Open education has tremendous potential to build tailored resources that reflect the best teaching practices and the diverse experiences of all students. In order for open education to meet its potential, however, creators must have access to the most current and relevant materials even when those materials are protected by copyright. Reliance on copyright exceptions such as fair use and fair dealing is critical for creating the most effective and inclusive materials. (Butler, 2018).

In order to meet these needs in North America, we have developed a Code of Best Practices for Fair Use in Open Education. Building on interviews and focus groups with creators, publishers, and legal experts in the open education community, we have developed a resource that explains how fair use and fair dealing can empower educators and publishers to live up to our aspirations and build open resources based on pedagogy and inclusivity, unencumbered by legal uncertainty and anxiety.

Because fair use is a US-specific law, however, we have also begun to explore the ways that the laws of nations around the world align to support the practices we describe. For open education to be a truly global movement, the community must understand how copyright impacts these uses in different nations and across national borders. Fortunately, there is a compelling body of legal scholarship identifying the ways that international copyright treaties such as the Berne Convention mandate precisely this sort of harmony in international educational copyright exceptions, even when the specific mechanisms may differ (Bentley and Aplin, 2020).

This reflective practice session introduces the Code and invites participants to explore the way relevant local laws can work in harmony to support open education. We will lead an interactive discussion about the Code and walk through strategies for applying it to a variety of situations in creating and using OER. These will include common scenarios that are clearly permitted under fair use and fair dealing as well as edge cases that require special consideration.

We will also introduce the work already done to align these fair use-based practices with Canada’s fair dealing regime and invite participants to discuss the way other jurisdictions – particularly the UK’s fair dealing regime – align with the Code. We hope this session will inspire transformative pedagogy as well as opening a conversation about how to make open education a truly global movement.