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CTRL Newsletter

Welcome!

Happy Fall 2024!

Welcome one and all to the 2024–2025 Academic Year! For those of you not familiar with the CTRL, we are the Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning—home of Brightspace, Grace Library, and the University Archives. We also house the newly launched Office of Student Retention, as part of the Title III grant work.

Starting this semester, we are launching a CTRL monthly newsletter so that we can distribute information regarding Title III, Brightspace, library resources, and faculty development opportunities quickly and efficiently.

You can also bookmark the CTRL's website for fast access to information: https://ctrl.carlow.edu/home

Our inaugural issue highlights the Summer Institute, a new Faculty Toolkit with quick links that new and returning faculty might find useful for course development, and Title III updates. We had a very busy summer!

Additionally, we will be sharing professional development opportunities. If there are topics you would like offered, please consider filling out this survey so that we can bring more high-quality professional development to you—in ways that help you feel most supported.

Faculty Toolkit

Here are links to some of the most requested information related to teaching resources, including support materials for Brightspace, Panopto, TurnItIn, and more.

Brightspace

Brightspace, sometimes called CelticOnline, is Carlow's Learning Management System (LMS). Even if you are not teaching an online course, you can utilize Brightspace for face-to-face classes, taking advantage of it to organize course materials, track grades, and provide additional materials for your students all in one place.

Brightspace Login: Access Brightspace directly from this link.

Brightspace How-Tos: Visit our site full of helpful documents, videos, and links for Brightspace.

Creator Plus: The CTRL recently added content from Brightspace Creator Plus! Learn how to insert interact elements like notecards, change the layout of your course, and create practice exams and assignments.

Brightspace Support: Looking for more Brightspace support? Book an appointment with the CTRL, chat directly with Brightspace, or join the D2L/Brightspace community to easily find resources and join community discussions.

Panopto

Record video and incorporate video assignments into your course.

Carlow University Panopto Site: This is where video content created by Carlow users are stored.

Panopto Resources: Find Carlow-specific Panopto resources as well as general resources created by Panopto. Includes video and text resources.

TurnItIn

TurnItIn helps instructors manage assignment submissions while detecting and preventing plagiarism in students' essays and research papers.

TurnItIn Support: Use this link to find helpful documentation on how to add TurnItIn to an assignment in Brightspace.

How can Grace Library support you and your students throughout the semester? This list provides just some of the many ways we partner with faculty to build library resources into course content.

Locating Supplemental Resources

Campus librarians are available to help locate resources appropriate for your course. Whether you are looking for articles to assign as readings or trying to decide on which databases to recommend to your students, we will help you find the right materials.

Creating Course- or Subject-Specific Research Guides

Using LibGuides, we will work with you to create Research Guides designed to provide students with curated information on how to best perform research on a specific course or topic. In these Research Guides, we can link directly to peer reviewed journals, books, databases, and websites best suited to your field or course content.

Exploring & Evaluating Open Educational Resources

Curious about Open Educational Resources? Librarians can provide you with lists of OER publishers, directories, and platforms that you can use to locate these resources, as well as assist in the evaluation process.

Library & Information Literacy Instruction

Schedule an appointment with our Instruction & Outreach Librarian, who will work with you to integrate in-person or virtual library instruction and information literacy content into your course. Services include customized instruction sessions or digital modules that can be integrated into your course.

Niche Academy

Niche Academy houses ready-to-go library instruction modules that you can integrate directly into your course content in Brightspace. Current modules include Information Literacy, Plagiarism, Reliable Sources, Refining Search Results, Developing a Research Question, and many database-specific modules provided by library vendors such as EBSCO and JSTOR.

Course Reserves

Do you want to provide a physical copy of a book or a digital article or eBook for your students to use outside of class? The library can set up digital and physical Course Reserves that can be made available for your students to access from the library homepage or Brightspace. Physical Course Reserves are available to students from 8:30am to 4:30pm Monday through Friday.

 

Copyright

Copyright law applies to the use, performance, and display of copyrighted works. All members of the University community—faculty, staff, and students—are expected to obtain permission from copyright owners for uses protected by copyright law.

The Copyright Act of 1976 provides "authors [and creators] of original works protection for their intellectual property in any work exhibiting minimal creativity and fixed in a tangible mode of expression." Copyright protections cover published or unpublished intellectual property in all formats and media by authors, artists, composers, and creators.

Grace Library's Copyright Policy prohibits the following:

  • Copying and/or distribution of copyrighted work that exceeds the limits established by the Fair Use Doctrine.
  • Illegal downloading, installing, or sharing the copyrighted electronic work of others.

Learn more about the Library's Copyright Policy here.


Fair Use

The general rule is that copyrighted work may not be appropriated by others through duplication or dissemination without the creator's permission. There are exceptions to copyright restrictions that apply to academic institutions.

Grace Library supports the use of copyrighted work that falls under the fair use doctrine, which is codified in Section 107 of the Copyright Act. To qualify as fair use, the use of the copyrighted work must be used "for purposes such as criticism, comment...teaching, scholarship, or research," although this is not without limits.

For the use of copyrighted work to qualify as fair use, the following factors must be considered:

  • The purpose and character of the use,
  • The nature of the copyrighted work,
  • The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole, and
  • The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

For more information, visit the U.S. Copyright Office Fair Use Index.

When determining what falls under fair use, we (your friendly campus librarians) recommend using tools such as the ALA's Fair Use Evaluator and the ALA's Exceptions for Instructors in U.S. Copyright Law tool. While these evaluation tools do not provide legal advice, they can help faculty members better understand fair use and evaluate how they are using materials in their courses.


Best Practices

While Grace Library cannot give legal advice, we do recommend these best practices when it comes to integrating materials into your courses:

  • Upload or link to course materials in your Brightspace course shell instead of emailing them to your students. This ensures that only students currently enrolled in your course can access the materials.
  • When using materials available through Grace Library, use permalinks to the library's online catalog in lieu of uploading a PDF to your course.
  • Instructors should only assign materials that fit within the scope of the course content and objectives.
  • Only the portion or amount of the work relevant to the educational objectives of the course should be used.
  • Materials shared in a course must be a legal copy of the work.
  • Consider whether the copy harms the market or sale of the copyrighted material.
  • Always, always, always include citations to the original source of publication.

Inclusion, diversity, equity, ethics, inclusion, and accessibility (IDEEA—an acronym under the DEIA umbrella) refers to a set of practices intended to ensure people from a broad set of sociodemographic backgrounds are represented and able to thrive in a workforce, as well as referring to an organization's actions and services to the public that consider the needs and desired outcomes for all its stakeholders.

This Research Guide, created in partnership between Richard Brzustowicz (Instruction & Outreach Librarian) and Sara Oliver-Carter (Chief Diversity, Equity, Ethics & Inclusion Officer), is available to be used as a resource for the Carlow community. This resource includes definitions for commonly used terms and selected resources on a range of subjects, including:

  • Accessibility & Disability Studies
  • Africana Studies
  • Asian American & Pacific Islander Studies
  • Gender & Women's Studies
  • Hispanic and Latin American Studies
  • Middle Eastern Studies
  • Native American & Indigenous Studies
  • Working Class Studies

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming various sectors, including higher education. From automating administrative tasks to enhancing research, AI tools and resources are becoming indispensable in academic settings.

Instruction and Outreach Librarian Richard Brzustowicz has put together many resources on AI, its role in higher education, and how to use it ethically and maintain academic integrity, for the Carlow community.

AI in Higher Education: Check out the information on the CTRL website on different uses of AI and Large Language Models.

Academic Integrity and AI: Suggestions on how to maintain academic integrity with AI, citation resources, and a link to the Carlow University Academic Integrity policy.

AI, Large Language Models, and Higher Education Research Guide: A more in-depth Research Guide including information on LLM architecture, applications, ethical considerations, information on key AI players, and research resources.

Instructional Designers and Librarians are happy to work with faculty in a variety of ways, either in person or virtually. Simply schedule an appointment using our Microsoft Bookings site for one of the following services:

  • Brightspace Support
  • ExamSoft Support
  • Faculty Library Research Session
  • Instructional Design/Course Planning
  • Library Orientation
  • Panopto Support
  • Preliminary Library Instruction Discussion
  • Respondus Support
  • TurnItIn Support
  • Video & Multimedia Services Consultation

We can also be reached by email at ctrl@carlow.edu or gracelibrary@carlow.edu.