Course Pack

A collection of documents put together by a teacher as a resource for students in a particular course or class.

Often, teachers with a specific curriculum in mind will wish to assemble their own materials rather than teach from a particular textbook. As a corollary to this, a teacher creating a curriculum drawing on a wide range of resources may wish to simply provide her students with only the materials they need, rather than requiring them to purchase many books, often at great cost, each of which will contain only a small piece of the curriculum, and the majority of the contents of which will be superfluous.

Of course, creating such a “course pack” necessitates the copying of the relevant works, implicating copyright law. Such copying may or may not fall under fair use, fair dealing, or other exceptions to copyright, depending on the circumstances and the jurisdiction. There have been two seminal cases in the United States dealing with course packs and copyright, both of which were resolved against the universities in question. It is noteworthy, though, that each of those cases involved a for-profit copying service.

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