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1 What is open learning and why OERs?

1.2 Copyright and OER

I assume that you are reading this unit because you would like to create a unit similar to the materials that you can find on the OpenLearn website. You therefore have a teaching purpose and are particularly interested in the use of online tuition. Hopefully you are also keen to share your teaching materials with others in the LabSpace. But why bother creating a new Open Educational Resource? Surely there is so much material already available for free on the web anyway!

I would answer this in a number of ways. First: quality. You want to know that the materials that you are using yourself, or obtaining for use for others, are of high integrity; accurate and well constructed. Second: copyright. The copyright rules for many countries are rather similar. You may be exposing yourself or your institution to legal challenge if you use copyright material. If you use Youtube for audio or video elements or Flickr to store, say, a collage of pictures in a ‘Sgt. Pepper style’ line-up, they will remove the material from their websites if they receive a complaint. So a unit that uses copyright material may be removed from such a site. However, most counties allow ‘fair use’ of copyright material in educational settings. Although each country is different in its copyright laws, ‘fair use’ usually includes factors such as:

  • the material is not used for commercial purposes, such as the sale of the copyrighted resources;
  • the amount you use from one source is not excessive. A short 20-second clip from a film would probably be considered fair dealing, but not a 20-minute clip;
  • what it is – a song or poem is more likely to be considered a whole unit under copyright than, say, a useful description of symptoms of an illness or health-and-safety procedures.

The material here on OpenLearn has been cleared for use using the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 2.0 for England and Wales.

This in short means you are free:

  • to copy, distribute, display and perform the work
  • to make derivative works

as long as you follow these conditions:

  • Attribution: you must give the original author credit.
  • Non-Commercial: you may not use this work for commercial purposes.
  • ShareAlike: if you alter, transform or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a licence identical to this one.

If you want to look at the whole legal code you can do so here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/legalcode.

However all third-party materials in OpenLearn are made available for use in accordance with permissions granted by rights owners and are not subject to Creative Commons licence. All users are required to read terms and conditions and any restrictions which are placed with acknowledgements. So therefore it is possible to combine Creative Commons Licence terms for your own materials and other terms for third-party materials to ensure your users derive educational benefit from a variety of sources.

You can find the Plain English version of this licence by clicking on the log at the bottom of this page, but if you want to look at the whole legal code you can do so here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/legalcode.

My final point about why you might want to construct your learning as an OER is that in serving the needs of your own learners you will be serving the needs of other learners. It is possible to use copyright material for online use if you point users to where it can be freely accessed but not copied or altered or if you password protect it so that, in effect, you are using it just for the few learners in your class. Many institutions currently do this using Blackboard or WebCT (now owned by Blackboard and being phased out) – but what a missed opportunity! If you have put in the work to create some online learning why not let as many learners as possible share the experience?

To summarise, the following advantages and disadvantages need to be considered before one embarks on creating OERs.

Advantages to OER

  • Freedom of access; both for yourself and others
  • Freedom from proprietary systems and corporations
  • Encourages pedagogical innovation
  • Lowers costs to students
  • Potential publicity
  • Contribution to a community
  • Method of collaboration
  • Helpful to future educators
  • Potentially beneficial to developing nations
  • Avoids ‘vendor lock-in’ or a situation in which you have to use one company's products.

Disadvantages to OER

  • Varying degrees of time commitment
  • Teachers sometimes not rewarded by the system for their efforts
  • Starting large projects can be difficult
  • Some projects require startup resources
  • Quality varies
  • May not meet accessibility requirements for persons with disabilities
  • Need to check accuracy before use
  • May need a high degree of customisation (called localisation in the OER community)
  • Technical requirements vary and some require you to use a particular software
  • Requires varying degrees of continual financial support
  • Licensing and obtaining copyright clearance can be difficult
  • Some institutions may be concerned about ‘giving it away’.

(From http://www.wikieducator.org/OER_Handbook/educator/advantages_and_disadvantages accessed 17 April 2008)

Constructing online learning can indeed seem rather daunting. How should we go about it? Let us look at some research.

