Bergen CC OER Faculty Handbook: Copyright & Creative Commons

What are Creative Commons licenses?

Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to the default "all rights reserved" nature of copyright, rather they work alongside the copyright laws, so you can modify your copyright terms to best suit your needs. They allow creators to keep their copyright and easily give permission for others to copy, share or even build upon their work. CC licenses make the "open" in open educational resources possible.

Creator: Choose a Creative Commons license

Select one of six Creative Commons licenses. 

• Understand your choice of CC licenses 

• Use this Interactive CC license chooser to decide and generate embeddable licenses.

The image below shows the 5 icons that represent different components in CC licenses. 

Why do you need to attribute?

Just like you cite and provide references in your scholarship, when you teach with course materials developed by someone else, you should always attribute by displaying the name of the author and the type of CC license that accompanies their work.

What to include when attributing:

• Credit the creator;
• Provide the title of the work;
• Provide the URL where the work is hosted;
• Indicate the type of license it is available under and provide a link to the license (so others can find out the license terms)

Example of how to attribute a photo:

"Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco" by tvol is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

See more examples from Creative Commons

Tools to help you attribute

• Open Attribution Builder from Open Washington 

• Install OpenAttribute, a browser plugin

Follow CC license terms 

• Learn how you can adopt and/or adapt by CC license type

​Click on the image below to enlarge.