Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Keep copyright in mind...when you post course materials to LEARN or Perusall

Part 3 of a four-part series from the Copyright Advisory Committee.

You’ve carefully curated a selection of readings and you want your students to have easy access to them. You might be using LEARN, Perusall, or another password-protected learning management system. How can you make sure your students get access to the readings while respecting copyright?

It depends on where you sourced the readings, the Copyright Decision Tool can help you think through this. Here’s a summary of the most common ways to clear copyright in course readings: 

Working from print materials? Look to fair dealing, an exception in the Copyright Act, to provide access. The fair dealing advisory allows for use of 1 chapter or up to 10 per cent (whichever suits your needs) on a password-protected system with your students.

Using downloaded articles from the Library? These materials are licensed from the publisher, so there’s a contract that says what users can do with it. Use Omni, the Library catalogue, to view the license summary for the materials. The finding usage rights page provides instructions on how to find this information. Too complicated? Ask us (copyright@uwaterloo.ca) or consider linking! You can always link to library materials (with the exception of Harvard Business Review). Use the linking tool to provide a link that helps your students avoid hitting publisher paywalls.

What about content that’s free online? Assuming the material is lawful (i.e. not pirated) you can apply the Work available through the Internet exception to provide access to your students in LEARN/Perusall as long as:

• you didn’t break digital rights management to access it,
• there is no clearly visible notice prohibiting copying on the website (this needs to be more than just the © symbol), and
• you provide credit, where possible.

If this is sounding like too much, don’t worry! There are services to help with copyright and teaching, two are highlighted here:  

• Course Reserves, a service offered by the Library will take care of the copyright review for you. They’ll make all the readings they can get copyright clearance for available in the Course Reserves widget, which you can connect to your LEARN course. Course reserves for instructors explains how to get started.
• Digital teaching support through the Agile Development Team, a group within the Centre for Extended Learning, which provides copyright guidance, among its many other supports for digital course components.

You can reach out to copyright@uwaterloo.ca for any content you are having trouble assessing.

Something delicious is cooking

The latest exhibit displayed in the President’s Office will surely whet your appetite for innovation. Elements from an internationally award-winning submission from the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering will be on display in the Office of the President for the next month. Team Collaborative Deliciousness, led by Professor Yue Hu and comprised by Jeffrey Lee, Cheng Tang, Dr. Francisco Andrande, Mennatellah Rihan and Anas Mahdi developed an automation system to aid the production of artisanal croissants.  

With support from the Active and Interactive Robotics Lab and the Human-Centred Robotics,  Machine Intelligence Lab, Alexander Werner from RoboHub, and the DUO Patisserie & Cafe, the team created a robotic baking solution that incorporates control processes, computer vision modules, mechanical prototyping and electrical integration to enable a robotic arm to assemble and bake pastries.  

By automating the preparation process through an intuitive user interface, bakers could use the "The IISYest baker" to replace thousands of repetitive tasks to reduce labour costs, provide scalability, and ensure that product quality remains consistent.     

Earlier this year, the team participated in the KUKA Innovation Award 2024 international competition at the Hannover Industrial Trade Fair. Teams from around the world showcased applications utilizing collaborative robotic arms to create crafts. The UWaterloo team was named one of the finalists and continues to garner substantial interest, including appearing on live German TV, underscoring the potential for robotics to be applied across industries. 

The display includes a small version of the robot, the team’s trophy and baking tools. 

Every month, the Office of the President’s display case features University of Waterloo innovation and academic excellence through exhibits that showcase ground-breaking research and inventions produced by students, faculty, and researchers. The exhibits are a great opportunity for partners, donors, international delegations to get a sense of what’s happening on campus when they visit the President in his office. 

Learn more about Team Collaborative Deliciousness.

Wednesday's Notes

One of the supported polling tools currently being piloted at UWaterloo, Vevox, is running an online training session on Thursday, August 29 from 9:30 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. A new integration with LEARN now allows Vevox to push grades to LEARN for correct answers and/or for participation. This session will demonstrate how to set up a link and will demonstrate how grades are pushed from Vevox back to LEARN.

By the end of the session, you will be able to: link to a Vevox Session from LEARN; understand when grades are transferred to LEARN during a Vevox Session; and choose a Vevox Session setup that will work effectively with your grading scheme. Use this link to access the training on Thursday, August 29. 

Information Systems & Technology (IST) has published the latest in the Atlassian blog series, entitled New Feature Spotlight: Prioritize Your Queues with Groups in Jira Service Management.