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Creating open educational resources
Pages: <Previous  1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    10    11  Next >

1 What is open learning and why OERs?

1.2 Copyright and OER

I assume that you are reading this unit because you would like to create a unit similar to the materials that you can find on the OpenLearn website. You therefore have a teaching purpose and are particularly interested in the use of online tuition. Hopefully you are also keen to share your teaching materials with others in the LabSpace. But why bother creating a new Open Educational Resource? Surely there is so much material already available for free on the web anyway!

I would answer this in a number of ways. First: quality. You want to know that the materials that you are using yourself, or obtaining for use for others, are of high integrity; accurate and well constructed. Second: copyright. The copyright rules for many countries are rather similar. You may be exposing yourself or your institution to legal challenge if you use copyright material. If you use Youtube for audio or video elements or Flickr to store, say, a collage of pictures in a ‘Sgt. Pepper style’ line-up, they will remove the material from their websites if they receive a complaint. So a unit that uses copyright material may be removed from such a site. However, most counties allow ‘fair use’ of copyright material in educational settings. Although each country is different in its copyright laws, ‘fair use’ usually includes factors such as:

  • the material is not used for commercial purposes, such as the sale of the copyrighted resources;
  • the amount you use from one source is not excessive. A short 20-second clip from a film would probably be considered fair dealing, but not a 20-minute clip;
  • what it is – a song or poem is more likely to be considered a whole unit under copyright than, say, a useful description of symptoms of an illness or health-and-safety procedures.

The material here on OpenLearn has been cleared for use using the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 2.0 for England and Wales.

This in short means you are free:

  • to copy, distribute, display and perform the work
  • to make derivative works

as long as you follow these conditions:

  • Attribution: you must give the original author credit.
  • Non-Commercial: you may not use this work for commercial purposes.
  • ShareAlike: if you alter, transform or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a licence identical to this one.

If you want to look at the whole legal code you can do so here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/legalcode.

However all third-party materials in OpenLearn are made available for use in accordance with permissions granted by rights owners and are not subject to Creative Commons licence. All users are required to read terms and conditions and any restrictions which are placed with acknowledgements. So therefore it is possible to combine Creative Commons Licence terms for your own materials and other terms for third-party materials to ensure your users derive educational benefit from a variety of sources.

You can find the Plain English version of this licence by clicking on the log at the bottom of this page, but if you want to look at the whole legal code you can do so here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/legalcode.

My final point about why you might want to construct your learning as an OER is that in serving the needs of your own learners you will be serving the needs of other learners. It is possible to use copyright material for online use if you point users to where it can be freely accessed but not copied or altered or if you password protect it so that, in effect, you are using it just for the few learners in your class. Many institutions currently do this using Blackboard or WebCT (now owned by Blackboard and being phased out) – but what a missed opportunity! If you have put in the work to create some online learning why not let as many learners as possible share the experience?

To summarise, the following advantages and disadvantages need to be considered before one embarks on creating OERs.

Advantages to OER

  • Freedom of access; both for yourself and others
  • Freedom from proprietary systems and corporations
  • Encourages pedagogical innovation
  • Lowers costs to students
  • Potential publicity
  • Contribution to a community
  • Method of collaboration
  • Helpful to future educators
  • Potentially beneficial to developing nations
  • Avoids ‘vendor lock-in’ or a situation in which you have to use one company's products.

Disadvantages to OER

  • Varying degrees of time commitment
  • Teachers sometimes not rewarded by the system for their efforts
  • Starting large projects can be difficult
  • Some projects require startup resources
  • Quality varies
  • May not meet accessibility requirements for persons with disabilities
  • Need to check accuracy before use
  • May need a high degree of customisation (called localisation in the OER community)
  • Technical requirements vary and some require you to use a particular software
  • Requires varying degrees of continual financial support
  • Licensing and obtaining copyright clearance can be difficult
  • Some institutions may be concerned about ‘giving it away’.

(From http://www.wikieducator.org/OER_Handbook/educator/advantages_and_disadvantages accessed 17 April 2008)

Constructing online learning can indeed seem rather daunting. How should we go about it? Let us look at some research.

Pages: <Previous  1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    10    11  Next >