Copyright When Teaching From Textbooks

[Twi78]

Hi,

I have started a personal tutor service online whereby I use a single textbook to teach from. I have created a study guide for students to work through in line with the text but having so many requests for one to one sessions I wanted to created pre recorded videos to support the material.

My question is if I ensure all my students have a copy of the textbook that I teach from, can I create video tutorials using examples, cases and information from the textbook? I will not make the videos publicly available just within a secure environment that my students are registered to (thus knowing they have a copy of the text as they would have purchased a copy to gain access).

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks
Garry

[AndyJ]

Hi Garry,
There are a number of exceptions to copyright law which allows a certain amount of copying for bona fide educational purposes. They can be found within Chapter III of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. A couple of the categories stipulate that copying may not be done for commercial purposes, which would probably include your tutoring, but sub section 32 (2A) doesn't and should cover what you want to do:

(2A) Copyright in a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work which has been made available to the public is not infringed by its being copied in the course of instruction or of preparation for instruction, provided the copying—

• (a) is fair dealing with the work,
  
  (b) is done by a person giving or receiving instruction,
  
  (c) is not done by means of a reprographic process, and
  
  (d) is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement.

Since you will be largely referring to the text rather than quoting large chunks of it, that should fall squarely within fair dealing. The sufficient acknowledgement part will automatically be achieved because your students will have their own copy of the book, so I assume you will start the video by saying that the tutorial requires them to follow the book. 'Reprographic' in this context means photocopying so is not relevant to what you propose.

[Twi78]

Thanks Andy,

Thats good to know. I use the study guide to constantly refer to the book to help with study planning. There are certain technical areas where the book provides detailed examples. At the end of each chapter there are 10+ exam style questions for the students to practice.

With these i would like to quote the entire example and choose 2 or 3 questions to do a walk through tutorial. Does this push the boundaries of referring to the text and fall into quoting large chunks?

One way around it is i could use the example but change key details so the substance is the same but the names and values differ?

Thanks again
Garry

[AndyJ]

Hi Garry,
Could I suggest you take a look at a couple of other threads which cover a lot of the same ground as your question, albeit dealing with slightly different areas of teaching/tutoring:
www.copyrightaid.co.uk/forum/topic1609.htm
and
www.copyrightaid.co.uk/forum/topic1358.htm.
If you find they don't really answer your question, please come back and I will try to enlarge on what I said in those threads.

[Twi78]

Hi Andy,

Following on from the discussion in this post, i now give tutorials over skype. This has evolved to a camera fixed on the text book allowing me to guide a student through, say, a chapter in each lesson allowing them to work through their text at the same time.

I again seem to be asked frequently to provide a recording of the lesson so the student can replay it at their convenience.

To protect this from unauthorised distribution i have considered recording the lesson and then holding it in a secure location on my own website that only that student has access to. How far do you think this goes to infringing copyright, especially seeing as i am 'recordng the text' but for the purpose of instruction?

Thanks
Garry