Open sharing and reuse of educational resources

Summary
Fontys ICT stimulates the open sharing and reuse of educational resources. There are several things you have to arrange then.

Lecturers at Fontys ICT regularly develop learning materials. This can vary from 100% from scratch made by yourself to composed from third party sources and own produced learning material.

Within Fontys ICT it is recommended to use as many third party sources as possible as learning material, with minimal adjustments. In many cases, however, learning material will be needed that does not yet exist, such as specific cases, slides for the courses or additional assignments. You will then make these materials yourself.

Fontys ICT encourages you to make learning material that you have made available to others. There are a few rules you have to follow here. This wiki article explains those rules. A instruction manual is available to provide information on more practical issues related to the sharing and reuse of educational resources.

• The main reason for reusing third party learning materials is efficiency. It potentially saves time if you don't have to develop learning materials from scratch.
• Developments within the ICT field are going fast. By making your own scratch learning material, you run the risk that it will be outdated before you have it ready. Especially in the ICT field, there are many parties, both educational institutions and private parties, that develop high quality material and make it freely available.
• Some learning materials are expensive to develop. Think of high quality video or interactive online simulations. In the case of such learning materials, it is worth reusing them from elsewhere, if present.
• Some learning materials require a specific online playing environment in order to use them. If these educational resources are already available online in such an environment and can be accessed freely, this will save you not only the development of these resources but also the installation and maintenance of the playing environment. Think, for example, of the platforms where you can follow a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC).

• Check if it is allowed to use the learning material you have found and what you can do with it. Please check the website for terms of use or similar. Note: If nothing is stated, the default is “All rights reserved”. If you would like to use the material in such a case, you can request permission from the owner of the website.
• Open Educational Resources are often recognisable by an icon of an open license. Often this will be a Creative Commons license. More information about Creative Commons licenses can be found later in this policy article. If you want to modify the learning material yourself, make sure that the Creative Commons license does not contain the “ND” (Non-Derivative) building block. This building block does not allow for adjustments.
• You may refer to external sources in your learning materials at any time, regardless of whether these sources are publicly available or not. You run the risk that the link will no longer work after some time if the source is changed. In the case of an open licence, you can always make a local copy of the learning material.
• Check that the learning material complies with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Dutch: AVG). Further on in this policy article you will find more information about this and who you can support.
• It is important to determine whether what you want to use is also appropriate for your context. Is it clear what prior knowledge is required? Does it fit in with the learning outcomes you want to achieve? Is it suitable to be used in the didactic way of working that you have in mind? Is it clear what the study load is? Please note that it takes time to determine this, as this information is not available for many educational resources.

There are several reasons why sharing of your learning materials is valuable:

• By sharing it with your colleagues it becomes more efficient for them to make their own learning materials; The wheel doesn't have to be reinvented over and over again.
• Colleagues who reuse your learning material will in many cases make adjustments themselves and share the adapted material with you. Think, for example, of updating your learning material or translating it into another language. Those adjustments could be valuable to you again; it will improve the quality of your learning material.
• If your learning material is reused by colleagues inside and outside Fontys ICT it can contribute to your good reputation.

You can choose to make your learning materials available only to your colleagues within Fontys ICT, or you can choose to make your learning materials available to everyone in the world. In the latter case, there are some rules you have to comply with.

You may only use parts of your material that are not subject to copyright by third parties. Think about this, for example:

• Images, sound recordings, videos
• Reuse of third party texts

The information specialist of Fontys ICT can help you with this. This officer can also check that your material does not violate copyrights when you want to share it openly.

All parts of the learning material of which you are the original author may be shared openly.

If your material contains images of persons or personal data, you should check whether this does not cause a violation of the GDPR (in the Netherlands called: AVG) in the case of open publication. The information manager Fontys ICT can help you with this.

Before you publish the material openly, have a colleague critically check the material for errors in content, spelling or other imperfections.

For third parties who will find your material, it must be clear what conditions they must meet in order to be able to use your material. These conditions are contained in a Creative Commons license. Choose one of the following licenses:

• Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) (this license is recommended by Fontys ICT)
• Attribution - Share alike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
• Attribution-NonCommercial-Share alike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Make sure that the icon of your chosen license is visible in the material.

Fontys ICT does not prescribe a platform on which you can share the material. It is recommended to use the national platform Wikiwijs.