OER tutorial: A self-paced guide for faculty

In the previous module you were introduced to open licenses and how they differ from all rights reserved copyright. In this module, you will learn about the different conditions and permissions of these licenses.

By the end of this module you should be able to:

• Distinguish between the six available Creative Commons licenses
• Identify licensing permissions when using open licensed material
• Recognize how different license permissions impact remixing compatibility
• Select and create the appropriate license for your work
• Create attribution statements for adapted work

Creative Commons Licenses

Creative Commons (CC) licenses provide a way for creators of copyrighted works to grant some rights to use or adapt their work to the public, while still retaining the copyright to their works. Works released under a Creative Commons license often have no cost, so save learners money in course materials. CC licenses give creators a choice in how they allow others to use their creations, whether text, pictures, quizzes, presentations, or other formats. CC licenses and other commitments to openness are gaining momentum in many environments: open access, open data, open source, and open pedagogy for example. Watch the video below from the University of Guelph Library to learn more.

There are six different CC licenses. They each include attribution of the original author, then each has a different combination of the other terms. Let's look at what each term denotes in the CC license:

• "CC" indicates the work has a Creative Commons license
• "BY" indicates that attribution of the author is required. You'll notice that each of the six licenses includes "BY"
• "SA" stands for "share alike". This means any redistribution of the work or a derivative must use the same type of CC license
• "NC" stands for "non-commercial". This means any distribution or derivatives of the work can only be for non-commercial purposes
• "ND" stands for "no derivatives". So others are free to copy and redistribute the work, but cannot modify it in any way. Any license that includes the "ND" is not considered an OER.

A CC license includes different combinations of these terms. So the six CC licenses are: 

• CC BY (any use is acceptable, but the author must be attributed)
• CC BY SA (the author must be attributed, and any redistribution must have the same license)
• CC BY NC (the author must be attributed, and only non-commercial use)
• CC BY NC SA (the author must be attributed, non-commercial use only, and redistribution must have the same license)
• The other two, CC BY ND and CC BY NC ND are not OER licenses, so we won't go into them here

More About Attribution in OER

It's clear now that unless a work is in the Public Domain, the original work must be attributed in any redistribution or derivative work. What exactly does it mean to attribute? We educators are familiar to citing sources, so what's the difference?

• Citing is done for academic reasons; attributions are given for legal reasons (i.e. copyright license violation).
• Citing follows specific styles like MLA or APA; attributions don't have an official format, but typically include title, author, URL, and license.
• Citations may still be used when quoting or referencing an open licensed source to give credit to the author.

There is a helpful resource to help create attribution statements when redistributing OER. Open Washington Attribution Builder is a simple online form that provides text to copy and paste. 

"Best Practices for Attribution" by Creative Commons is licensed under CC BY 4.0

"Creative Commons Licensing: Nuts & Bolts" by Carrie Gits is licensed under CC BY 4.0

"CC License Compatibility Chart" by Creative Commons is licensed under CC BY 4.0

"CC License Conditions" by William Meinke is licensed under CC BY 4.0

"Putting a CC License on Your Work" by William Meinke is licensed under CC BY 4.0

"TASL" derivative work by Jack O’Grady, is licensed under CC BY 4.0 , based on TASL, created using Creative Commons logo, fixed by Quibik, public domain, retrieved from , and Graduation cap, public domain.