In Challenge # 3, you learned about CC licenses and how they communicate to others how work can be used. The one common requirement in all Creative Commons licenses is attribution – giving credit to the original creator. For example, in a CC BY licence, the “CC” stands for “Creative Commons” and the “BY” stands for “Attribution,” or who the work is “by”. You can see that attribution (BY) is found in all of these licences:

6 creative commons licence icons

An attribution statement is used to provide credit to the original creator; its purpose is similar to a citation. It ensures readers and users are clear on who created what – the audience should not be misled to believe you are the original creator of a licensed work.

What does an attribution statement look like?

Here is an openly licensed image with an attribution statement found below:

six colourful lenses

“Colours” by Ram Balmur is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Here is an example of an attribution for an openly licensed book:

“Thriving Online: A Guide for Busy Educators” by Robin Kay and William J. (Bill) Hunter is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Attribution Structure:

A typical attribution has the following structure:

” _______________” (title and link to source) by ________________ (creator name and link to their profile page if available) is licensed under ________________ (CC License and link to licence deed).

Creating an Attribution Statement

Luckily, there is a tool that makes creating these attribution really simple!!!! The Open Washington attribution builder allows you to enter all of the required information and it builds the attribution statement for you. When you are done you can copy and paste the attribution into your own resource (i.e a word doc, a powerpoint slide, your course shell, etc). 

Watch this video walkthrough to see how to use the attribution building tool:

Watch “Attribution Builder” on YouTube

Your Challenge 

For this challenge, you will be creating an attribution statement using the Open Washington attribution builder. You can either use the OER you found in Challenge 1, or any other OER you have found that has a creative commons licence.

  1. Decide which OER you would like to create an attribution statement for (the resource you found in Challenge 1, or another OER you have found that has a CC licence).
  2. Go to the Open Washington attribution builder and create your attribution statement. Here is the video walkthrough (same video as above).
  3. In the Padlet below, start a new post by double clicking anywhere on the wall, or by selecting the pink “+” sign. Enter your name in the subject prompt at the top. Then copy and paste your attribution into the text area of the post.

Made with Padlet

Attributions

This challenge was built on content from “OER for Faculty” by Algonquin College Library is licensed under CC BY-NC.

This challenge was inspired by, and adapted from, The Open Education Challenge Series by Leva Lee and Tannis Morgan is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

CC licences image attribution: The CCNY OER Workshop by the City College of New York is licensed under CC BY 4.0.