Selecting and Using Great Media…Responsibly

  • Linking
  • Images
  • Videos
  • H5P
  • CC licenses
  • Public domain
  • Captions Attributions and References

It is likely that you want to include materials, such as images, videos or H5P content. Select materials that supplement or support your content, engage your reader, connect your reader to current contexts, and so on.

Document!

Whether you are submitting your OER to BC Campus for their collection or you plan on posting your materials to another open site – including on TRUbox! – keep records for any 3rd party content and include the following for each item:

  • Retrieved from/ source URL and date – ensure that you are sourcing materials from the original rights holder!
  • Title of content
  • Descriptive location of textual content
  • License type or public domain tool that permits usage (more details in the section on Copyright)
  • Where the item has been placed in your OER, including where it may be located in an H5P

Choose wisely!

Consider whether the media you are including may be offensive or exclusive to some readers.

For example:

[find example images]

Consider the source!

If you are bringing readers outside of your OER, is the source webpage academic? Is it reputable? Are there offensive ads?

Academic References

There are many reasons for including academic references in materials that are going to be openly accessible:

  1. Academic – including a reference for where you may have used ideas, information and materials from someone else is respectful and it models academic best practices for other academics and students and general readers.
  2. Accessibility – if links go down for videos, for example, or if the reader wants to pursue an idea that you’ve shared from someone else, it is helpful to have this information in the reference list – on the same page as the material you’ve referenced and built upon.
  3. Legal – Even materials that are CC or openly licensed often require an attribution to the creator and the original platform as well as the license information in their Terms of Use.
  4. Design – if you have notes in the figure caption areas that take up too much real estate and it starts to look a little cluttered, you can add an in-text reference citation and then include a full reference citation below with all of the required academic and copyright information.

Copyright

  • Visit the TRU Copyright website to answer any specific questions you have about copyright or contact Copyright@tru.ca
  • Or see the copyright page on this blog to get specific examples for attributions.