Free Resources for your Courses: Websites

You can use content from the internet! Under certain conditions:

What can you do?

You can use publicly available material from the internet for educational purposes. And you can use it in different ways:

• link to it
• copy it (cut and paste into your lecture slides, post it in your course on MySeneca, but make sure you cite it!!)

Conditions:

• you can’t use the material if you know (or can logically guess) it was posted online without the consent of the copyright owner
• you have to cite the material you use, which you already do with everything you use, right? ;)
• you can’t use the material if there is a lock on the website, like a password or something preventing the general public from accessing it
• you can’t use the material if there is a “clearly visible notice” saying you cannot use the material, and not merely a copyright symbol “©”. 

PLEASE NOTE: you cannot use logos or trademarks without prior permission from the owner. These are not covered under copyright law and do not have any educational exceptions.

Otherwise, if it’s publicly available on the internet, you can likely use it for your teaching.

It's fairly safe to trust information you find through a library database. Often, it's been checked many times by experts before publication, especially if it's a scholarly journal article. But the same is not true for information you find freely available online. How do you know if it's trustworthy?

Watch this video for some tips: