Then, when I first became a department chair, as one of my first major tasks, I created an inventory of all the books and curriculum materials in the English Department. I cleaned out the overflowing storage closet and had all the teachers, grades 7–12, clear out their bookshelves and storage areas. Anything they did not want was to be delivered to the shelving located just outside my office, so I could donate them.  

I wasn’t surprised that many of the books showed signs of use with missing pages, torn covers, and broken spines, nor was I surprised by the materials that were never used, still wrapped in plastic where the collected dust had become more of a grime.  

Too often teaching programs are not vetted by the people who will actually use the materials. Educators know what will resonate with their students. They know that authentic, relevant content engages students. The piles of dust-covered materials still wrapped in plastic had one thing in common, the content was synthetic. 

Synthetic content is when there’s a single creator who writes multiple texts on multiple subjects to meet a given standard. The writing becomes formulaic, predictable, and honestly, boring. The writing is product-driven and not story-driven.  

Additionally, to reduce costs, much of our traditional canon is in the public domain, and it often does not represent the experiences of the diverse population in our classrooms. At the same time, there is a reason why these pieces of literature have withstood the test of time. For example, students groan at the thought of reading Shakespeare. The language alone puts a barrier between the text and the audience, not to mention the most likely differences in culture, socioeconomic background, religion, and physical features. So, teachers seek relevant texts to supplement those titles in the public domain to more effectively connect their students to their themes. 

Authentic content includes texts from leading publications and primary sources that include diverse perspectives and contemporary voices, addressing a variety of interests and learning styles. When authors write, it is to send a clear message, whether the text is informational or literary. There is a passion behind their purpose. Students need to learn how to comprehend and infer meaning from these messages because once students enter ‘the real world,’ they will be required to read authentic texts in their jobs. More importantly, they will read about other people’s perspectives and comprehension builds compassion, while inference builds empathy.  

The teacher’s awesome task is to connect students to these authentic texts. To do so, more and more educators spend hours searching the internet for supplemental materials. But what they need are expertly curated materials that reflect the passions of the students in front of them and link to the passions of the authored work being taught. Relevant content increases student engagement. 

Now, storage closets and bookshelves in classrooms are rather sparse as schools entered into the digital age, buying EdTech products in place of books. Still, too often teaching programs are not vetted by the people who will actually use the materials, and the resources that contain synthetic content are passed over in favor of content-rich programs. The difference — online materials don’t collect any dust. 

To help EdTech companies and schools incorporate authentic content into their K-12 products and curriculum, CCC offers the Annual Copyright License for Curriculum & Instruction (ACLCI). The license streamlines the permissions process by providing the rights to reuse excerpts or articles from more than one million published works, providing the depth and breadth needed to help educators reach all learners. 

The post Igniting Passion: Authentic Content Connects Students to New Ideas appeared first on Copyright Clearance Center.

Makes sense. It’s an effort to ‘level the playing field,’ so one student doesn’t receive more information than another, so the measurement of a student’s ability level and whether their meeting standards or obtaining skills is truly a measurement of the student’s knowledge and not the teacher’s. 

But what if… 

The students taking the test suffer from test anxiety when there are many questions beyond their ability level. Surely, they would need a teacher’s help. Computer Adaptive Testing solves that issue by generating passages based on individual student responses. Therefore, the assessment gauges each individual student’s mastery of skills and standards, challenging them without increasing their stress level. 

But what if… 

The assessment is for students with significant cognitive disabilities? Surely, they would need a teacher’s help. With permission from publishers, some assessment creators have modified texts in readability, sentence length, and passage length to meet the needs of this population. Therefore, these students were exposed to the same high-quality passages with the depth of ideas and information that other students read on their assessments.  

But what if… 

Student A doesn’t relate to a passage as well as Student B? Wouldn’t that give Student B an advantage? Or worse, what if Student A doesn’t have the knowledge base to be able to understand the text? Surely, they would need a teacher’s help.  

On one high-stakes final assessment, less than a decade ago, there was a story about a young boy, around age 12, away on a ski trip with his family. This would be a great excerpt of fiction for an eighth-grade student to read about. Right? Most every eighth-grade student is currently or was once 12. Most every eighth-grade student can relate in some way to spending time with family. The boy’s ethnicity and socioeconomic background is never mentioned, helping to universalize the story (though skiing in the U.S. is not an activity typically associated with a particularly diverse cross-section of Americans). Not everyone identifies as a boy, but if you were to replace this gender with any other, the story would still make sense. Even skiing as a concept is a relatively simple activity to grasp. So, the picker of this passage did their job well. Right? 

Although he read below grade level, one of my former students did extremely well when answering questions regarding this passage. He’s a boy who frequently went on ski trips with his family. Another one of my students who read well above grade level, I’ll call him Darren, frequently went on trips around the world with his family and understood the concept of skiing, but he still asked for my help. 

“What’s a chairlift?” Darren asked me. In the passage, a chairlift was never explained, but in order to answer the question correctly, Darren needed to know what a chairlift was. This dilemma is certainly not unique to me. I’m certain every teacher who has ever administered a high-stakes final assessment has encountered their own ‘chairlift question’ from a student.  

Assessment providers have an extremely difficult job when it comes to passage picking. They must determine what would be most ‘appropriate’ based on several criteria, like comprehension difficulty, reading ability, and how well a passage supports specific standards. And they are working toward incorporating passages that are ‘appropriate’ across socio-economic status, gender, culture, ethnicity, and faith to relate to and reflect on as many people as possible. I do not envy their task. 

So, what if…  

Students could actually choose which passage they would read on an assessment? 

