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Faculty Resource Guide

This libguide provides information on a wide range of issues of relevance to faculty including how to link to library resources, what you can and cannot put into Moodle, Open Content Sites, and Information about new Scholarly Communication Hubs.

Adapting Educational Content to Online Teaching
 

With instruction moving online in the Fall, there is a need to adapt how we teach and provide educational materials to our students. This guide will  provide you with the information you need if you want to know about course readings, streaming media or possible alternatives to the traditional textbook in the online environment.

Much Ado about Textbooks

Providing students with access to textbooks is easy when course are offered face-to-face as students can visit the on-campus bookstore. Providing access to the entire student body when everyone is studying online can  present challenges associated with text delivery to remote users - and copyright makes providing online textbooks extremely costly.   But this does not mean institutions face an insurmountable problem as there are options available to the traditional textbook.

1.  Open Textbooks

Open Textbooks are a type of Open Educational Resource.  They have been created by faculty in institutions around the globe and come with open licenses that allow users to download the content, print it, adapt it, remix it  or share it with students - all without the need to contact the copyright owner and get permission.   Want to use it in a Course site?  No problem.  Want to use chapters 3-9 from one book and incorporate chapter 5 from another open textbook to form a new textbook?  No problem.  As an added bonus these textbooks are free to use, and as such are easy on student's pocket book.  Check out the library's libguide on Open Textbooks to learn where to locate them.  The guide also points you to Open Access Books.

In addition to this guide, Campus Manitoba has staff to help you if you wish to adapt an open text.  To get help contact:

Kaitlyn Schilling, Campus Manitoba
Dylan Woodcock, Campus Manitoba

2. Online Course Packs

Another option for providing instructional materials is to develop an Online Course Pack consisting of recommended readings / viewings that are linked to via  your Moodle class site.  Readings coming from the library's  electronic journals / e-books can be linked to from your site.  Articles or Chapters in physical journals / books, can also be digitized and  added to Moodle but are constrained by copyright.

To locate relevant works for your online course, check out our Open Textbook Guide, which also has information about linking to electronic items in the library collection whether they are e-books, online articles, online newspapers or library licensed streaming videos collections.   There is only one exception to this and it is any individually licensed videos as they are uploaded to the library's Moodle Video site.  

3.  Digitized Chapters and Articles in the Physical Library

You can also - to a limited extent - make content in our physical collection available online to students.  Because of copyright there are restrictions  including:

  • The need to place the content into a system - like Moodle - that requires institutional users to enter in an institutional Username and Password.
  • Only using One Chapter of a Book or One Article from a Journal.

To have library content digitized for usage in Moodle, contact Donna Lowe in Library Reserves.

Streaming Media and Online Classes

If you need to use an audiovisual production in an online class, it is important to note that copyright forbids you from uploading a movie from a DVD into a class site / web site as it violates Technological Protection Measures.    This does not mean you cannot use media in an online class as you can:

  • Use videos that are part of the library's video collections as they come with streaming licenses.
  • Use video that are openly available on the Web - but you need to link to them (i.e. do not put the video into your online class) and know that the content will be there in the future and not removed because of :
    •  A take -down request  from a copyright owner, or
    •  A site's commitment to continually change its media content.
  • Ask the library to license titles for you.
    • If we acquire them via of licensing a collection of videos, you will find the video collection listed here. 
    • If we license a video individually (I.e. not part of a collection) then the video will be uploaded to the library's Video Site on Moodle.  

To acquire a streaming license for your class, contact Angela Revet (revet@brandonu.ca ) at the John E. Robbins Library and provide her with the list of video titles, for which, you need a streaming license.

Copyright and Online Instructional Materials


If you want to know more about your ability to use content online, check out our library's Copyright Libguide or consult the Copyright Decision Tool.  

As a general rule you can use copyrighted materials in an online class but:

  • Linking to online resources (commercial or open access) is best practice.
  • You need to place the content behind an institutional Course Management System that ensures only authorized users can access commercial content.
  • Fair Dealings means you can only digitize and upload a limited amount of content from each copyright protected item.