There are a few things stewing in my mind as a result of this first module, enough that I'm going to split it into two posts because it's going to get too long and scattered otherwise. So this is part one, with general thoughts and reactions to the class material so far.
Online Courses Generally: The idea of online courses is in no way unfamiliar, thanks to my experiences in college. I had some solely online classes (which I remember as having been well-done, but at this point I'm not sure which particular aspects communicated that impression, and that's really bothering me!) in addition to the use of the LMS as the place for documents and such for face-to-face classes. I also worked for campus IT Help Desk and was one of the student specialists for troubleshooting our LMS (we started in Blackboard, but used Desire2Learn for most of my college career). I'm going to have to go back through my school files and see what I have from my online graduate courses; recalling how my instructor(s) did it might help me get a better sense of what some of the suggested principles look like in practice.
Topics in the Readings: I was pleased that some of the topics in this first week of readings--namely, copyright/privacy and accessibility--were things that I'm also already reasonably familiar with. Librarians are often pretty conversant about copyright issues because of the questions we are asked, and I had the opportunity at my last job to work with the screen reader JAWS to evaluate the accessibility of an interface I helped design. Believe me, using a screen reader is a vastly illuminating (and often frustrating) experience! If you ever have a chance to try something like that, DO IT. It will change how you look at the internet.
On a related note, I'd like to reiterate a comment from the Know Your Copy Rights - Uses in Online Courses reading: it is *always* better from a legal standpoint to link to a document rather than post the document itself to your Moodle course, whether the course is fully online or not (for example, notice that all of the Module 1 Resources are links to websites, not links to PDFs that have been uploaded to Moodle). This is especially true for articles; book chapters are trickier. Lest you think this isn't a big deal, be aware that there is an ongoing lawsuit on the issue of posting copyrighted works online for students to read ("Georgia (State University) On My Mind" gives a good overview of the issues involved.)
If you need help figuring out how to link to an article in one of our databases (or help finding whether we have access to an article/journal/etc. at all), ask me or Tippi or Marci. Copyright questions are generally handled by Tippi or Marci; I can answer some, but they've had more experience in that area. This stuff is one of the many things we're here for!
Faculty Self-Assessment: I am somewhat bothered by the fact that this assessment had no answer for 'I am familiar with the idea but not had opportunity to try it'. I know they're trying to keep their evaluation simple, but some of the questions really can't be answered by any of the "I have done this..." responses until you either 1) teach a class in any format, or 2) teach an online class (e.g. "Establishing your presence in the course on a regular basis" requires a regular-length course in which to be present). I guess they're assuming that only people who are experienced instructors are going to be making the leap into online teaching? (Some of us non-instructors don't have a choice, not if we want to serve the students as best we can! But anyway...)
Cindy, it's great to have your expertise for all of us to learn from. I hope you'll keep sharing your knowledge as we encounter various media and will opportunity to develop our own courses.
ReplyDeleteI know the faculty self-assessment isn't the greatest, but I just wanted something quick and easy that would give a general idea of where you stood. Someday if I get ambitious, I may develop my own, but for now this will have to do.
Cynthia, since you are mulling over the role of the library in online classes, I would like to ask you for some insight on our readings about copyright. You say that it is *always* a good idea to link to library resources rather than posting PDFs of scanned materials to one’s moodle page. From our readings, it seemed like one could “fall back” to some sort of fair use justification if one took this route (posting one’s own PDFs). But it was notably vague in the readings whether this was a good idea. What do you think? Is scanning and posting something like a book chapter defensible, minimally defensible, doomed to failure? What options do we have if one’s library cannot link to the sources the instructor wants to use? For, in an online setting, “course reserves” aren’t a possibility. Should instructors limit themselves to what the library can link to (or what is available on the internet and free of copyright restrictions)?
ReplyDeleteThese are excellent questions! Sadly, they do not all have definitive answers--the issue of copyright vs fair use in terms of online class materials is still being figured out. I am also not the person in the library that deals the most with copyright (that would be Tippi), so what I know is based on questions that were directed to me that I then discussed with others before responding. Also, when we talk about posting PDFs, it's under the assumption that we're talking Moodle or something else that only the students in that course can access.
DeleteAs I understand it, the issue with posting PDFs is twofold: 1) some publishers actually restrict the reposting of PDFs in the licenses for electronic content, and 2) if we were to make a copy of something we don't own/don't have access to and place it on physical reserve, that could potentially be problematic legally (because we never paid for it, the horror!), and the rules for physical reserves are more or less how electronic class reserves are being handled. (For better or worse, and for the time being. That lawsuit involving Georgia State may change things, once it's finally decided.)
Book chapters are a weird beast in this regard, but potentially defensible. Our library recommendation has been that if an instructor wants to scan and post a book chapter, the library should own the book (and we do buy books for this purpose). I believe the rationale there is that it's essentially the same as putting the book on reserve, just for an online class.
For articles, if it's something that we have to pay to access (i.e. it's not just freely available via Google), then linking is best. Mostly that's so we are complying with the licensing terms for the various databases, but also that helps the library get a better handle on usage statistics (so we know what we're paying for is worth the money!). Plus, that gets students interacting (at least superficially) with the databases. ;-)
For articles freely available online, you're probably okay with posting them (because they're freely available), but you have nothing to lose by linking to them. Good faith effort, and all that.
If there's something specific you have questions about, ask the library wherever you're teaching. They may have specific policies to cover some of the weirdness involved in online course reserves. And there are allowances for things that are not available electronically so long as the due diligence is done in trying to find a workable copy.
Fortunately for everyone, the amount of good stuff freely available is increasing dramatically (due at least in part to Open Access advocates). One day I hope that worrying about copyright when putting together an online class won't even be on the radar, but we're not there just yet.
If that helps?
Thank you for the rationale. That helps a lot, Cynthia.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome! And as I said, just ask if you have questions. Sometimes things need to be considered on a case-by-case basis.
DeleteAlso, I neglected to mention that the copyright policies from the faculty handbook are also online (I forgot that'd we'd put them up; they didn't used to be on the site!): http://www.trnty.edu/ss/copyrightpolicies.html . Some of the online considerations we discussed aren't covered, but the text does encourage linking to things rather than making copies of it (posting the PDF can be considered making copies).