Distributed Learning Meets Intellectual Property Policy: Who Owns What?
By Dr. Veronica Diaz,
Learning Technologies Manager,
Adjunct Professor
University of Arizona
The rise of eLearning and technology in higher education—including distance
education, digital repositories, and electronic courseware products—has
changed the way faculty and institutions regard ownership and control of these
materials. A new market exists for products that previously had little or no
commercial value, especially as institutions become more adept and profitable
at delivering and marketing distributed learning courses and programs. In turn,
this has created a need for higher institutions to revise their existing intellectual
property (IP) policies.
The authority and responsibilities of faculty members in this digital era regarding
how courses are developed, taught, and maintained are in flux, and many existing
institutional policies fail to address important questions raised in this changing
environment. Distributed learning is vastly different from what has traditionally
been covered with copyright (books, articles) and brings with it several important
areas that must be addressed to ensure its long-term viability and proliferation.
One area is that of ownership—who owns what. In university intellectual
property policies, it is not unusual to find little or no faculty involvement
in the development of the policy. Few colleges and universities clearly grant
IP interests exclusively to the faculty. It is far more common to find that
the college or university has a policy that views courses as the property of
the institution.
Another question involves all the other individuals involved in the creation
of intellectual property. Current institutional IP copyright policies often
include detailed distributed learning scenarios describing the participation
of various individuals (media specialists, designers, instructors) in the production
of instructional materials and corresponding ownership determinations. Some
policies are particularly unique in addressing issues of content to include
credibility and relevance and in assigning responsibility for such tasks beyond
the original creator(s).
A well-developed IP policy should meet the diverse needs of those constituencies
involved in development and delivery: faculty members, administrators, subject
matter experts, instructional designers, and media specialists. Despite the
rapidly changing distributed learning environment, institutions well-crafted
IP policies create stability and foster productivity. The following recommendations
come from a review of best practices of over 40 higher education IP policies
addressing distributed learning and copyright.
Inclusive and Collaborative Policy Development
Institutions should develop clear policies, contracts, and agreements in order
to create an environment in which all involved parties clearly understand their
rights to ownership and control. This helps to prevent disputes and encourages
innovation and participation over time. It is not unusual to find IP policies
that focus on work of individual faculty. However, this traditional focus ignores
the contributions of specialists when teams are used and fails to address new
development models.
Furthermore, it d'es not reflect the variety of motivations
for developing digital resources within an institution. For example, digital
repositories may be useful to an academic department intent on sharing resources,
such as a repository of art images to teach a variety of art history courses.
Conversely, some university administrators might prefer a learning content management
system (LCMS), which is typically available only through a centrally controlled
learning technologies center. An academic department may have collaboration
and knowledge-building as its goal, while the institution's administration may
be more interested in revenue generation. Faculty members may have in mind a
cooperative/sharing model, especially within and outside of their department,
while administrators may be inclined to protect their often-costly investment.
Policies developed by a limited constituency will most likely fail to address
the range of issues represented by the above examples. A broadly constituted
collaborative policy development process that includes all contributors will
likely address the contributions of those outside the traditional faculty.
Organizational Goals and Culture
It is important to maintain a clear focus on the institution, college, or departmental
vision and the goals for distributed learning within a particular context. Policy
language may invoke the “work-for-hire” doctrine and/or “resources
expended” language, thereby strengthening the institution’s ownership
claims, or it may assign ownership and control to faculty members or other developers.
Irrespective of the approach, all contributors should have a clear understanding
of not only ownership, but also the context within the institution.
Flexibility and Adaptability
Institutions should strive to develop policies that are flexible and adaptable
and are able to address changing models of learning technology development and
future technological innovation. Since, one approach may not be appropriate
for all situations, institutions should offer a range of options to include
contracts, policy, or individually written agreements. This would allow for
a variety of needs and interests to be addressed as opposed to imposing one
policy on all.
Policy and Product Maintenance
Learning objects are an example of the critical and frequently unaddressed issue
of maintenance. For example, maintaining a learning object’s content quality
and currency may fall to a completely different individual or team than that which
created the original object. Similarly, as more instructional products are transformed
into digital objects (for instance, a classroom overhead projector presentation
transformed into a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation) and removed from the larger
course, how are such transformations addressed? Policies should help prevent the
potential erosion of quality that may occur when the educational product is divorced
from the producer. Thus, the responsibility for keeping the information up-to-date
must be clearly assigned. Policy language must address issues related to the transformation
of existing material to new forms.
Conclusion
It is critical in the rapidly evolving development of eLearning technology that
institutions regularly revisit campus IP policies. A policy that is five to seven
years old hardly addresses the issues found in today’s distributed learning
products. While it may be possible to adapt policies developed for a traditional
instructional lab setting for application to basic online courses, well thought
out and developed IP policies are required to address the issues of more evolved
distributed learning issues. Campuses need to examine their current policies to
make sure they are clearly addressing issues that are presented by technologies
such as LCMSs, learning objects and other emerging approaches. So, institutions
would be wise to reexamine and revise policies on regular basis to keep pace with
rapidly evolving technologies and practices.