Copyright
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What is contract cheating?
“Contract cheating occurs when a student procures a third party (who knows about and benefits from the transaction) to produce academic work (that is usually, but not always assessable work) that the student then submits to an educational institution as if it were their own” (Ellis, Zucker & Randall (2018) p. 1). Contract cheating is an increasing concern. Research indicates contract cheating incidence is on the rise and is an international issue (Newton, 2018) . This form of cheating has been getting more attention in the last decade, and more recently, during remote teaching and learning under COVID 19 restrictions. Fairness of assessment systems and evidence of student learning are…
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Canvas Commons Opens New Ways to Share Materials With Colleagues, and Beyond
As part of our move to the Canvas LMS, the U of S gains the use of the Canvas Commons. The Canvas website describe it as: Commons is a learning object repository that enables educators to find, import, and share resources. A digital library full of educational content, Commons allows Canvas users to share learning resources with other users as well as import learning resources into a Canvas course. As an instructor who is a Canvas user at USask, you will be able to find materials in, and share materials to the Canvas Commons. In addition, there are institution-wide documents, such as a U of S Canvas template available in…
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Copyright and Remote Teaching
As you prepare for remote teaching this fall, you need to keep in mind issues related to copyright. The following key points were made in the USask version of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARLs’) copyright guidance released as the University quickly shifted to remote teaching in March: Most of the legal issues are the same whether the teaching is done in person or online. If it was okay to do in class, it is often okay to do online – especially when your online access is limited to the same enrolled students. You can continue to apply the University of Saskatchewan (USask) Fair Dealing Guidelines. The following resources have…
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Online Presentations and Poster Sessions Within Canadian Copyright Guidelines
We’ve had several instructors approach us about how to move their poster sessions and student presentations to a remote (online) environment. After extensive conversations with the Copyright Coordinator, Undergraduate Research Initiative Coordinator, and our Distance Education Unit, we felt it was a good idea to develop some support resources around this topic. An earlier post addressed choosing appropriate technology, while this one will provide guidance on staying within appropriate copyright parameters. If the work does not contain any copyrighted materials then you have the option of having the students share their posters openly. Give them the option of what license they wish to put on their own work. This could…
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Open Access Week is October 20-26, 2014!
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Diane (Dede) Dawson, Science Liaison Librarian This year marks the eighth annual Open Access Week – an international advocacy event that seeks to promote and raise awareness about open access (OA) and several closely related areas such as open education and open data. So… what is open access? “Open Access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder” (from Peter Suber’s A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access). The OA movement developed as a response to the unsustainable, higher-than-inflation, journal subscription increases experienced by…
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Open Textbooks Easily Available Through BC Project
[social_share/] [social-bio] There has been a growing amount of talk around the U of S, and higher education in general about open textbooks. These are digital textbooks that are freely available to learners and customizable for instructors. Textbooks are expensive, something particularly clear to first year university students. This fact has had a shift toward open textbooks a priority of University of Saskatchewan Student Union President Max FineDay’s since his first term. The provincial government has also this issue on its radar as evidenced by the Saskatchewan government signing a memorandum of understanding to cooperate on the creation of open educational resources with Alberta and British Columbia. There are several…
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An Update on Open Courseware at the U of S
[social_share/] [social-bio] Last year we ran a blog post about the Open Courseware (OCW) initiative which is a joint venture of ICT, SESD and the ULC at the U of S. This portal offers a gateway to every course offered at the UofS and provides a space where instructors may choose to open up course information or learning resources to the world. There has been a lot of talk around the university lately about syllabi being open through OCW, which is now in accordance with the Academic Courses Policy. I thought that these conversations make it an appropriate time to write another post on this initiative. Instructors have the option to…
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Fair Dealing, Contracts With Publishers and Linking to Journals
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Charlene Sorensen The Copyright Act contains a clause that allows for “fair dealing” in formal educational settings. This means that a non-substantial portion of a published work can be re-distributed to students enrolled in a class provided that neither password protection nor digital locks are circumvented. Non-substantial roughly means an article from a journal volume, a chapter of a book, or short excerpt (less than 10% of the overall work). Similarly, “direct linking” or “deep linking” to a particular piece of content within a website (i.e. giving the exact URL of a PDF file containing a paper within a journal) is acceptable provided that neither password protection nor…
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Copyright – Easing the Pain?
[social-bio] Canada’s new copyright bill has passed Parliament and Senate and there are several things instructors on our campus need to know. 1. What copyrighted electronic materials can I share with my students? Answer: share links, but if you are copying or uploading articles for students to access, make sure copyright is cleared (I.e. open access materials, material for which you have publisher permission to reproduce, or material for which a license to copy is in place). 2. May I post a PDF article on my class Blackboard or Paws site? Answer: NO, unless you have copyright clearance do so, or it is open access, creative commons, or created by…