IPR policy – comments

October 30, 2009 in update. Leave a Comment
Tags: ipr, policy

In light of our investigation into the University’s IPR policy we have noted a few things that we need to consider. In brief summary, the policy indicates that work derived from scholarly activities is the intellectual property of the author. Copyright of materials produced as curriculum design and development, including e-learning, resides with the University. All this is clearly articulated in staff contracts. Students and staff are treated equally by the policy, and so it would seem that this is a fairly straightforward clarification.

However, it might not be quite as simple as all that. In the supporting IPR guidance document, the term ‘safeguard potential for exploitation’ is used in reference to the commercial value of IP. In fact, on several occasions the IP of the University is mentioned as needing to be safeguarded, implying a protective stance towards content. Clearly there are no direct commercial benefits to the open release of learning materials, but there is long-term value.

The most recently updated IPR policy (April 09) does articulate the need to widely disseminate IP, describing it as ‘fundamental to the work and idea of a Higher Education Institution’. We feel, therefore, that the idea of OER does fit into the existing policy, but it raises a couple of key things:

1) Does the policy need to be explicit about the use of open content for commercial exploitation (and does it need to acknowledge the inherent myriad values of OER)?

2) How can we raise awareness of these values needs in order to permeate our teaching staff body, and ensure the support of policy-makers and management that can drive sharing.

Why a project narrative?

October 29, 2009 in admin. Leave a Comment

When Steve and Debbie visited us up in Carlisle a few weeks ago, we talked about all sorts of interesting project related things. During the conversation it occurred to us that we were forming useful perspectives on the University’s approach to OER based on the data that we had collected, and that we needed to record these ideas somehow. It was reminiscent of an e-learning benchmarking process we had gone through a couple of years earlier.

Following that experience we engaged in a Pathfinder project in which we recorded an informal project narrative throughout. This ultimately manifested itself in a summative ‘journey’ report that articulated our experiences as the project developed. We found this experience to be extremely useful and so we thought we’d give it a go again here.

Hopefully it will help us to understand and explore issues in our own context, and help feed forward into actions and evaluation of our activity. As previously mentioned, some of these reflections may include sensitive information, and where they do we’ll password protect the entry. You’ll need to contact the protect team if you want to read them.

Open Access

October 29, 2009 in admin. Leave a Comment

Our journey begins

October 27, 2009 in admin. Leave a Comment

This is the blog for the team at University of Cumbria, currently working on the Art, Design and Media Subject Centre led Open Educational Resources (OER) project. The University of Cumbria is very pleased to be working alongside sector partners and the Art, Design and Media subject centre in this important OER initiative. The team in Cumbria perceive the project as the bud of something with significant potential for both our own institution and the sector in the future, so we are delighted to be involved.

Note: Some entries may be password protected. Please contact the project team for information.