My colleague Andrew Campana and I are more than willing to discuss the great advancements in student assessment, the ongoing possibilities in student assessment, and how our licensing solution can support your efforts. 

The Annual Copyright License for Student Assessments (ACLSA) saves hours of time you might otherwise spend clearing one-off copyright permissions from multiple publishers. The license provides broad coverage across a wide variety of leading publishers to use excerpts from their works in your K-12 adaptive, formative, interim, summative, and through-year assessments, as well as item banks, and pre- and post-test materials. 

The post What’s a ‘Chairlift’? appeared first on Copyright Clearance Center.

What are some challenges today facing resource-sharing managers, including librarians and administrators? 

One of the biggest challenges this group faces is having a limited internal collection, which can cause students to struggle finding what they need for their papers and may lead them to look to other research solutions outside the library. 

To help expand their internal collections, librarians and administrators are adopting resource-sharing solutions more frequently, but these sharing solutions can come with their own challenges, both for librarians and users. 

For users, these solutions can be confusing and frustrating, causing high drop-off rates owing to the need to fill out long forms, badly designed user interfaces, and a lack of transparency regarding the status of requests. 

For librarians, research-sharing solutions can lead to a large amount of manual work in correcting submitted forms, as well as the tedious and time-consuming process of fulfilling borrowing and lending requests. 

What is Rapido by Ex Libris? 

Rapido is an integrated borrowing solution born out of the pressing need for librarians to offer a more intuitive borrowing experience to their users. Before Rapido, users would fill out long and confusing forms for which they would be redirected outside of the library’s interface.  

Students would also not be able to track the status of their requests and would be left in the dark until they received their items, with some requests only fulfilled after the students’ assignment deadlines. 

Rapido solves these issues by integrating the borrowing layer into the discovery journey in the library’s interface. In a few clicks, library patrons can extend their research to the Community collection, and they are presented with different options for delivery. A common example is the choice to either borrow an entire book that will arrive in 5 days, or only the book’s relevant chapters, which will arrive in 24 hours. And once students, submit their borrowing request, a detailed tracking process is automatically activated. 

How does Rapido differ from other resource-sharing platforms?

Rapido is an integrated borrowing solution designed for modern library experiences. For users, Rapido acts as an extension of the library collection to provide a simplified borrowing experience. 

Instead of looking for an item on the web, searching it on the library’s app, filling in a request form, and waiting for an update, students manage the borrowing experience in a few clicks, without ever leaving the library’s interface. Rapido also provides transparent delivery dates that let users know whether items will arrive in time for their paper or exam, giving them more control over the borrowing process.

For libraries, Rapido extends their collection, not their budget, with automated access to the resources of the Rapido community. In addition, with its automation of the borrowing and lending processes, library staff can manage a higher volume of requests with less effort. 

A significant feature of Rapido is its “Cloud Apps Center.” What are Cloud Apps and how do they benefit Rapido users? 

Cloud Apps are integrations into the Ex Libris solutions that are created, shared, and used by the Community, for the Community. 

This feature leverages community collaboration and offers institutions a way to customize their Ex Libris products and to adapt them to their specific needs while contributing to the continuous improvement of Ex Libris products. 

Rapido members can take advantage of Cloud Apps by installing them on their instance of Rapido. Once installed, they can enjoy an enhanced and even more personalized experience. 

Recently, CCC and Ex Libris expanded their longstanding partnership to create a Cloud App called the Get It Now Add-on. Could you tell us more about this new Cloud App? 

Certainly. The Get It Now Add-on allows library staff to purchase articles within Rapido and deliver them directly to patrons. This Cloud App is both free and easy to use—for each record in their task list, library staff members can see article availability in the Get It Now add-on, as well as the price if the article is available for purchase via Get It Now. 

To request content through Get It Now within the new Cloud App, library staff members can simply select each article they need and check the terms of use agreement, at which point a request is sent to CCC. Once an order is processed, staff members receive an email containing a link to the requested content, which they can forward to the patron who made the initial request for viewing or downloading. 

What are the benefits of this integration of Get It Now and Rapido and of using the Add-on? 

When using the new Cloud App, library staff members can review article pricing and place orders in just two clicks. Orders are processed 24/7 in as little as two minutes, and libraries can maintain control of the process by keeping content requests mediated by their staff. 

Get It Now is also the best choice for purchasing articles once a library has exceeded the “rule of five,” since staff members can order high-quality PDFs that arrive in minutes without the extra step of having to report copyright fees. 

When should I use Get It Now if I’m a Rapido member? 

Get It Now is best used when Rapido cannot find a lending library, meaning that the borrowing library has not been able to fulfill the request for free. 

At this stage, if borrowing members have installed the new Cloud App, they will receive a suggestion to purchase the content through Get It Now. The Cloud App will provide information to the library, such as price and availability. 

The idea behind this new functionality is to give librarians as many options as possible to fulfill requests from their patrons. 

If I already have Rapido, how do I adopt Get It Now and the Add-on? 

To begin using the new Cloud App, Rapido customers must first sign an agreement with CCC and create a Get It Now account. Libraries interested in doing so, or those with any questions, can send an email to getitnowsupport@copyright.com.  

Are there any incentives if I adopt Get It Now with Rapido? 

Yes, CCC has offered to reduce the one-time Get It Now set-up fee by $500 for any Rapido users that adopt Get It Now by May 31^st. 

Interested in learning more? Check out: 

• Get It Now Add-on – Ex Libris Developer Network 
• CCC Get It Now Cloud App on GitHub 
• Library Technology Guides 

The post 9 Questions for Ex Libris Senior Director of Product Management Judith Fraenkel appeared first on Copyright Clearance Center.