{"id":769,"date":"2025-08-28T14:54:31","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T18:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opentextbooks.concordia.ca\/explorationsversiontwo\/?post_type=back-matter&p=769"},"modified":"2025-08-28T14:54:31","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T18:54:31","slug":"instructors-guide-for-explorations","status":"publish","type":"back-matter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbooks.concordia.ca\/explorationsversiontwo\/back-matter\/instructors-guide-for-explorations\/","title":{"raw":"Instructors\u2019 Guide for Explorations","rendered":"Instructors\u2019 Guide for Explorations"},"content":{"raw":"
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Explorations:<\/em> An Adaptable Open Educational Resource \r\n<\/em><\/h2>\r\n

Open Educational Resources (OER)<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n

Unlike a traditional textbook, Explorations <\/em>is an Open Educational Resources (OER). OER are teaching, learning, and research materials that have been openly licensed and that come in many forms: books, case studies, software, reference materials, assessments, assignments, tutorials, slides, videos, and more.<\/p>\r\n

OER emerged in response to rising textbook costs in higher education. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there has been a 1,041% percent increase<\/a> in textbook prices from January 1977 to June 2015. Students often feel compelled to buy these expensive textbooks to succeed in their courses. Recognizing that textbook costs exacerbate existing socioeconomic and racial disparities in education, some instructors and institutions have sought to provide free, <\/em>high-quality teaching and learning resources. As more instructors adopt OER, students are saving hundreds of dollars every semester, and large systems, like the University System of Georgia<\/a>, calculate cumulative savings to be in the millions of dollars.<\/p>\r\n

In addition to cost savings, OER have the added benefits of coming in a variety of accessible formats, being available on the first day of class, and having an open license that permits reuse and adaptation without a need to obtain permission from the copyright holder. For more information on OER and its benefits, we suggest The OER Starter Kit<\/a> and Affordable Learning Georgia<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Creative Commons Licenses<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n

Copyright law automatically protects all creative works, but a copyright holder may waive some or all rights by placing them under an open license or in the public domain. The most commonly used license types are <\/span>Creative<\/span> Co<\/span>mmons<\/span> (CC) licenses<\/span><\/a>. The Creative Commons was established in 2001 to allow copyright holders a standardized, flexible, and legally sound way to express the conditions under which others can use the work.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Creative Commons offers six copyright licenses. Each license requires users to provide attribution (BY) to the creator when the material is used and shared. The most permissive CC license requires only this attribution (CC BY). Beyond that, creators may select additional limitations including Share Alike (SA), Non Commercial (NC), <\/strong>and No Derivatives (ND). The six licenses, and descriptions of the limiting terms are provided in the image below (Figure 1), and more information can be found on Creative Commons website<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"450\"]\"Six Figure 1: Creative Commons licenses and their terms. Credit: Understanding Creative Commons Licenses (Figure 3.1)<\/a> by Das and Kinjilal 2015 is under a CC BY-SA 3.0 License<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Figure 2: Creative Commons licenses from least restrictive (top) to most restrictive (bottom). Credit: Adapted from Icons<\/a> by The Noun Project.by Creative Commons and is under a CC BY 4.0 License<\/a><\/caption>\r\n
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License<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<\/td>\r\n

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Terms<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n

CC 0<\/td>\r\nAll Rights Granted\/Public Domain:\r\n<\/strong>Licensors waive all rights and place a work in the public domain.<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
CC BY<\/td>\r\nAttribution:<\/strong>\r\nOthers can copy, distribute, display, perform and remix your work if they credit your name as requested by you. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
CC BY-SA<\/td>\r\nAttribution-ShareAlike:\r\n<\/strong>This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to \u201ccopyleft\u201d free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
CC BY-ND<\/td>\r\nAttribution-NoDerivs<\/strong>\r\nThis license lets others reuse the work for any purpose, including commercially; however, it cannot be shared with others in adapted form, and credit must be provided to you.<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
CC BY-NC<\/td>\r\nAttribution-NonComercial:<\/strong>\r\nThis license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don\u2019t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
CC BY-NC-SA<\/td>\r\nAttribution-NonComercial-ShareAlike:<\/strong>\r\nThis license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
CC BY-NC-ND<\/td>\r\nAttribution-NonComercial-NoDerivs:\r\n<\/strong>This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can\u2019t change them in any way or use them commercially.<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>\r\n
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The Creative Commons also has a Public Domain dedication (CC0 or CC Zero), which allows creators to give up their copyright and place works in the worldwide public domain to be used without any restrictions (Figure 2).<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"222\"]\"Public Figure 3: Creative Commons Public Domain license (CC0 or CC Zero). Credit: CC0 \u201cNo Rights Reserved\u201d Marker<\/a> by Creative Commons is under a CC BY 4.0 License<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n

CC licenses come at no cost, and works do not need to be registered. CC licensing an original work only requires selecting the license that suits the creator\u2019s needs, communicating them clearly to the reader, and including a link to that Creative Commons license. It can be as simple as adding the following statement to the title page: \u201c\u00a9 2022. This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license<\/span><\/span><\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

CC Licenses and OER<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\r\n

According to David Wiley\u2019s definition of<\/span><\/span> \u201cop<\/span><\/span>enness<\/span><\/span><\/a>,\u201d true OER grant legal permission to engage in the \u201cfive R activities\u201d: reuse, retain, revise, remix, and redistribute.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n