Cornell College—Center for Teaching and Learning
The Consultant
A Newsletter for Faculty
24/7 Access to Course Readings
VOLUME 4 ISSUE 1
NOVEMBER 27, 2007
Technology Opportunity Corner
Through the ACM, Cornell has a membership in NITLE
(National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education).
This organization offers workshops for faculty on integrating technology into the curriculum. Please take a look at
upcoming NITLE opportunities at http://www.nitle.org/
index.php/nitle/opportunities. If you see a workshop that
interests you, send an email with the information to Jean
Donham, our campus liaison, who will submit your name
in nomination. If you are selected by NITLE, your registration and travel are fully funded by NITLE.
by Jean Donham
Many faculty members choose to place articles or book chapters on reserve in the library. However, if you want your students to have 24/7
access to your course readings, consider making them accessible via Moodle.
Option 1. Provide in Moodle a link to the persistent URL for an article available in full-text from a database the library owns. For assistance
in identifying the persistent URL, contact Holly Martin Huffman in the Academic Media Studio (hmartinhuffman@cornellcollege.edu). Because the library pays for subscriptions to databases for student access, there is no copyright implication here at all.
Option 2. Upload the article or book chapter as a PDF into Moodle to provide direct access to the article. This option requires that you protect the copyrighted information behind a password and allow no guest logins to your course. In a copyright workshop by staff from IUPUI,
the following fair use interpretations were suggested for posting text of articles or book chapters in a course management system:
Purpose of the Use
•Materials should be posted on Moodle only to serve the needs of the course.
•Access to materials should be limited by password only for students enrolled in the specific course for which the materials are needed.
Nature of the Work
•Post on Moodle only those portions of the work relevant to the educational objectives of the course.
•Fair use applies more narrowly to highly creative works; accordingly, avoid substantial excerpts from novels, short stories, poetry,
modern art images, and other such materials.
•“Consumable” materials, such as test forms and workbook pages, probably are not covered here.
Amount of the Work
•Materials posted on Moodle will generally be limited to brief works or brief excerpts from longer works. Examples: a single chapter
from a book, a single article from a journal.
•The amount of the work placed on reserve should be related directly to the educational objectives of the course, i.e., not more than
students will be able to use within the term.
Effect of the Use on the Market for the Original
•Try to avoid repeated use of the same materials by the same instructor for the same course.
•Materials posted on Moodle should include a citation of the original source of publication and a copyright notice. The instructor
should also advise students that the materials are made available exclusively for use by students enrolled in the course and
must not be distributed beyond that limited group.
• Access to materials should be limited by password.
•Moodle should not include any material unless the instructor, the library, or another unit of the educational institution possesses a
lawfully obtained copy.
•Materials on Moodle should not include works that are reasonably available and affordable for students to purchase.
These same provisions for copyright apply to course reserves. Instructors are ultimately responsible for copyright compliance.
Permission to Post Materials
Permission from the copyright owner is an option for posting materials on Moodle when the above guidelines cannot be met. Instructors are
responsible for securing permissions. If specific articles are used repeatedly for the same course by the same instructor, obtaining permission is
the safest procedure.
Course Packs
Course packs provided through the bookstore provide yet another way for students to access course resources. Copyright clearance is included
in the service from the bookstore and fees are calculated into the cost of the course pack.
C o r n e l l C o l l e g e — C e n t e r f o r Te a c h i n g a n d L e a r n i n g
VOLUME 4 ISSUE 1
NOVEMBER 27, 2007
MegaSearch Comes to
Cornell
The Consultant
by Tonnie Flannery
A Newsletter for Faculty
The arrival of a new academic
year brings an exciting research
interface to Cornell College.
Web 2.0 (or “What in the world can I do with cool new technology?”)
In the past, students could become overwhelmed by multiple
databases that changed from
course to course. That has
changed thanks to a new tool
called MegaSearch.
by Holly Martin Huffman
Is the phrase “Web 2.0” an advertising slogan or
a meaningful appellation? The buzzwords that accompany the phrase include “participation, not
publishing” (=Blogs), “radical trust” (=Wikis) and
“remixability” (=Ajax & RSS). It’s been called “an
attitude, not a technology,” and it embraces everything from a new way to create and manage copyright to visions of an expanded democracy filled
with “citizen journalists.”
Consider one of the more famous manifestations
of Web 2.0: the wiki. A wiki is a collaborative writing/editing environment which lets you see the
changes made in a document (and who made the
changes). The most conspicuous example is Wikipedia, where everyone can contribute to an encyclopedic storehouse. Now, despite the potential for
disinformation, Wikipedia has become a pretty
useful resource.
A wiki can be used in the classroom. One
Boston professor has replaced the textbooks in
his computer management course with a wiki.
His students also post potential tests questions
on the wiki that the professor uses for the final
exams.
At Cornell, Professor Shannon Reed is using
individual wikis to house the “Commonplace
Books” of her students in a course on John Milton. Within a wiki, each student develops a project open to peer and instructor review.
What else can you do with a wiki? Plan something (a trip or a conference), share something
(curriculum, class notes, facts about butterflies
or political processes), or even have your students write a textbook/dictionary/grammar
handbook for a class. For more ideas or help
implementing your ideas, contact the Academic
Media Center.
Further Reading:
Ways to Use Wiki in Education at
http://
www.scienceofspectroscopy.info/
edit/index.php?
title=Using_Wiki_in_education
includes examples of courses that
have used wikis.
Romantic Audience Project at Bowdoin College (http://
ssad.bowdoin.edu:8668/) focuses
on poems, poets, and topics related to Romantic literature.
Lamb, Brian. “Wide Open
Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not”
EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 39, no.
5 (September/October 2004):
36–48. http://
www.educause.edu/pub/er/
erm04/erm0452.asp?bhcp=1
Test Taking in the Writing Studio
by Mariah Steele
Historically, the Writing Studio
has provided space and proctoring
for students who need special
testing accommodations or to take
make-up tests. In response to increasing requests to provide a place
for students to take tests, we want
to remind faculty of the procedures and policies for arranging
test taking for students in the Studio.
Because we have limited resources and increased demand for
service to documented students,
we must give priority to students
with documented disabilities who
need to take tests in the Writing
Studio. For the most part, this
means that we can no longer provide spur-of-the moment test taking nor can we assure proctoring
MegaSearch provides students
with a single, intuitive starting
point for research. With one
click, students can search the
library catalog while simultaneously looking at results from almost every database Cole Library
provides.
MegaSearch has been customized to allow for subject/
discipline searching, as well as
larger searches. By starting with
this interface, the researcher has
the opportunity to cast a wide net
and capture results from multiple
databases. The searcher can then
look at these results and decide to
refine his/her search, or to pursue an individual database that
generated interesting leads.
Mapping Is for Everyone!
Maps are an important
of make-up tests. To ensure that
we are best able to serve students means of communicating
who need special arrangements, quantitative information.
we encourage you to do the folTrends are often much more
lowing:
apparent when data are pre• Please notify Mariah Steele
sented visually. I have recently
or Nicole Jackson in advance of
begun investing GIS, or Geothe test date.
graphic Information Systems,
• Please provide the name of
which is used to create maps
the student and a hard copy of
from data.
the test.
If there is a place for maps in
• Please provide specific details
about the accommodations the
any of your classes, or if you
student needs, based on what is
would like more information
on file with the Registrar.
or examples, please contact me
• Please arrange to retrieve the at x4222 or by email at
exam when the student is finJohanningmeier
ished.
@cornellcollege.edu.
Questions? Contact Nicole or
Mariah.