License student work in Pressbooks

• Overview
• Create a license agreement and get consent
  • Example license agreement
  • Create a survey
• Learn more

Overview

UITS recommends, with guidance from the IU Libraries' Copyright Program, that instructors collect consent from students before sharing those students' work in Pressbooks, as part of their coursework, with anyone other than course instructors, teaching assistants, or peer reviewers. Examples of coursework for which a license is recommended include, but are not limited to:

• Pressbooks texts edited by an instructor with chapters written by students
• Open Educational Resources (OER) with content contributed by students
• Pressbooks texts with content contributed by students that will be shared publicly

Create a license agreement and get consent

The recommended method to collect consent is to create and distribute a Canvas survey with a licensing agreement for the students' work.

Adapt the following example licensing agreement as needed for your course, then create a survey in Canvas to allow students to read and sign the agreement.

Example license agreement

License Agreement

This License Agreement is between Indiana University (the "Licensee") and individual students enrolled in [Insert course number and title of course (for example, EDUC-M 469 Content Area Literacy)] (the "Licensor").

Description of Pressbooks Project

[Insert a description of the class Pressbooks project]

Use of Work

Students retain the copyright in their academic work (called "traditional works of scholarship"), including work covered by this license, as described in IU's Intellectual Property (UA-05) policy. This license does not transfer ownership of copyright; instead, it allows Indiana University to:

• reproduce, distribute, perform, or display your work named in this license
• distribute your work named in this license to anyone, anywhere ("world-wide")
• reproduce and re-use your work named in this license: you are also allowed to reproduce and re-use this same work ("nonexclusive")

This license limits use of the covered work by Indiana University to the use described in this license, namely the Pressbooks Project detailed above.

This agreement is final and cannot be changed ("irrevocable").

Agreement

I hereby grant to Indiana University an irrevocable, royalty-free, world-wide, nonexclusive license to reproduce, distribute, perform, or display such covered work for purposes of reproducing my work, [Insert title of the student's work], in [Insert the title of the Pressbooks project or book].

Create a survey

After making the necessary changes, insert the license agreement into an ungraded survey on Canvas. Add these questions to allow students to consent to the agreement:

• True/False: "I agree to the terms of this License Agreement."
• Fill-in-the-blank: "Full name:"
• Fill-in-the-blank: "Date:"

For more, see the Canvas Instructor Guide section on creating surveys.

Learn more

To learn more about IU's policy on copyrights, see Intellectual Property (UA-05).

To learn more about copyrights generally, see IU Libraries Copyright Services.