Coursera Design Guide

Overview Specialization Course Module Learning Assets ⌄

Guidance for every learning asset

Accessibility, Copyright & AI

As you develop each Learning Asset, you’ll make choices that help it work well for learners, fit a public and commercial Coursera Course, and reflect your own expertise (even if AI has supported the process).

You and your Learning Experience Designer can return to this page throughout planning, production, and review. Use it to think through what applies to your work and identify questions to discuss together.

When this page may be helpful

While planning

Think ahead about the format, source materials, and tools you may want to use.

While developing

Find guidance for the text, media, interaction, or other content you’re creating.

Before handoff

Take stock of what’s in place and note anything you’d like to review with your Learning Experience Designer.

Three considerations throughout development

These questions may come up at different points in your project. Open the section that’s most useful for the asset or decision you’re working through with your Learning Experience Designer.

Accessibility

Plan content and interactions that learners with a range of access needs can use meaningfully.

Explore accessibility →

Identify materials you did not create and work with your CTL team to confirm that they can be used in a public, commercial Course.

Explore copyright →

Using AI

Use AI thoughtfully, protect material you share with AI tools, and carefully review anything AI contributes to the Course.

Explore AI guidance →

Build in accessibility

Accessibility is part of every Duke Coursera Learning Asset and is easiest to support when considered from the beginning. Early decisions about structure, media, tools, and interactions can make an asset easier for more learners to use and easier to produce accessibly.

Share ideas and drafts with your Learning Experience Designer while there is still time to shape the approach together. They can help you identify what applies and plan for complex content, interactions, or possible access barriers.

Use a logical heading structure and consistent formatting.
Use concise, direct language and explain specialized terminology or syntax.
Make sure that you use meaningful link text (the text of your link makes sense independent of context) when you link to a resource.

Provide alternative text for meaningful images.
Describe complex visuals — charts, diagrams, and data — in the surrounding content.
Identify table headers clearly and avoid using color or position alone.
Ensure that all visuals, including slides, follow color contrast guidelines. You can use Duke's color contrast guide to find appropriate color combinations.

Coursera auto-generates captions and transcripts for videos. Leave the lower third of your slides empty for captions.
Describe meaningful visual information aloud.
Make essential names, citations, links, and resources available in writing.
Ensure your videos have clear audio. This may influence how and where you record.

Design essential controls so they can be reached with a keyboard and assistive technology.
Whenever possible, choose interactions that do not depend on dragging, hovering, speech, or precise movement.
Provide accessible static resources for all interactions.

Pair color, sound, animation, images, and visual position with another way of understanding the information.
Provide instructions and feedback in an accessible form learners can return to.
Give flexibility in how quickly they work through a task.
All documents shared with students on Coursera must follow digital accessibility principles.

When a format creates a barrier unrelated to the objective, or is unavailable to some learners, provide another way to participate.
Consider the accessibility of the complete environment learners will use, including third-party tools, editors, consoles, and visualizations.
Ask learners only for information needed to complete the activity, avoiding personal or sensitive information whenever possible. You will not be able to view learner information via Coursera.

Helpful things to share with your Learning Experience Designer

Editable source files whenever possible
What important images, charts, media, or interactions are meant to communicate
Any tool, plugin, software, or file format learners will use
Questions about alternatives or possible access barriers

Copyright and permissions

Coursera is a public, global, commercial platform. That makes it different from a face-to-face, for-credit Duke course, and materials you already use in teaching may need additional review, permission, or licensing before they can be included.

Whenever possible, build from materials you created yourself. Even material free to access online can have restrictions on the rights to reproduce, adapt, or distribute through Coursera.

Why Coursera is different

How course materials are used in a Duke classroom compared with a Coursera Course
In a Duke classroom	In a Coursera Course
Course materials are shared with a defined group of enrolled students for a limited educational purpose. Depending on the material and how it is used, classroom exceptions, fair use, library licenses, Course Reserves, or other permissions may support limited use within that setting.	Course materials are distributed through a public, global, commercial platform and may remain available well beyond an academic term. Permissions, licenses, and fair-use decisions made for a closed classroom may not extend to this setting.
These provisions do not mean that any material may be copied or shared for teaching. They apply under particular conditions and may limit who can access the material, how much can be used, and how long it remains available.	Materials generally need to be created for the Course, in the public domain, covered by a license that permits commercial use, or used with the rights holder’s permission. Have questions about using materials in your Course or elsewhere? Bring these to your CTL team for discussion.

