General Permissions

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General Permissions Considerations

As stated earlier, copyright and permissions issues led to some of the biggest changes in the way that the University of Nebraska - Lincoln (UNL), Division of Continuing Studies (DCS), Research and Development Unit (R&D) developed course materials. These are a few of the considerations that other course developers should consider:

Identify your classification (non-profit, not-for-profit, or for-profit).
Many individuals and groups make permission judgments based on how the material is going to be used. They are far more likely to grant permission for educational purposes or individual uses than to an entity that they perceive may profit financially through the use of their holdings or be in competition with them. The CLASS™ Project found that even though the University of Nebraska maintained intellectual property rights to all CLASS™ courses, several groups withdrew their permission to use certain items because the courses became associated with a for-profit entity.
Consider budgetary and time restraints with regards to copyrights and permissions.
Getting permission to use recent print materials and photographs, audio, and video can be nearly impossible unless you have a significant amount or time and money. CLASS™ found that negotiations for rights can take over a year.
Consider copyrights and permissions in all course development decisions.
Unfortunately, the copyrights and permissions issues can affect course content decisions, especially in courses that depend heavily on material on which permissions may be difficult to acquire. Literature courses became increasingly difficult to develop after the for-profit entity was involved. (In fact, one literature course could not be released because of permissions restrictions.) In addition, CLASS™ stopped work on an art history course because it could not get permission to use most of images needed to make the course educationally sound.

CLASS™ considered three options for literature courses in the final 18 months of producing courses: 1) use only selections that are in the public domain; 2) use only selections that are already on-line on stable sites; and 3) require students to purchase an anthology for the reading portion of the on-line course. Each of these choices had serious drawbacks:

Restricting literary pieces to those that are at least 75-years-old eliminated the option of presenting selections that students would perceive to be most relevant to their own lives.
On-line literary selections seemed to have many of the same limitations as the CLASS™ found for putting literature on-line. Most of the works were those that were in the public domain, or they were on less stable sites. Interactive activities, such as vocabulary rollovers or internal commentary, cannot be done on pieces that are not under the course developers' control.
If students have to buy a print-based anthology, it defeats much of the purpose of an on-line literature course. In fact, mixing print and on-line resources may create more confusion for students than they would find if they completed the course using only print materials. In addition, course designers cannot reference particular elements for further study if excerpts cannot be reprinted on-line because students may have different versions of the selection.

After months of thought, the literature course development team decided that none of the options maintained the intent of an on-line course or provided the students with a suitable number of viable options to broaden their literary experience.

Find cost effective graphic options.
If you are creating courses that do not require specific photos or images, royalty-free and public access photo services probably are the best options. Often you will be able to purchase a CD of 50 or more photos or images, cataloged by subject, for about the same cost as purchasing less than five of the same type of graphics from a stock photography source. If you need a significant amount of original graphics, on-site or contracted graphic artists may ease your course development process.

Government and public domain sources have a vast array of historical photos, drawings, and documents for little or no cost, especially if the material is going to be used for educational or non-profit purposes. There also are memberships available, at a reasonable cost, that allow access to huge selections of images--clip art, drawings, photos, art, etc.
Consider creating your own audio and video pieces.
The rights to audio and video can be extremely difficult and expensive to obtain, so research the possibility of creating audio and video materials. Even if you have to get the rights to use the material being produced, it generally is easier, cheaper, and more manageable if you record your own audio and video so that you have full rights to alter it for your particular needs.
Determine if you can get permission to cache web sites, if the need arises.
While books and journals go out of print so that they are no longer available for sale and recordings can lose clarity over time, Internet web sites probably are the least stable reference resource. Consequently, if your course is designed to use one or more web sites extensively, you probably need to find out if the individuals responsible for these sites are willing to allow you to cache the site.

Following are standards and policies set forth in the CLASS™ Project.

All requests must include a “Permission Request Form” along with copies of printouts of the specific request. The request form should include: name of course, requestor’s name (ID/IDS), date requested, vendor’s name, and any other pertinent information.
Any and all designs that are created in house by a graphic designer MUST turn in the “Waiver for Graphic Design” form complete with signature and all pertinent information and attached to a printout of the completed designs.
Any and all designs to be created by NET or other contractor must follow the appropriate permissions procedures prior to any work being accomplished.
Derivitive works of elements are generally not allowed. Most vendor agreements do NOT allow ANY modifications whatsoever to their images, others are not so concerned – this is a permissions issue – not a designer decision. In either case, proper crediting of elements must be followed.
To have a resource purchased the IDS must submit to permissions a “Request for Requisition” with sufficient documentation attached to support the purchase as questioned by the Office Manager, Assistant Director, Business Operations, and State Purchasing.
Graphic Designers doing in house creations will need to fill out “Graphic Design Permissions” forms and attach the form to the graphics they create. On form for each course is sufficient. However, if a work is a derivitive (with permission) in any way then the documentation must include which tools and sources were used on that particular item to modify it, in which case the item would have a form of its own.

Crediting Elements
Terms Defined:
Media elements: elements appearing on the HTML pages that are graphics, video, animation, shocked elements or audio. These include:

Common elements: elements designed to be repeated throughout the course (i.e., navigational items, sounds used on multiple quizzes, navigational buttons, quiz right/wrong graphics, etc.) This could also include chapter specific elements that repeat in only that chapter or part of the course, characters that appear over and over in the course, thematically related graphics, headers.
Content elements: media elements within the course excluding all navigational items and also excluding any elements that repeat throughout the course.

Types of elements to be credited:

Any element with a width or height of 150 pixels or larger
Photos
Graphics (illustrations, charts, graphs) over 150 pixels in width or height
Animations
Video (on screen in HTML under video)
Audio (on credits page)
Interactions (on credits page)
Book excerpts, Poems, etc. (in HTML)

Elements that are not credited:

Any element under 150 pixels wide or high (listed by course page in the element credits section of the course)
Mathematical graphics
Common elements (see definition)
Activities or interaction (credited at the end of the course due to interference with the integrity/educational value of the pieces.

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