentation or digitally editing the image), telecommunicate, or publish the image.

Why do we need to know about Copyright when using images?

The current way copyright works images, inclusive of images on the internet, and google images, is that images (or any copyright materials) “belong” to the individuals, organizations, and companies that create or own them. In most cases legally you need to ask permission when you use them, OR use them by the terms and conditions, or licenses that the creator, company, or organization has expressed for use for the image. 

Creative commons licenses are one way creators can offset the automatic “all rights reserved.” approach of copyright and give you a clear indication of permissible ways you can use the work, and that is why we encourage the use of Creative Commons materials in education.

Want more information on how Creative Commons works?
Check out this video and Copy responsibly.

Written by Ebony Novakowski, Copyright Officer

The last couple of years has seen a transformation in education and teaching techniques. The transition to largely online learning saw many educators quickly having to relearn how to deliver and rewrite their course content to match. Not all course materials and delivery methods transitioned easily to an online delivery model, and everyone had to work double-time developing new content, and searching out alternative materials. Throughout, Open Education Resource’s (OER’s) made this job easier, and lot more affordable, both institutionally, and for students.

OER’s. Applaud them. They are the real MVP’s. Going out there every day, offering themselves up to be reviewed, taken apart, and reassembled – within the limits of what their creative commons licenses stipulate, of course – all to meet so many different needs and applications, and asking almost nothing in return… well, maybe attribution (see how to use OER’s correctly.)

If you have never used an OER (as unlikely as that seems) find out about them today. It’s Open Education Week and there are lots of great open-access online resources to learn about and adopt. A great place to start learning about OER’s is the RRC Polytech Libraries OER Guide

OER’s come in all shapes and sizes, for every education level, but it is important to know where to find ones that are open access, copyright free, and fit your curricular needs.

In recognition of Open Education week, here is a list of just some of the many great OER resources available online.

Textbooks

• Textbook (eBook) Open Resources For Nursing (Open Rn) Nursing Fundamentals
• Textbook (eBook) Open Resources For Nursing (Open Rn) Nursing Skills

Open Textbook Repositories in Canada

• BCcampus: Open Textbook Collection
• eCampusOntario: Open Library
• Manitoba Open Textbook Initiative

Learning Resource Repositories

• Sol*r: Shareable Online Learning Resources
• Skills Commons
• MIT Open Courseware

Search Tools

• The Mason OER Metafinder (MOM)
• Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) This tool will simultaneously search 44 different open content sources.

Need a process for evaluating whether an OER resource is appropriate for your purpose? Try this OER Evaluation Checklist adapted from Kirkwood Community College Library.

When using OER’s, it’s important to know how to identify licenses and credit appropriately, but don’t let that intimidate you. You can easily learn all about creative commons licenses and how to use OER’s correctly.

Still feeling lost on how to use something you found online? Did you know that Red River College Polytech Library and Academic Services has a Copyright Officer? Ebony Novakowski, is your copyright expert on using all forms of media on LEARN, in presentations, and more! You can find out even more on the Libraries copyright page.

Artemis Hedrich
Reference Technician
Library and Academic Services, Information & Program Delivery
Red River College Polytechnic

Image credit: freepik.com, Electrical neon ‘open’ signage Free Psd

We find and interact with materials online everyday and most of that online content we interact with is protected by Copyright. “So much of our normal everyday behavior puts us at risk of infringing copyright, especially since so much of our life is digital.”[i] “The copyright regime cannot be considered fit for the digital age when millions of citizens are in daily breach of copyright, simply for shifting a piece of music or video from one device to another. People are confused about what is allowed and what is not with the risk that the law falls into disrepute.”[ii]

February 21 – 25th marks Fair Dealing week a time to highlight user rights, and promote the opportunities presented by the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright act. During this week we aim to explain Fair Dealing and how it applies to our daily uses of copyright materials.

As part of Fair Dealing week the video guide to Fair Dealing posted above has been created. The the RRC Polytech Copyright officer. The video touches on the basics of exercising user rights in relation to Education, Private Study, and Research in the video.

How we engage with copyright materials matters. As students and educators are not only individuals who use content, but are also creators of content. Fair Dealing is the doctrine that balances the right of users and creators and allows the navigation of user and creator rights for innovation that benefits society at large.

The RRC Polytech Library is dedicated to helping students, faculty and staff, navigate our institutional copyright policy. We offer a Fair Dealing tool to help streamline policy navigation and help ensure copying is in accordance with our policy guidelines. If you need to make a copy check out this quiz based tool!

