OER Sample: Group Activity Involving Copyrighted Content

A long time ago, in a...

Well, that might be unlicensed reproduction if we continued, so we restart.

Somewhat recently, an educator produced a simple and effective activity for groups of developmental composition students.  He selected several paragraphs of a movie review found online, put each on a separate card, included some irrelevant paragraphs, and had students, in groups, dismiss the irrelevant paragraphs and then reorder those that remained.

The material was certainly useful in a variety of comp/rhet scenarios, and the educator wanted to share the activity with his colleagues.  Before doing so, however, permission had to be obtained.  The activity, while perhaps defensible as a "fair use" repurposing in class and for a limited time, would have to be transformed into a legitimate open resource in order to be publicly distributed.

So an email was sent to the editor of the publication that contained an explicit description of how and why the content would be used, including, especially, it's use in an OER scenario.  The permission was promptly granted, the response printed and filed, and the digital document containing the activity was CC licensed.  Then the activity was shared and used, completely within the restrictions of copyright law.

Great, right?  It works. 

Here you will find the activity, which was designed for ENG 091.  It is an active, hands-on application of the concepts of relevance and unity.

Download paragraph scramble numbered and reordered.docx