Distance Education and the Copyright Law

Did you realize that U.S. Federal Law can dramatically affect the way faculty teach? Well, it does, particularly in the distance education classroom!

The use of copyrighted materials in the distance education classroom is governed by the TEACH Act of 2002. TEACH is an acronym for Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization. The TEACH Act was signed into law by President Bush on November 2, 2002 and specifies how copyrighted materials can be legally used in transmitted courses, which includes courses distributed via Internet, satellite, and two-way video.

The TEACH Act provides challenges for both faculty and students in the distance education classroom environment. Even so, it provides a remedy to many of the inconsistencies in the 1978 Copyright Law, which was not distance-education-friendly. The Teach Act uses a unique, education model concocted by the U.S. Congress.

This educative model in TEACH is known as a mediated instructional activity (MIA). The MIA means a couple of things. Firstly, it means that an instructor should be present in the accredited distance education environment. Secondly, the MIA limits the types of copyrighted materials used in distance education to the same kinds of materials a face-to-face lecture would use in a face-to-face class. MIA allows, for example, this scenario: If you use a four-minute clip from the 1942 movie Casablanca in your face-to-face History 210 classroom, that same clip transfers over to your distance education course and you do not need any kind of permission from the copyright owner. Of course, you can use less time. However, you cannot use more and still comply with the MIA requirement of the TEACH Act.

Whatever media an instructor would display or perform during a face-to-face course can be lawfully and legally used in a distance education course. There are, of course, some caveats. Besides owning the necessary legitimate copy of the work, there are four basic requirements:
The performance or display must be related to the teaching content
The performance or display must be technologically limited to enrolled students
The audio/visual transmission must be encrypted and/or password protected
You cannot retain copies past the class session


In summary, the TEACH Act in digital transmissions:
Only covers in-class performances, with the provisos mentioned above
Only covers in-class displays, with the provisos mentioned above
And for any other distance education activity, for example, supplementary materials such as articles, fair use will probably need to be relied on. Failing fair use, permission and/or licensing will need to be obtained for transmitting the copyrighted material.


The sum and substance of this is that what an instructor can do in a face-to-face classroom is not the same for the distance education instructor. The distance education instructor must comply with the TEACH Act’s MIA requirements for a transmitted, distance education course.

In order to comply with the TEACH Act stipulations, and for the convenience of faculty, the University Libraries provide an online form to help faculty comply with the TEACH Act. Click on the link below.*

The information submitted on his form will be used to make an analysis for the "mediated instructional activities" exemption as defined by the TEACH Act.

The Copyright Office realizes that the TEACH Act can be complicated. To assist our distance education faculty, the University Libraries have a page dedicated exclusively to the needs of distance education faculty, www.bsu.edu/library/collections/distanceed/faculty.
This article is the fifth and last in a series of articles on Intellectual Property Issues in Higher Education. For additional information or to have any of your questions answered, please contact Dr. Fritz Dolak, The University Libraries’ Copyright and Intellectual Property Office, FDolak@bsu.edu, (765) 285-5330.

Ball State University's First Technology Enhanced Teaching in Distance Education Conference is Successful

Ball State University held its first Technology Enhanced Teaching in Distance Education Conference on Friday, February 16, 2007, at the L.A. Pittenger Student Center. The event drew about 60 participants, despite the weather.

Attendees were very pleased with the conference format and more so with the content. One person commented "Well planned and organized conference, good sessions with good speakers," and everyone who filled out the conference evaluation form indicated they would attend again next year.

Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Terry S. King opened the conference with his remarks about technology in teaching and learning. Interim Associate Provost and Dean of Extended Education Frank Sabatine addressed the attendees as he outlined Ball State's goals for increasing enrollment in distance education and laid the plans for future conferences.

During the morning session, Ball State faculty delivered presentations in nine topics such as course design, organization, evaluation, and technologies available for online teaching.

"Organized and informative" was a comment made for the majority of the sessions. One attendee wrote, "Really wonderful, very helpful," while another wrote, "nice job with good suggestions … ."

Assessing student performance is an issue of interest to many faculty members, particularly when students are not in a specific place at a specific time for test taking. Panelists provided the attendees with ideas for alternative assessments and shared experiences about academic dishonesty. In the panel discussion, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" panelists shared a variety of experiences they have had with their online students and provided a rich overview of what it is like to teach students who are located around the country.

The presenters at the event were
· Bryan Byers, Criminal Justice and Criminology
· Cheryll Adams, Center for Gifted Studies and Talent Development
· Greg Siering, Office of Teaching Learning Advancement
· Jerome Kotecki, Physiology and Health Science
· Jim Flowers, Sam Cotton, and Richard Seymour, Department of Technology
· Karen Ford and Susan Tancock, Elementary Education
· Kristin Ritchey, Psychological Science
· Marilyn Ryan and Linda Siktberg, Nursing
· Matthew Stuve, Educational Studies
· Melinda Messineo, Sociology
· Roch King, Physical Education
· Suzanne S. Rice and Yasemin Tunç, University Libraries
· Vinayak Tanksale, Computer Sciences

Judging from the success of this year’s event, and encouraged by attendees and administrators alike, John Burton (Director, Electronic Programs, School of Extended Education) and I have already started to work on our next conference. I will be facilitating the program for next year’s conference which we hope will be a statewide event.

For more information, or to arrange for a technology consultation, contact Yasemin Tunç, Ball State University Libraries’ Director for Technology Training Support Services, YTunc@bsu.edu, (765) 285-5902.

This newsletter article first appeared in The Library Insider 5(3): 10; March 2007.