Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons: An Active-Learning Exercise for Studio Art Students
Short Description
This article describes an active-learning exercise intended to help teach copyright, fair use, and Creative Commons licenses. In the exercise students use a worksheet to draw original pictures, create derivative pictures on tracing paper, select Creative Commons licenses, and explore commercial usage, fair use, and copyright infringement. Librarian-instructors may find the completed worksheets to be useful aids to supplement copyright lectures; student perspectives will be integral because they are generating the examples used in discussion. Although a scholarly communication librarian developed this exercise to help introduce some basic copyright information to an undergraduate studio art and design class, the exercise can be performed in a general educational setting.
Recommended citation:
Boston, A. J. (2020). Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons: An Active-Learning Exercise for Studio Art Students. Journal of Copyright in Education and Librarianship, 3(3), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.17161/jcel.v3i3.8193
Learning Outcomes
Introductory understanding of how copyright, fair use, and Creative Commons licenses.
Information Literacy Concepts
Discipline
Participation Type
Ability Level
Potential Pitfalls and Teaching Tips
This is designed as a standalone one-shot session, but would be much more effective spread across two class sessions, with one of the sessions devoted to lecture and discussion.
Course Context (e.g. how it was implemented or integrated):
This exercise was created, developed, and used with senior studio art majors enrolled in a capstone course. Students were to upload their creative portfolios to an open access institutional repository, with the option of assigning a Creative Commons license of their choosing. The scholarly communication librarian and author of the article came up with the exercise as a fun, engaging way to teach the students about copyright, fair use, and Creative Commons licenses in a one-shot session.
Additional Instructor Resources (e.g. in-class activities, worksheets, supplements, etc.)
Supplements for this article, including the worksheet, activity slide presentation, and students examples are freely available on the publisher site.
Assessment or Criteria for Success
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Boston_CopyrightFairUseandCCForArtStudents_examples.pdf | 5.06 MB |
