In the spring of 2021 the Code of Best Practice in Fair Use for OER was released. The Code is designed to support creation of new and different OER – resilient materials that give educators the control and flexibility to meet the needs of their students and the pedagogical goals of their courses. By empowering open educators to understand and apply copyright exceptions, the Code provides a tool for educators, librarians, and authors to evaluate common professional scenarios in which fair use can enable them to incorporate third party materials, including those protected by copyright.
With the release of the Code completed, the development team began the core work of fostering actual change - including uptake in discipline specific communities and implementation support for institutions and networks. Beginning in the summer of 2021 we have recruited a cohort of participants designated as OER “Development Fellows” and constituting small, discipline-specific teams in areas such as STEM, language learning, health sciences, and LIS. With support from IMLS we are supporting these teams as they use the Code to develop new OER or substantially update and diversify existing high-impact OER.
This panel brings together designers of the Code, development fellows, and administrative supporters of this work to talk about what they have done, what they have learned, and what happens next. We will discuss new opportunities made available by the Code and new OER that would not have been possible without this resource. We will also discuss challenges that emerged in terms of understanding and applying the Code in particular disciplines and what we are doing to address those challenges. By sharing perspectives from OER creators working in specific disciplines, we hope to make the abstract values described by the Code concrete so that OER developers and those that support them have a sense of where it can be useful and what aspects need more work.
Join us to hear from a variety of open educators - from lawyers and librarians to subject experts, publishers, and instructional designers - discuss their experience field testing a powerful new resource. We’ll share inside tips and stories from the trenches as well as answering your questions. You’ll leave this panel with a deeper understanding of the law, the Code and your own opportunities for creating more accessible and inclusive OER.
After participating in this session, attendees will be able to:
- Understand and apply the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for OER
- Analyze and compare a diverse set of concrete examples of projects made possible with the Code
- Design and teach in your own context with OER made with and relying on the Code