Educational use is not automatically fair use

Fair use may allow copyrighted material to be used without permission in some circumstances, but each use must be considered individually. The analysis includes the purpose of the use, the nature of the material, how much is used, and the effect on the market for the original.

A nonprofit educational purpose can support fair use, while a commercial context may weigh against it—but neither factor decides the question on its own. Because Coursera differs from a closed, for-credit classroom, share any proposed reliance on fair use with your CTL team.

Do not reprint non-public-domain materials without direct permission from the copyright holder. Examples include but are not limited to: political cartoons; Getty images; popular movies, television shows, or songs; trademarks.

Keep track of materials you did not create

As you develop an asset, using the table below as guidance, take note when it includes anything you didn’t create and where it came from. Your CTL team can help you understand what may be used, what may require permission, and what might be better replaced.

In general, you may need to link to third-party sites to share readings or other resources, rather than posting them directly on Coursera.

Types of material to take note of, and what each may include
Material	Take note when it includes
Text and publications	Articles, chapters, quotations, substantial excerpts, cases, scripts, exercises, or licensed question banks
Images and figures	Photographs, illustrations, figures, charts, tables, or diagrams you did not create
Video, audio, and music	Clips, footage, recordings, background music, or people appearing in a recording
Data and datasets	Purchased, licensed, restricted, institutional, or third-party data
Code and software	Starter code, libraries, packages, APIs, software, templates, or configured environments
Scenarios and personas	Real people, copyrighted characters, proprietary cases, confidential situations, rubrics, or published exercises
Tools and platforms	External tools, embedded content, accounts, data collection, privacy conditions, media, or simulations

Using Creative Commons materials

Show license guidance

A Creative Commons license gives the public permission to use a work under stated conditions. Check the exact license attached to the material—not simply whether it has a Creative Commons symbol. We can use two types of Creative Commons licenses for Coursera: CC0 and CC BY. Review the table below for a comparison.

Creative Commons licenses usable on Coursera, and what to keep in mind
License	Use in Coursera	What to keep in mind
CC0	Generally permitted	The creator has waived copyright restrictions to the extent legally possible. Attribution is appreciated even when it is not required.
CC BY	Generally permitted	Commercial use and adaptation are allowed. Credit the creator and provide the license information.

All Creative Commons licenses require you to follow their conditions. Unless the work is marked CC0, plan to identify the creator, title, source, and license and indicate whether you made changes.

Helpful things to share with your CTL team

A link to the original source
The creator or rights holder, when known
Any license, permission, or purchase information you already have
How you would like to use the material (e.g., by reproducing, adapting, embedding, or linking to it)

After permission or use is confirmed

Attribute third-party materials and preserve any required license notices, including open-source notices.

When material does not need to be reproduced in Coursera, consider linking learners to a lawful source.

Protect private and sensitive information by keeping credentials, confidential data, private repositories, and personally identifiable information out of the Course.

Confirm distribution rights for software, packages, datasets, templates, and starter files used in Labs.

Using AI during Course development

CTL will not use AI to develop course materials with your content without express permission.

AI tools can be useful for brainstorming, drafting, restructuring, summarizing, or generating examples and practice questions. They can also introduce errors, bias, privacy concerns, and copyright questions that aren’t always easy to spot.

Your expertise remains central. Treat anything an AI tool produces as a starting point to verify, revise, and shape before it reaches learners.

Protect what goes in

Use AI tools only with material you are permitted to share.
Keep confidential, proprietary, personally identifiable, and restricted information out of AI tools.
Consider what the AI provider may store, retain, or reuse.

Review what comes out

Verify facts, figures, citations, and disciplinary reasoning.
Review for bias, stereotypes, close reproduction, and accessibility concerns.
Revise the output to reflect your expertise, voice, learners, and objectives.

Keep your CTL team informed

Let your CTL team know when AI has contributed substantially to an asset.
Share which tool you used and how you reviewed or revised its output.
Bring forward any remaining questions about accuracy, rights, bias, accessibility, or appropriateness.

Helpful things to share with your Learning Experience Designer

The AI tool you used
How it contributed to the asset
Any source material or instructions used to guide it
What you have already verified or revised, and what you’d still like help reviewing

As you prepare for handoff

Use these questions with your Learning Experience Designer to take stock of what’s ready and what may still need attention.

Have accessibility needs and possible alternatives been considered?

Are editable and accessible source files available?

Have third-party materials and their sources been identified?

Are permission and attribution needs recorded?

Has substantial AI-supported work been shared and reviewed?

Are any open questions clearly noted for your CTL team?

Record relevant decisions and source links in the Design Document so the team can carry them into production.

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