Maybe I became somewhat more daring after having taken a course through a full accessibility build. It seemed the right time to also create a course that fully observed every copyright law that we were aware of. It takes some walking the straight line to be able to do it somewhat more easily the next time.

As I come from the academic side of the house (vs. the commercial), the constraints I've worked with have been low funding and a purposeful blind eye towards things like copyright. Every last-minute stand at the copy machine was an "emergency" under fair use and not just a habitual reliance on fair use to swipe others' materials.

In a way, e-learning has forced a more serious look at this issue. The materials we upload and store in online password protected learning management system sites leaves clear digital trails, and one cannot as easily argue intent or lack of awareness.

The Particular Course

Several other factors aligned to support this absolutely legal (semi-legalistic) build. One was that the course focused on ethical issues. Another was that the instructor had an email site and handle that focused on her honorability. What was even more delectable was that this course had been taught by the particular instructor for just short of the past decade. That left us with plenty of materials of questionable origin. That also meant that the instructor had clear preferences for what she wanted to use as digital learning objects. She'd honed her teaching over the years and had some very creative learning approaches.

And if those factors weren't enough, she was also a high skeptic about what we could legally use. When I would download royalty-free music for her consideration for the lead-in for the videos, she questioned whether the music should be used and whether we had copyright release. (My direct supervisor also made available a lot of royalty-free music that the office had bought for just such purposes, but classical music sort of set the wrong mood.) She had conscientiously cited the URLs of sites where she'd swiped photos for her slideshows. She had cool graphical handouts that she'd made by cobbling together images from various locales. She had a range of case studies from off of a public site at a Jesuit university. She had a cool article from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Going in "Squeaky Clean"

So I started emailing people. I emailed the musician of the music she adored, which she'd found off C/NET after nixing quite a few other songs. He responded graciously and expeditiously with a "yes." There was a particular poem she wanted for her students; the organization and the author that owned that signed over rights gratis. Then, there were over a dozen ethics cases she'd been using in class from off of a private university's site. A quick email to them, and they also said yes. Microsoft's free clipart offered us a range of rich images to use to illustrate some of her ideas. The Chronicle, of course, said yes.

Her own models were easily rendered with MS Visio, and those were cleaned up.

Her office's logo and poster were used for branding elements on the course site, with in-house copyright.

"You're going in squeaky clean," I deadpanned in an email.

In light of Web 2.0 sharing, there's a lot of information that people make available to others for pedagogical and social sculpting purposes.

Creating her own Contents

We ran up against a high wall with broadcast media. Under fair use, it seemed that a short snippet could be used for educational purposes, and that's how she ended up going through each video and choosing out a couple minutes here and there, with a personal "talking head" wrap on her own. There was a news case that combined print and video news, and we haven't started pursuing that yet.

The outright no's encouraged her to think of other sorts of video captures that could be done. Students could interview professors about their experiences with academic dishonesty. Panels of informants could be captured on video. Students could simulate particular instances of academic dishonesty from their own imaginations and known stats. Students could hold debates about relevant issues, and those could be captured strategically for pedagogical value.

She worked out a video release for those who would take part...and then set aside several weeks for the video captures with ideas for the scenarios she'd seen over th eyears.

Disclaimer

She tidied up with an in-class disclaimer for how the copyrighted materials could be used in the course. And this was a two-month speed-build, too...so she goes live in January 2008. It's amazing working with a faculty member who is unafraid of technology and who is goes for the gusto.