Copyright Guidance for Online Courses

Pedagogical and technical issues may make the shift from in-person to online teaching a challenge but copyright concerns should not be a significant barrier!

Key points to remember:

1. Most of the legal issues are the same in both contexts. (online and in class)
2. If it was okay to do in class, it is often okay to do online – especially when your online access is limited to the same enrolled students.
3. You can continue to apply the Fair Dealing Guidelines.

This resource is adapted for the University of Calgary from material prepared by the Copyright Office, University of Minnesota document Copyright Services, Rapidly shifting your course from in-person to online. Unless otherwise noted, all content on the Copyright Information section of this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License. We would like to acknowledge some contribution of adaptation language from University of Toronto Scholarly Communications & Copyright Office and Ryerson University Library.

Consult the copyright website or email copyright@ucalgary.ca if you have other questions about copyright.​