Comments on: What are the barriers to open access teaching tools?

By: Tara

Tara — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:30:58 +0000

When it comes to signing your IP rights away to something while you are employed by a University, it’s best to talk with someone in the IP office.

Our university has an ‘outside activy’ reporting requirement and if you have to waive your IP rights — even on something you are doing outside of your faculty work — you have to get it approved by the IP office.

I’m sure the process and the amount of rights a university or college has over their faculty’s property changes not only by country and state, but individual institutions as well.

By: llwynn

llwynn — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:58:05 +0000

I just got this message from Tom Hanson at OpenEducation.net:

“Michael Wesch of Kansas State gained instantaneous fame with his viral
video, “A Vision of Students Today.” Recently the associate professor
offered his suggestions for teachers charged with educating this current
generation of students.

“At OpenEducation.net we featured Wesch’s follow-up and gave our assessment
of his suggestions. The post may be found at:
http://www.openeducation.net/2008/10/28/a-vision-of-students-today-some-additional-thoughts-from-michael-wesch/

“If you think the article would be of interest to your readers we would be
grateful if you would share it with them. In addition, we welcome your
feedback on our treatment of this important topic.”

Tom Hanson
Editor
OpenEducation.net

By: Why Learning Objects Need to be Open Access

Why Learning Objects Need to be Open Access — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 02:18:12 +0000

[...] Succint post by L. L. Wynn about the need to keep learning objects open access. The basic and most obvious is that people won’t share their time and skills with you if you don’t. It probably should be noted that Macquarie has a particularly over-protective policy on protesting IP in learning contexts. [...]

By: llwynn

llwynn — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:32:55 +0000

Hey thanks for that info, Kim, and for telling us about Mukurtu. That’s so awesome that you put up all your presentations and lecture slides on your blog. You are officially CM’s model for open access teaching tools.

Does anyway know about the specific Australia context to “ownership” or rights over the things developed by faculty?

By: Kim Christen

Kim Christen — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:58:51 +0000

It is not as simple as saying that any University “owns” the slides or lectures etc of its faculty. In the US at most institutions, including mine, in my contract it states that faculty’s intellectual property is vested with the University. This, however, is usually aimed at those scholars in the sciences who may, develop a patentable drug or something. It is not out of the realm of possibility that a Uni would have an interest in a professor’s slides and other teaching tools, but this does not mean they “own” it nor does it mean that the scholar in question can not use a CC license and put it up on a blog etc. I have all my presentations up on my blog and I have separate class blogs that all of my lecture slides are on. In addition when my collaborators and I created Mukurtu [www.mukurtuarchive.org - an indigenous archive tool] I went to my Uni’s Intellectual Property office and negotiated that we use a GPL {http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html] so that it could be available to anyone (specifically indigenous communities) to use and reuse and build on as a archive tool and teaching tool.

There are options out there for the kinds of material you describe and it sounds like one of the problems is the general confusion over what types of access and licensing exist and in this case people seem to be defaulting to a skewed notion of ownership and “rights.”