Don't Blink Eh?: Copyright Law is Changing in Canada - What It Means to Educators

Bill C-11 passed a House of Commons Vote this week and readings in the Canadian Senate have already begun. (Here's the full text of the bill in full-fledged legalese). So the writing on the wall is that Canadian Copyright Law is about to change. There are a lot of little goodies in the law that may help the average person. Some things that have been going on illegally for years will now be legal. Simple stuff like giving the ability to Canadians to:

• record their favourite TV shows for later viewing (Yeah - TiVo'ing the late game on Hockey Night in Canada so you can watch it the next morning while eating a bowl of Shreddies is now legal!)


• transfer music from your collection of Compact Discs or Vinyl LPs to a digital device (Yeah - ripping your RUSH Records so you can listen to Geddy Lee on your iPhone while eating a Beaver Tail is now legal!)

Canada is truly great, eh! But what's in it for educators? The practical answer to that question is still pending. People need more time to interpret Bill C-11 in the context of classroom courses, class websites, class discussion forums, and distribution of course materials for distance education. Some interpretations are already starting to become available and in the coming months more information will come to light. If you are a teacher, instructor, professor, or instructional designer then you will want to follow this for the next few months so that you can decide how it impacts your practice. So that you can start getting info, please find below some of the early interpretations and commentary on Bill C-11 from an education perspective.

• UBC’s summary of Bill C-11
• NDP Member Rathika Sitsabaiesan’s opinion on Bill C-11
• Bill C-11: A Guide for Academic Instructors by the British Columbia Library Association Information Policy Committee

If you come across any other great links on the subject, please let me know by leaving a comment below. I will be sure to amend this blog post with the resources you provide. Thanks!

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Careful: Test Cheaters are SMART!

A colleague of mine directed my attention to a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that describes a high-tech method where students can cheat on some multiple-choice exams in online courses. It’s a great read really.

Overall, I think that the way the students exploited the weakness in the course’s testing method is truly ingenious. They deserve a bit of credit for detecting, and then so intelligently exploiting, the flaws in this course. (Note: not enough credit to absolved them of their academic dishonesty though!) They honed in on two-specific facts: 1) that students could take the tests twice and get an average of the two scores, and 2) that the correct answers where given to the students immediately upon answering a question. These two facts brought to light a weakness in the course that could be exploited by an elegant collaborative turn-taking method of sharing correct answers using Google Docs among a small group of students.

Although it is not discussed in the article, I imagine that this course did not have a final exam, or if it did, it followed a similar format (multiple-choice, with the answers given immediately) and naturally was un-proctored. Therein lies one problem. If the final exam is not proctored then what incentives do the student have to learning anything during the semester? However, this point is moot if there was no final exam in the course.

In the case where there is no final exam and the weekly tests are essentially summative evaluations, more design features need to be put into place to give incentives to students to learn. Does the feature of being able to take a multiple choice test twice help students learn? In a summative evaluation, does the feature of giving students the answer to a given question immediately after answering help them learn?

What do you think would be a better design for this course? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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