🌐Overview

Developing Sustainable Institutional Training Programs requires buy-in across campus. Strategies for making the case for training topics are below.

Faculty involved in OER, accessibility, DEIA, UDL, and copyright training do more than meet development needs. They become leaders in innovation, compliance, and inclusive teaching. Their skills are vital for meeting federal and state requirements. They help ensure accessibility and affordability while pushing our campus equity goals. These faculty members drive changes in teaching and learning, often ahead of policy updates.

As ZTC Coordinators and leaders, we must support these faculty. They need recognition and encouragement. Their efforts should be visible and valued across the institution, not isolated. They set the standard for the future of higher education. By investing in these educators, we invest in a sustainable, legally compliant, and student-centered future.

📖 Table of Contents

OER, Copyright, and Licensing
Inclusive, Diverse, Equity-Minded and Anti-Racist (IDEA)
Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

✔️ OER, Copyright, and Licensing

In Unit 1, we discussed strategies for gaining institutional buy-in and creating an OER culture on campus. However, increasing the number of OER used requires that we engage faculty who are not currently using OER. We need to provide trainings and support to help them find OER and understand how they can use these resources.

Many faculty tend to over-apply Fair Use and the Teach Act in ways that may infringe on the copyright of others. The Creative Commons licenses simplify copyright decisions because they provide clear guidance on what can, and can't, be done with the works.

The Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization (Teach Act) extends copyright exemptions allowable in the physical classroom to online classes. Essentially, this relates to activities like showing a video in class. However, use this exception in the online space has strict guidelines.

The content must be limited to students officially enrolled in the course. So, you can use the content within the Canvas shell of an official course that is not visible to the public.
Requires the institution to take specific actions to promote compliance with copyright law. That is, the college must have a copyright policy and provide informational materials on copyright.
The use of the material must be "ephemeral" meaning the the college must take actions to make sure these works are not downloaded by users and must inform users that the material is copyright protected.

Fair use guidelines are outlined in 17 USC § 107. These are general guidelines that don't provide clear guidance. There are, however, tools to help faculty think through if their use is "fair"

The Harper College Copyright Tutorial has an excellent step-by-step guide to determining if you can use something in class.
Copyright and Fair Use: The Stanford University Libraries
Fair Use Checklist Columbia University Libraries
Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Open Educational Resources. A Guide for Authors, Adapters & Adopters of Openly Licensed Teaching and Learning Materials

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✔️ Inclusive, Diverse, Equity-Minded and Anti-Racist (IDEA)

California Title 5 § 51201 outlines the CCC commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The CCC Chancellor's office outlines why these efforts are important:

Removing advantages and barriers to provide everyone the same access to opportunities.
Research shows that all students, regardless of background, benefit from a diverse faculty and are better educated and prepared for leadership and professional competitiveness. At the same time, diversification also improves retention rates for faculty and staff by making our system more inclusive for faculty of all backgrounds.
By lifting up diverse, unique perspectives in our curriculum and learning, we contribute to DEIA and anti-racism efforts and pave the way for allies and other peers to be a part of the work.

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✔️Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

There are two major pieces of federal legislation that provide the foundation for our approach to accessibility in California, the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. This legislation provides the underlying mandate for designing courses that are accessible to students with visual, auditory, and physical impairments, as well as students with information processing differences.

In 2024, a new section was added to the Code of Federal Regulations (28 CFR) that provided more guidance including removing third party content that is posted "due to contractual, licensing, or other arrangements with the public entity." This means that textbooks and other third-party content used in a course must be accessible. Note that many of the federal accessibility requirements apply to public agencies receiving federal funds and not to businesses. So, textbook publishers are not bound by these requirements but the colleges are.

Creating accessible content is not a skill most faculty develop during the course of their education. In addition to legal requirements creating accessible colleges is also an ethical imperative.

UDL is an important consideration for all aspects of teaching, beyond just the resources we use. Training faculty on these principles will help them better understand how to support all learners and improve their student success rates.

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