The library also hosts a suite of copyright support services to help inform staff and students toempower those within our college community to make copyright decisions that exercise their user rights and respect the rights of creators in accordance with our policy.

To learn more about copyright be sure to check out our copyright resource pages on the RRC Polytech library website. For copyright support or assistance at any point get in touch with the RRC Copyright Officer.

Happy Fair Dealing Week.

——————————————————————————————————————–

[i] Muller, Stan. Crash Course Intellectual Property #3: Copyright, Exceptions and Fair Use.

[ii] Hargreaves, Ian. Digital Opportunity: A Review of Intellectual Property and Growth. UK Intellectual Property Office. P 5

Library staff member, Rosemary Woodby, recently worked with three RRC Polytech Nursing instructors – Joanne Loughry, Krystal Boyce-Gaudreau, and Carla D. Andreamatteo – on the creation of specialized Library Guides for their courses. It was a rewarding experience for everyone, but most importantly, it made the learning materials required for these programs easier for their students to access.

Before diving into the benefits of Guides, are you familiar with what they are?

What are Library Guides?

Library Guides pull together and organize Library books, videos, and databases, along with a variety of online sources such as webpages, videos, and reports. Guides present all of this information in one place, where any student can access them. You can link to Guides in your LEARN site, and we can update content as needed.

Learn more >> Visit the Library Guides

How do Library Guides benefit students?

“The guide has the potential to save the students valuable research time and cultivates a supportive and progressive learning opportunity… These essential research skills and increased exposure to credible resources will prepare our students to be practice ready when entering the workforce.”

— Joanne Loughry, Nursing instructor

At RRC Polytech, our mission is to help students succeed in their studies and move on to rewarding and successful careers. The greatest benefit of Library Guides is felt by the students, which is one of the main reasons our instructors request them. Feedback from Nursing instructors confirms this fact.

Krystal Boyce-Gaudreau describes her newly developed guide, Leadership, Management and Collaborative Practice, as a time-saving and learning opportunity for her students. Through the Guides, students are presented with a gateway to high-quality information categorized by topic, saving “students time searching through website and journal articles for relevant and appropriate resources.” Carla D Andreamatteo, who requested the Nutrition and Lifestyle Guide for her students, describes it as “a great one-stop location for students to access resources to assist with their learning in the course.”

Joanne Loughry requires her students to utilize several kinds of resources from varied sources. In her opinion, Library Guides help students learn to develop their research skills and gain exposure to navigating credible sources. In her words, “The guide has the potential to save the students valuable research time and cultivates a supportive and progressive learning opportunity… These essential research skills and increased exposure to credible resources will prepare our students to be practice-ready when entering the workforce.”

How does an instructor set up a Library Guide?

Guides are created by the Library staff member assigned to your program area, as listed in our Collection Development Contacts. You may send a request to your subject specialist directly, or send a general inquiry to the Library through our Contact Us page.

Follow Library and Academic Services on social media!

For everything from fun series to service and programming updates, follow us on social media. We’re active on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!

Written by Linda Fox – Library Technician, Program Support and Promotion

Are you an instructor in an academic program that is being highly impacted by COVID-19… and you need some new supports and resources to address your students’ learning needs online? 

Are you an instructor in a course that is being offered across academic programs… and you would like supports in different student cohorts?

Are you an instructor with students that despite all their efforts fall behind in their coursework… and you are looking for options that support the students while they do not affect your work time?

Join us at Red River College’s RED Forum on Thursday, May 20 at 3:20 p.m.

Staff from different units in Library and Academic Services will be presenting a panel session designed to share scenarios that will underscore the intersection of faculty instruction with library and academic services at the program, cohort and individual level.

The panel will share the suite of student supports that we have continued to develop over this past year in an engaging and interactive way, contextualizing the resources and services to situations you may have now, or may encounter in the future. The presentation will incorporate time for a Q&A section at the end of the session.

Please come to the session reflecting on areas where your students’ academic needs have changed during this past academic year. It is our intention that you will leave the session with a bank of resources that will help you in your everyday work with your students at the College.

For more information about this panel session, contact Dayna Graham at dagraham@rrc.ca.
 

