Reading Time: 3 minutes

We have looked at open-licensed images, such as the Creative Commons licenses, pre-approved for reuse and sharing. The images used on this blog come with Creative Commons licensing terms – we know that we can use them, because their owners granted permission. Please note that using material available for free or licensed for reuse, should be rights cleared, and that you include an appropriate attribution.

Information

The focus of today is on introducing tips to searching and reusing high quality resources that are licensed but available for your teaching. One of the challenges that many academics face when preparing material for use online, is the uncertainty of how to source third party material copyright cleared for educational use. The most common infringement is the unauthorised copying and uploading of images and journal articles. In order to best protect yourself against unintended infringement, we recommend you take a look at the excellent list of resources available for reuse that the Library and Learning Centre (LLC) subscribes to.

Open - written in lights
Attribution: © Finn Hackshaw 2016, used under a Creative Commons Zero license – CC0 1.0 via Unsplash

Embedding video in Blackboard

While you may have found Blackboard’s ‘Mashup’ tool useful for Yuja (the University’s video service) and YouTube, it can be a bit more fiddly to embed other video tools. This video shows you how to use embed codes that bob and other licensed services use.

Finding relevant material

In this activity we would like you explore the library’s Types of Resources – electronic resources that includes e-books, e-journals as well as video, image and sound repositories. The subject guides are useful for pointing you to subject specific resources – but don’t ignore other subject areas, you might well find useful resources.

  1.  How might you re-use the material for your teaching or your own development?
  2. What are the advantages and disadvantages for using licensed material, in particular, what are the terms and conditions for re-use as these can vary and what are the restrictions for use in the VLE?
  3. How do you feel about searching for licensed images using the library’s collection as opposed to searching for material ‘out there’ on the web?

Please post a comment to share your views about one or two of the resources that you’ve looked at. You are encouraged to comment on each other’s entries and you may wish to take notes in your blog, tweet or anything related to this activity.

Note: While most content can be used via your Dundee authentication off campus wherever you are, some, e.g. bob  (Box of Broadcasts) are limited to the UK only.

LinkedIn learning (Lynda)

The University subscribes to LinkedIn Learning (used to be called Lynda). You can login using your University email address – note that it may ask you if you want to link it with your existing LinkedIn profile, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. While this predominantly covers Business, Creative and Technology courses, if you’re in other fields you may find that some of the Office 365 videos are useful to get a greater understanding of what you can do with the tools we have. For example, there’s one on using Office 365 teams

Resources and guides

Uploading e-journals and articles downloaded from the web into the VLE is not permitted. Instead of uploading articles create web links to the articles into your module or use the Library’s online Reading Lists service.

Link of the day

Instructables is a fun resource for exploring and for sharing resources on how to make things. Always read the terms and conditions for use.

Instructables – Explore. Share. Make.

8 thoughts on “Day 2: Searching – Licensed Resources

  1. Hi, I have just discovered a whole new world out there that I didn’t realise existed and am very grateful. I have found video clips that are brilliant, e.g. they relate specifically to working with young children and are focussed on current topics such as wellbeing and listening to children. I have spent a lot of time recently looking for clips and going through the channels that I knew about such as Teachers TV and the Early years Foundation Stage, mostly through YouTube. Having this first layer of search already completed by accessing the library materials makes the process more straightforward. This is excellent for updating materials on my modules. I selected education as a search and Media Plus came up as the Best Bet. This made any further searching really straightforward. What I need to work out now is how to embed the video clips into MyDundee. I’ve had a quick try but no success yet. Perhaps you could point me in the right direction please?

    I really like the idea of searching through the library as this reassures me that I can only be accessing reliable sources, This removes any concerns about copyright I think, although obviously I would double check.

    1. Hello Angela, thank you for your continued engagement. Pleased to read that you found today’s activity in exploring the library resources beneficial for both enhancing your practice and teaching. I looked at terms of use for MediaPlus and found no restrictions for the VLE – terms are located at 3.1.7 You are good to go!

      Digital video from MediaPlus can be embedded in My Dundee using an Embed code. For some reason though, and I’m hoping my colleagues help me out here, the Embed code does not display the video for an Item, but does work using a Campus Pack blog! Tomorrow I am going to update our Resources and provide a step-by-step guide on how to embed video to a module.

      I am looking forward to hearing about the materials you have sourced and how you might use them within modules to engage learning.
      Helen

    2. Hi Angela,

      I was wrong, the video display works just fine when you want to embed video from MediaPlus as a link or a code into an Item within a module. I have updated the Resources section. Find here a link to the document, My Dundee: Embed Video.

      Helen

  2. Hi

    Better late than never. I knew a little about how to search on the library website but his has helped. I did not fully understand the extent of the online resources and I particularly like the Literature Online and easy search tools; Learning on Screen but was not sure – are these programmes/clips we can use with permission? Iain Gillespie suggests B.O. B. (not sure what the full title is) as a good avenue to similar programmes, etc. The Nexis access to newspapers is a very good online source- with good search tools. Helen form what I can gather we can use all of the above legitimately, is that right?

    I also like that you can see whether the resource is full text or no.

    1. Hi Gary,
      Learning Online is the parent of Box of Broadcasts (BoB). They’ve recently changed a little, so if you looked a year or so ago, it probably looked a little different. In terms of use, because they’re UK broadcast TV, viewers have to be within the UK.
      And, yes, when developing learning materials for students, you can use them all; though, as Helen pointed out, you have to check to see what licences there are. As a rule of thumb, it’s best to get into the habit of linking to a resource (even if that means the students have to login to see it) than to download it and then upload to the VLE.

  3. Hi
    I was unaware of this feature and find it extremely interesting. The availability of published material relevant to my preferred subject is incredible. I look forward to being able to use this resource to help me study.

    1. What subject are you studying, Oliver? Which of the resources have been particularly useful? Do you know how to cite them if you are including them in your assessments?

  4. I haven’t used this library resource before and it was enlightening to see what was available. I searched in Alexander streetpress and BOB. I had heard of both of these individual resources before but wasn’t sure how to access them. Reassuring to know that these sources have already been checked for use.

Leave a Reply to claire kerr Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *