Managing IPRs in Digital Learning Materials

TrustDR and Managing IPR in Digital Learning Materials: A Development Pack for Institutional Repositories looks like an interesting set of resources I should spend some time on.

"The largest UK Higher Education funding council HEFCE issued guidance to the senior management of higher education institutions about IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) in e-learning. A key points was:

“Every HEI needs to establish a clear, preferably plain English, IPR policy and disseminate it widely across the organisation, including IT guidelines and codes of practice for staff and students.”

Intellectual Property Rights in E-learning Programmes: good practice for senior managers , HEFCE, 2006

The objective of this institutional development pack is to empower people to undertake this task and help them put in place the necessary supporting measures in their institutions. To do this we have been working across a very broad front that takes in educational factors, culture and organisational issues, technology, the law, the commercial environment and policy development.

Background to the production of this pack

This institutional development pack is part of the outcomes of the work of the TrustDR project (Trust in Digital Repositories) funded by the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) the UK government body responsible for supporting education and research by promoting innovation in new technologies and by the central support of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) services.

The TrustDR project was a partnership between the University of Ulster and UHI Millennium Institute and operated between June 2005 and August 2007 as part of the JISC Digital Repositories Programme...

The main part of the pack NB in Draft (Word - 1.5Mb)

This institutional development pack for managing IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) in e-learning is intended to support those who wish to update and clarify their institutional policies and infrastructures to help get the best out of using technology to support teaching and learning. Confusion, lack of awareness, poor practice, contradictory policy and risk aversion currently dominate thinking about this subject at all levels – particularly amongst senior management. This is presenting a major obstacle to the effective uptake of e-learning in our tertiary education system. In this pack we explicitly link the task of overhauling the IPR regimes in our institutions to the organisational and professional ‘process change' that is required to make effective use of e-learning – especially in relation to the introduction and extension of flexible learning delivery."