Creative Commons for Educators: Impact of OER-Enabled Pedagogy on Language Instruction

Context

Since 2012, I have been directing the Center for Language Technology (past name Center for Language Technology and Instructional Enrichment). This is a center with a very modest size (one full time non-teaching faculty, me, as the director, and four full time staff, and several part-time lab assistants) that serves a large group of faculty and graduate students who teach world languages at Indiana University--more than 50 different languages are taught on the Bloomington campus each Fall and Spring semester in the past years. This center has maintained a web-based portal of language archives that cover all the languages that have been taught at Indiana University, as well as analogue materials that have been digitized. 

These materials have been given to  CeLT by various instructors as instructional materials to be shared with students. Some of them are copyrighted materials shared with password protection, used under Fair Use guidelines. Some of these were instructor created materials. Many of these material have been existing for a long time and the ownership of copyright was not clear.  

In addition, recently, CeLT and another affiliated language center have organized pedagogical workshops. Some of these have been recorded and the recorded videos are shared on the centers' Website, with video release permission from the faculty who were invited to teach the workshop. 

Recently, we also have recordings of student presentations that are high in quality shared on the center's website, as requested by the instructor (with permission from the students), with the purpose of sharing with other students. 

Over the years, we have received many emails from people around the world of different professions (teachers, retired person, library staff, etc.) and different purposes of using the materials (teaching, independent learning, etc.) asking for access to materials that are password protected. 

University Policy on Intellectual Property and Open Education  

The Intellectual Property Policy of Indiana University distinguishes between two types of copyrightable works: Traditional Works of Scholarship and University Works. Ownership of Traditional Works of Scholarship remains with the creator of the work, while the ownership of University Works is vetted in the University. Definitions of these two types of work can be found on the policy page. Based on this policy, online instructional materials (except when Exceptional University Support is provided to the creator) are categorized under traditional works of scholarship, which, supposedly means that the creators (instructors, for example) can legally license their online instructional materials not subject to Exceptional University Support under Creative Commons licenses. 

I have to admit that while this is a logical conclusion, I still need to verify this conclusion from the university General Counsel. There is no specific university policy that I have known of that explicitly addresses open licenses and open educational resources. It would be great to have a section on this topic in the current Intellectual Property Policy page or a link to a page that addressed OER Policies at the university. I am interested in exploring the OER Policy Development Tool and consult with university General Counsel on the possibility of creating such a policy. 

I am very certain of the conclusion, though, because Indiana University has provided multiple resources and information on creating OER:

• The IU system has joined the Open Textbook Network (OTN). See blog post on this topic published on Feb. 13, 2020.  
• IU library has created an Open Scholarship page and provides FAQs for this topic.
• IU has adopted Pressbook, a tool that makes it easy for faculty and students to create open educational resources. 
• In June 2020, IUPUI Center for Teaching and Learning, and Digital Education Programs & Initiatives of Indiana University hosted weekly OER Open Office Hours through Zoom. Faculty were invited ask questions and discuss ideas for OER.  

Challenges and Opportunities? 

The goals are two fold: First, go through our large collection of language materials hosted online and archived offline, identify and clearly label the copyright status of each asset, contact owner of copyright holder, inquire possibility of making certain assets open. Second, for new request of hosting materials online, create a document that CeLT can use to communicate with faculty in terms of their willingness to assign creative commons licenses to the materials, if these materials were created by the faculty who make the request. The ultimate goal is to create a database of OER resources on the CeLT language portal, as well as to connect them to national and international portal of OER. 

I first see the opportunities. Due to Covid-19, language instructors are already developing language materials and pedagogy assets (lesson plans, assignment, tests, etc.) for online courses. For a long time, there has been lack of such materials for less commonly taught languages (LCTL). Indiana University proudly teach many of these.

Challenges are multiple. First, faculty need information and education on the topic of OER. Some may equate open with free and need to understand the sophisticated issues of copyright and open licences. Second, motivation of faculty to create such resources. It is not clear yet how creation of OER is factored in promotion and tenure. Third, copyright consultation is needed for faculty to make good decisions on choice of open licenses. 

Strategy to Address the Challenges

1. Contact university general counsel, copyright and OER librarian to confirm understanding of university's policy on OER. Advocate developing such a policy if it is not existing. Use OER Policy Development Tool as a starting point. 
2. Develop a series of workshops for faculty. Invite department chairs, Deans and associate deans to participate, too. 
• What is Creative Commons Licenses and How to find open content
• What is OER and how to find them?
• Creation of OER-- technical and legal considerations
• Seminar on Open Education Practice/Open Pedagogy/OER-enabled Pedagogy
• Question and Answers on Copyright and OER by inviting university general counsel and copyright librarians. Invite department chair and deans in the College. 
• Guest speaker sessions-- invite faculty who has already created and published OER to talk about their experiences and invite experts on this topic
3. Obtain and provide funding and award for faculty to create OER in language materials, especially for LCTL. Provide technical support in the process. Host the created OER on the center website, which will also be connected with national and international OER portal. 
4. In our workshop on creating teaching portfolio, include a reminder to include and document OER created by owner of the portfolio
5. Continue to host seminar on Open Pedagogy and invited IU faculty who has engaged in open pedagogy to present. 
6. Obtain and provide funding for research in innovative instructional approach adopting open pedagogy. 
7. Reach out to other language centers and consortium to collaborate on creation of OER in language materials and pedagogy, especially for LCTL. 
8. Encourage faculty to conduct action research on the topic and provide financial support for attending conferences. Showcase publications of faculty on this topic.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License by Xiaojing Kou. This article is written as an assignment for the Creative Commons Certificate course, Summer 2020.