In the context of March 21 – International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and City of Winnipeg’s Anti-Racism Week from March 21-27, Academic Success Centre is proud to share that is finalizing the development of a new Anti-Racism Training for Students. Once finalized, this training will join our Diversity Training suite of workshops that already includes Intercultural Competence Training and Gender and Sexual Diversity Awareness Training. (More information about our Diversity Training is available here.)

When we think and talk about racism, most people reference examples of interactions between people. However, racism is also maintained by institutions and society through the implementation of policies, practices, and programs. This training is an introduction on how racism functions as an interconnected system. The training will go over historical instances of racism and it will also focus on current examples of racism.

It is our goal that the Anti-Racism Training will support our students and contribute to the College’s educational efforts in enhancing our knowledge and understanding about racism, acknowledging how racism has shaped our thinking and actions, and speaking out against racism and systemic barriers.

The Anti-Racism Training for Students includes key concepts and frameworks, as well as activities for reflection and discussion. The training also presents a curated suite of relevant videos to amplify the voices and lived experiences of racialized people and Indigenous people. At the end of each training module, students will receive a set of key strategies and resources to map out a personal Action Plan and foster an ongoing student learning and action experience.

After piloting this training in the Spring/Summer time, we expect to offer this training for students from the Fall academic term on. The training modules will be delivered as live workshops via Webex, and will also be recorded for later screening as needed. Workshops are facilitated by Academic Success Centre’s diversity facilitators, and faculty is encouraged to take advantage of this new resource to support their students and book workshops to be delivered during class time, as time allows.

As an additional resource, students and faculty can also access a new Anti-Racism Learning Toolkit developed together with Library staff. This guide is available here and features curated videos, readings and other resources from the College and the community at large.

For more information about the Anti-Racism Training for Students, please connect with Nora Sobel, Diversity Initiatives Coordinator (Academic Success Centre) at nsobel@rrc.ca.

Open education is a philosophy about the way people should produce, share, and build on knowledge. “Open educational resources (OERs) provide a model for convenient, cost-effective access [to resources] with no copyright barriers to worry about, expensive texts to purchase, or restrictions on adaptation, customization or re-use.”[i]

Open Education Week seeks to raise awareness and highlight open education efforts worldwide. OE Week provides practitioners, educators and students an opportunity to gain a greater understanding of open educational practices and be inspired by the wonderful work being developed by the community around the world. [ii]

The 2020-2021 year presented unprecedented challenges in the world. One of these challenges met by educators was the sudden shift to online learning. Red River College kicked off discussion and supports for Faulty using OER (Open Educational Resources) in May 2020 spearheaded by the new Copyright officer in partnership with Campus MB. Over one hundred faculty and staff attended this session, and two additional sessions on OER were hosted during the 2020 year.

One simple adoption of an open textbook at RRC during the 2020-2021 year served 840 students, saving each student $159.95 in textbook costs for a total saving to students of $134,358. This the impact of just one title, over the years RRC has seen over 8 open textbook adoptions.

OER’s have also provided instructors at RRC with additional resources to work with and adapt in a time when access to physical resources has been limited. The Open Education philosophy proves to be a great asset in the push for online learning environments prompted by the pandemic,  but OER’s themselves have been around since the early 2000’s.

If you would like to view our past 2020 OER session it was recorded and is available to be viewed at your convenience:

OER’s are resources published under an open license, such as Creative Commons, these resources can be freely adapted to help your students meet the learning outcomes for your course. At RRC our main focus in the 2020 year has been around the use of Open Textbooks but many different OER’s exist as vast as the types of educational content. If you feel like you missed the boat and are just hearing about OER, let me assure you that isn’t the case. The RRC library offers an OER Landing Page to start you out on your Open Education journey.

If you are already familiar with OER and would like to take this week to get up to speed conversations educators are having regarding Open Education during the pandemic Law Bytes has a prerecorded podcast discussing the significant new challenges for teachers and students in adapting course materials to the online learning environment. Be sure to check it out!

Episode 45: David Porter on the Benefits of Open Educational Resources as Millions Shift to Online Learning

As we celebrate Open Education Week for the 2021 year, I challenge instructors to ask themselves:

What can Open Education do to support your online instruction?

How can Open Education serve your students?

If you are seeking OER assistance or support get in touch with the RRC Copyright Officer.

Happy Open Education Week!

[i] Michael Geist, “David Porter on the Benefits of Open Educational Resources as Millions Shift to Online Learning,” Law Bytes Podcast, March 30, 2020, https://www.michaelgeist.ca/podcast/episode-45-david-porter-on-the-benefits-of-open-educational-resources-as-millions-of-canadians-shift-to-online-learning/.

