ELT materials and Creative Commons -

ELT materials and Creative Commons

You've just created your ELT material and want to publish it online. How do you protect it with a creative commons licence?

Where to begin?

Publishing content online can feel overwhelming. You have worked on making something you’re proud of and you want to share it with others but you’re not sure. What if someone takes your content and passes it off as their own? What if people change it so it doesn’t match the learning outcomes you initially set out for it? Or even worse, what if someone changes your content, does a really bad job and then credits you for it!

On the other hand, maybe you want people to take your content, do something new with it, and then redistribute your content to make something even greater.

So how can you control what permissions you give people and make sure you, your content and even your brand is protected? There’s an easy solution, use a Creative Commons licence.

Common misconceptions about copyright

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s take a moment and clear up a few popular misconceptions about copyright online.

Anything you publish online is protected by copyright – TRUE

As the creator of ELT materials, or any content for that matter, you have the exclusive copyright to that content. That means no person or organisation can use your content without your expressed permission. This works both ways too, so you can’t use other people’s materials without their permission either.

You have complete control of the content you put online – IT DEPENDS

If you upload your material to your own website the answer is yes. However, if you upload your material to third-party websites you may giving up significant rights by doing so.

Let’s take YouTube for example. If you post content there you will still own the content but you will lose some of the rights. In their terms and conditions – the part that none of read – they state by using their platform you are giving them a “worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service”.

So what does that mean for you? It means that other YouTube users can copy, edit and make new content based on your own. Not to mention you are doing this irrevocably and in perpetuity! You can dispute copyright claims with YouTube if you feel someone is unfairly using your content but it is YouTube who decides if their terms of service have been broken and you have very little input in this process.

While every platform has slightly different terms and conditions they are broadly similar so keep this in mind if you post content to third-party websites!

Attribution Needed
Non-Commercial
No Derivatives
CC BY-NC-ND

This licence allows others to download your material and share it with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change the content in any way or use it for profit. It is considered the most restrictive licence.

Attribution Needed
Non-Commercial
Share-alike
CC BY-NC-SA

This license lets others alter, and adapt your material but only not for profit. They have to credit you and license their new creations under the identical licence terms you used initially.

Attribution Needed
Non-Commercial
CC BY-NC

This license lets others alter and adapt your material but not for profit. New material based on your original material must credit you and be non-commercial but people are free to use whatever licence they want for the new content they create based of your original.

Attribution Needed
No Derivates
CC BY-ND

This license is the first that allows comercial use for any purpose but the material cannot be altered and the author still needs to be credited.

Attribution Needed
Share-alike
CC BY-SA

This license lets others alter, and adapt your material including commerical use , but they have to credit you and license their new creations under the identical licence terms you used initially.

Attribution Needed
CC BY

This license lets people pretty much do anything with your material as long as they credit you for the original content. It gives others the most freedom of all the Creative Commons licences.

Publishing your content on your own website

If you want to keep complete control of your content, this is the way to go. But what if you want to share your material to teachers and learners online but don’t want your email clogged up with their copyright requests for use? This is where a Creative Commons licence comes in to make your live a whole lot easier.

There are six different types of Creative Commons licences. You can see them on here or on the Creative Commons website. As you scroll down you will give more and more freedom to others to copy, adapt or make money from your content. Take your time reading what each one allows people to do with your content. You might want people to share and adapt your content freely or you might want something more restrictive. Typically, most EFL material writers will use the CC BY-NC-ND licence for their content.

The Creative Commons licence is legally robust, its legal code was written by lawyers with the assistance and advice of an international experts in global copyright. So you can be sure that your content is protected and that you have not relinquished any rights that you would not want to.

How to use a Creative Commons licence in your material?

After all the technical stuff you’ll find this surprisingly easy. The first place you will need to visit is the Creative Commons website and choose a licence.

It will ask you to complete a few questions and then recommend a licence for you.

It’s important to note that you don’t get specific licence number or key when you create your licence. It’s protected under the conditions of the general licence rather than something specifically tailored to you individually.

You can then embed the HTML code into your website or attach the relevant Creative Commons licence logo to your material. If you are looking for where the different logo files are stored or where you can find different formats for these files you can find them on the downloads page.

Here’s an example of how I embedded the Creative Commons in the englii elt discussion questions. I used the CC BY-NC-ND licence which allows other teachers to download and use the material but they can’t adapt it or use it commercially. It was perfect for the client and what they wanted but you might want to look at the other licences as they might be better suited to your aims.

Hopefully this helps clear up the confusion that this topic often generates and good luck creating and licencing your content in the future!

Would you like to know more?

I’ve included a few interesting articles talking about the use of creative commons in education. Unfortunately, not all of them are freely available but I have included links where I can!

Daryono, B. S. (2018). “Developing English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Teaching Materials Based on Creative Commons Licenses.” Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 8(1), 179-186.
Kumar Misra, P. (2022) Creative Commons licenses: Benefits and implications in teaching and … Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357793497_Creative_Commons_Licenses_Benefits_and_Implications_in_Teaching_and_Research
Anderson, T. (2011). “Theories for Learning with Emerging Technologies.” In The Theory and Practice of Online Learning (2nd ed., pp. 45-74). AU Press.