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Open Educational Resources (OER) Guide

Poll

Have you ever used Creative Commons licensed material in your work?
Yes!: 24 votes (48.98%)
Maybe? not sure: 3 votes (6.12%)
Never heard of it until now: 16 votes (32.65%)
Never thought about it: 6 votes (12.24%)
Total Votes: 49

Key Facts About Copyright

  • Copyright occurs automatically with the creation of a creative work and lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years.
  • Copyright is a bundle of rights.
  • Almost everything is copyrighted whether or not the author intends to keep all of those rights
  • Some websites provide resources for free, but not openly for reusing or re-mixing. Be careful to check the rights before using materials!

What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that aims to make it easier for people share their work with others for various purposes. Creative Commons allows you, as a user of media, to legally use, share, and repurpose media, such as photographs and music, for free with the permission of the creator. Creative Commons licenses allow creators of works to release some of their rights so that their works may be used by others, so creators can have as much or as little control as they want over their products. The Creative commons licenses allow for more flexibility than traditional copyright.

Creative Commons Licenses

License Conditions

When using a Creative Commons (CC) license, creators can choose a set of conditions they wish to apply to their work. Here are descriptions of the different licenses from Creative Commons: 

Gray box with CC icon and icon of a person to represent attribution

Attribution 
CC BY

This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build
upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit
you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating
of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum
dissemination and use of licensed materials.

View License Deed | View Legal Code                

 

Gray box with CC icon, person icon to represent attribution, and arrow going in a circle to represent sharing alike

Attribution-ShareAlike
CC BY-SA

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your
work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit
you and license their new creations under the identical
terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free
and open source software licenses. All new works based
on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will
also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would
benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and
similarly licensed projects.

View License Deed | View Legal Code

Gray box with CC icon, icon of a person to represent attribution, and icon of an equal sign to represent no derivatives

Attribution-NoDerivs

CC BY-ND

This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

View License Deed | View Legal Code

Gray box with CC icon, icon of a person to represent attribution, and a dollar sign with a line through it to represent no commercial use

Attribution-NonCommercial

CC BY-NC

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your
work non-commercially, and although their new works must
also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t
have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

View License Deed | View Legal Code

Gray box with CC icon, icon of a person to represent attribution, a dollar sign with a line through it to represent no commercial use, and an arrow in a circle to represent sharing alike

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

CC BY-NC-SA

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your
work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and
license their new creations under the identical terms.

View License Deed | View Legal Code

Gray box with CC icon, icon of a person to represent attribution, a dollar sign with a line through it to represent no commercial use, and an equali

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs

CC BY-NC-ND

This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses,
only allowing others to download your works and share
them with others as long as they credit you, but they
can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

View License Deed | View Legal Code

 

 

Resources

Follow these links to find further resources on Creative Commons: 

Searching for CC materials

General Searches:

​Photos:

​Music & Sounds:

​Videos:​

​ ​Other Media:

Using Creative Commons Licensed material?

Questions to consider:

  • Are you using borrowed media, such as photos, sounds, or music?
  • Have you checked the license? Which creative commons license does it use?
  • Do you have permission to use it?
  • Do you have permission to tweak, remix, or change the media?
  • Have you credited the source of the media?  

License

The resources used in this guide are released under Creative Commons Licenses.

This guide was adapted by Sarah Guy from the UNCG Guide "Open Educational Resources" by Beth Bernhardt. 

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.