[ii] Open Education Week. Open Education Global, n.d. https://www.openeducationweek.org/page/what-is-open-education-week.

Red River College takes the protection of Intellectual Property rights seriously. The College and its staff and students are expected to take reasonable steps to ensure that materials protected by copyright are used in accordance with the law by following our Fair Dealing Policy. Copyright is complicated but interacting with Copyright materials is often a daily part of our lives. At work, during our education and in our leisure time, we are often engaging with copyright materials. Fair Dealing is an important part of how we as educators and students ensure we are using Copyrighted content with respect to the rights of the individuals that create the content, and in in accordance with the law.

Could you imagine if there was no legal way to use Copyright material without permission from the owner of that content? How would this affect your work, education and hobbies?

Our ability to use Copyright content when we don’t secure permission is limited, Fair Dealing is a provision in the Copyright Act that permits use of a copyright-protected work without permission from the copyright owner or the payment of copyright royalties in limited circumstances. Fair dealing exists as a user right within the Copyright Act for the public good to foster education, creativity, and innovation.

The doctrine of Fair Dealing guides our use of Copyright material under the Copyright Act of Canada, but how do we use materials in accordance with Fair Dealing? Here at the RRC library we have some helpful tools to point you in the right direction. If you are trying to make a decision around using copyright material we have a Fair Dealing tool to support you. This tool will walk you through a series of questions around your use of copyright content to ensure your use is in line with our policy, and the tool will direct you to the Copyright Officer when you are in need of assistance.

Want information about how to use our Fair Dealing tool, and how you can use Copyright material under Fair Dealing?

Register For our Fair Dealing Week Session

Date: Thursday, February 25, 2021
Time: 11am-12 noon

Register for Fair Dealing week Events Across Canada Here

Date:  February 22 – 26, 2021

Fair Dealing Week is a time to highlight and promote the opportunities presented by the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright act, celebrate successful stories, and explain this user right under the Copyright Act. How do students engage with, and rely on fair dealing? Check out this Fair Dealing Testimonial from Shifrah Gadamsetti Sociology Student and President of the Students’ Association Mount Royal University.

Educators also interact with copyright on a daily basis. “Fair dealing is critical for innovative teaching and learning on campuses across Canada. It helps our instructors bring dynamic and relevant content to their courses…” read more about how fair dealing impacts educators in the following testimonial from Leslie Reid Vice-Provost (Teaching and Learning) and Teaching Professor, Faculty of Science University of Calgary.

RRC policy is available to guide our actions when using Copyright material, our Library Team and Copyright Officer are here to assist Instructors and Students in interpreting this policy. If you have questions about Copyright or Fair Dealing be sure to visit the Copyright Page on the RRC library site and reach out the Copyright Officer for assistance.

Happy Fair Dealing Week!

Image: Rafabollas / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

Open Access (OA) week 2020 will be hosted internationally October 19 – 25. Open access is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other access barriers. With open access strictly defined, barriers to copying or reuse are also reduced or removed by applying an open license for copyright. We see the principles of OA in Open Education. [i]

Event:

If you want to learn more about Open Access and the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) be sure to register for the Red River College Open Access Week Event here: Open Educational Resources (OER) adoption and adaptation Session  – Oct. 20, Noon – 1PM  hosted by the Red River College Copyright Officer in partnership with Campus Manitoba.

In the Spirit of OA week let’s ask ourselves some complicated questions:

Why should Open Access Matter to Educators?

Sun Yang associate professor of China University of Political Science and Law stated “It is naturally accepted that teachers should have the authority to determine the specific use of their course materials by third parties, including their students. Without their permission, no one should copy, distribute, delete or modify the copyrighted course content. In an offline environment, copyright is controlled through physical copies which are purchased. This becomes a challenge in online classrooms.”[ii]

While the original goal of the Open Educational Resource (OER) initiatives was to make higher education more accessible by reducing students costs through the use of openly licensed textbooks these resources now serve educators in the wake of a pandemic as valuable and adaptable tools for the online classroom. OER supports Open Access principles by freely allowing modifications, adaptations, and format transitions without the need to seek costly or time consuming copyright permissions for modification to fit online institutional environments, platforms and classrooms.

The restrictive licensing agreements and terms of copyright applied to many digital textbooks and supplementary materials from publishers make it difficult to adapt materials in new ways to engage students in online learning environments. Materials can further have restrictive licensing agreements that make it confusing to establish when the material can be used in conjunction with a Learning Management System (LMS/LEARN). OER’s have become powerful tools in aiding educators in the adaptability they need to function in continually changing teaching environments that can move from the classroom in person, to digital online learning with little notice and their access to the physical resources of their institutional libraries continues to be limited or completely cut off.

Why Should Open Access Matter to Students?

UNESCO stated that, “…as of 17 May 2020, almost 1.21 billion learners were affected (by the global pandemic), accounting for 69.3% of the world’s student population. The global education community continues to face the major challenge of providing interactive and motivating educational experience during school and university closure. In this special situation, Open Educational Resources (OER) have never been so urgently and broadly needed like today.”[iii]

OER’s can involve students directly in the adaption and building of the learning materials they engage with. They allow students to contribute to online education which can be built upon by others around the globe and allow classes and instructors to source global perspectives to incorporate into College programs. These skills as well as the experience of involvement in the creation of resources for teaching and instruction ensure the student experience is intellectually rigorous, experiential and robust. Student involvement in OER development and adaptation can upon graduation stand as a real world example of experience and skills gained by the student in their education. This can be helpful in providing prospective employers meaningful examples of not only the skills they have acquired but “what” they have accomplished during their studies, in contributing to educational resources that can be used by other educational institutions around the globe.

OER’s and Open Access resources also reduce the cost textbooks and supplementary materials to students as these resources are free and openly available alternatives to traditional textbooks and supplementary material.

What is the Role of Open Access in a post pandemic society?

UNESCO (2020) has recently launched a call stating that “the Covid-19 crisis has resulted in a paradigm shift on how learners of all ages, worldwide, can access learning. It is therefore more than ever essential that the global community comes together now to foster universal access to information and knowledge through OER.” [iv] Open Access to information is the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need. Open Access  has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted. It has direct and widespread implications for academia, medicine, science, industry, and for society as a whole.

For more on the importance of OA check out this video from PHD Comics.

Sources:

[i] ‘International Open Access week, about page’ Accessed September 30, 2020 http://www.openaccessweek.org/page/about

[ii] Yang, S. (2020). ‘As teaching shifts online during the epidemic, it faces copyright issues.’ Accessed September 30, 2020 https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-02-20/Copyright-concerns-as-teaching-shifts-online-during-epidemic-OejyJkh3xu/index.html

[iii] & [iv]  UNESCO (2020) ‘Guidance on Open Educational Practices during School Closures: Utilizing OER under COVID-19 Pandemic in line with UNESCO OER Recommendation’ Accessed September 30, 2020 https://iite.unesco.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Guidance-on-Open-Educational-Practices-during-School-Closures-English-Version-V1_0.pdf

RefWorks: an Incredible Citation Tool

This past winter, the Library acquired a reference management software called RefWorks for college-wide use.  This incredible tool has many practical uses.  For students, it will store their articles and other resources, give them a Reference page and help with in-text citations.  For faculty, this can be a useful tool for sharing documents amongst group members with a lot of extra functionality.

How RefWorks Was Used in a Recent Partnership

The Library recently partnered with the School of Health Sciences and Community Services with regards to the Science of Early Child Development living textbook and modules.  These resources are used by students globally and contain an enormous number of references that were cited in APA 6^th style.  With the release of the 7^th edition APA this past October, these citations needed to be updated quickly.  All of the references from the living textbook and modules have now been entered into RefWorks and PDFs were uploaded to give one site storage in RefWorks.  In addition, the SECD team now have the capability to make revisions and to allow for swift updates should there ever be an APA 8^th edition.

The Library Team “showed dedication and attention to detail and did an incredible amount of ‘heavy lifting’, saving us time and ensuring that we can move forward with APA 7^th Edition changes.” – Jan Sanderson, Research Chair, School of Health Sciences and Community Services.

Do you have a research project that you are working on?  Need to share resources with colleagues?  Then RefWorks is the perfect tool for you.  Library staff can help you and your team get started.

More Information:

• Visit the RefWorks guide
• Watch the RefWorks Lunch and Learn session online
• Check out APA 7th ed. Highlights guide

Questions? Connect with Us!

While the Library’s physical doors are closed, we are able to serve you virtually through chat, email and virtual meetings.

To connect with us, simply visit library.rrc.ca and click on the Ask Us button.

Written by Joan Boersma, Library Services