Understanding Openly Licensed Materials

ADAPT is an "open" homework system, meaning that the content on the platform is available for anyone to use and share. In order to facilitate sharing by protecting creator's ownership of their work, every assessment has an open attribution, which is indicated with a license, or is in the public domain. If you are using an existing assessment, it is important to know how to determine what the attribution requirement is has and how you can use it. If you are creating new assessments, you need to know what your options are in order to share your content in your preferred manner. 

Determining the Attribution Requirements of an Existing Assessment

In Existing Assignments

When you are reviewing questions in existing assignments, you can view the attribution information for each question by selecting the "Attribution" button underneath it. 

Example:

Attribution button in an ADAPT question.

In this case, when you click on Attribution, you will read, "This assessment titled 1.10: Role of Accounting in Society (Multiple Choice) is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Links to an external site. license and was authored by OpenStax via source content Links to an external site. that was edited to the style and standards of the ADAPT platform." The license will always be a clickable link that will go to a webpage where you can read what it means. 

Go to the next tab to see how to view licensing In Your Favorites.

Understanding Licenses

In ADAPT, you may encounter the following licenses/public domain note:

  • Public Domain
  • CC0 1.0
  • CC PDM
  • CC BY
  • CC-BY-ND
  • CC-BY-NC
  • CC-BY-SA
  • CC-BY-NC-ND
  • CC-BY-ND-SA
  • GNU GPL
  • OPL
  • IMathAS Community
  • CK-12 Foundation Curriculum Materials License
  • NCBSN
  • All rights reserved - *not an open license

More information about each license can be found by clicking on it. Links to licensing information will also be available directly from the attribution information window of every assessment. In addition, a summary of Creative Commons licenses, the most commonly used license for open resources, is provided below. 

Picking a license for your assessments

You must pick a license option when you create a new question; however, you can change it later by going to "edit the question" pencil icon. 

If you want to modify an existing question and change the license, you are allowed to do that as long as it doesn't have a license that prohibits derivatives. To do that:

  1. Go to My Questions > My Favorites and select the folder where the question is saved. 
  2. Open the question by clicking on it. 
  3. Clone the question by clicking on the clone icon. Indicate where you want it saved and select "clone."
  4. Go back to the My Questions tab and select the folder where you saved the question. 
  5. Modify the question as you wish, change the author to yourself, and apply the license. 

The Six Different Creative Commons Licenses

The six Creative Commons licenses allow differing levels of openness. They are organized below from the most amount of freedom to the least amount of freedom. The last two that contain ND (no derivative) are not considered open educational resources.

CC BY icon.

The attribution or CC BY Links to an external site. license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and Use of licensed material. 

CC BY SA icon.

The attribution-ShareAlike or CC BY SA Links to an external site. license lets others remix, tweak, 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 “copyleft” 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.

CC BY NC icon.

The Attribution-NonCommercial or CC BY NC Links to an external site. license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they can also choose to add on layers of restriction (SA or ND).

CC BY NC SA icon.

The Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike or CC BY NC SA Links to an external site. license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

 

CC BY ND icon.

The Attribution-NoDerivatives or CC BY ND Links to an external site. license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you. This license is not an OER.

 

CC BY NC ND icon.

The Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives or CC BY NC ND Links to an external site. 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’t change them in any way or use them commercially. This license is not an OER.

 

More about Creative Commons Licenses

You can learn much more about CC licenses on the Creative Commons website Links to an external site., including the Creative Commons FAQ page Links to an external site. which is particularly helpful for detailed information about using the licenses. 

Sarah Davis is sharing some assignments completed for the Creative Commons certificate course. Viewing alternative: Accessible text equivalent of Infographic: A Little Introduction to Creative Commons Licenses Links to an external site..

Creative Commons Resources

Creative Commons licensing can be confusing. Luckily there are some great resources available to help you wrap your head around these ideas.

Page Inspiration & Attribution