Our experiences of and interest in sharing and openness This topic has elicited much discussion and interest amongst our group members. It would appear that our colleagues, as educators are passionate in their views about opening up the sharing of resources, at an individual, institutional and national level. On the one hand, it seems non-sensical to create educational resources from scratch when high quality materials are readily and freely available. On the other hand, “opening” up the publication of original works of a more specialised nature, which are not expected to attract funding or subsidisation by government, might create a barrier for authors to consider not to share their research and findings. Many diverse factors motivate educators to share their teaching materials, ranging from the availability of an institutional repository to share materials to, to the presence (or absence) of an IP policy that facilitates the sharing of OER. The willingness of educators to share their resources would ultimately depend on whether sharing knowledge was their ultimate concern. What is also worth noting is that in many cases universities (in South Africa) use the same textbooks for similar modules. Consequently, lecturers do not actually have a claim on their “own notes” as the foundation of the content is gained from one source. Before the introduction of learning management systems (LMS) such as BlackBoard, lecturers configured online spaces to share their notes, slides and exercises. Eventually the content was in the open space, for all to peruse and use. However, the method of sharing content has changes as more institutions understand the importance and see the potential of using an LMS. One could argue from the discussion above that universities may have an obligation to develop spaces such as LMS to aid lecturers in order to distribute materials, and also, to “gate keep” the openness of lecturers’ material.
The national contexts for these phenomena The position of sharing of resources amongst both public and private Higher Educational institutions in South Africa will be briefly examined.
Private Higher Education Institutions Regarding the copyright of our private Higher Education institution’s published work i.e. anything that is produced by us, is protected by traditional copyright laws and people need to apply for permission to utilise this outside of the institution’s space. Sharing is thus limited without designation of an open license. Our institution is however generally flexible in this regard when work is published in its original form e.g. the institution allows authors who publish in their own accredited journal to put their articles on their institutional repositories in the final PDF form and attribute to them, but only after permission has been applied for. Academic material would be more complex in this regard. Also if anyone uses any of our sites/staff/artefacts/students/study manuals/slides/processes/ policies/a case study etc. for anything outside of their direct work on campus i.e. a lecturer can use the material to lecture, make class notes etc. but if an individual wants to research us or do an assignment with us as a case study or interview students for collation of data as part of their Masters or Doctorate, they need to apply for permission through the research request process contained in the institution’s research and postgraduate studies policy. What is encouraging to note is the fact that there is an acknowledgement that the opening up and sharing of resources is acknowledged as an important area of development in online teaching and learning support.
Public Higher Education Institutions In the case of a public university based in Pretoria, South Africa, their Intellectual Property Policy states:
“The fundamental objective of the University’s policy on intellectual property is to provide a framework for a fair and equitable distribution of benefits occurring as a results of research, technology development, and innovation and technology transfer.”
In their policy the university does not link their content to CC licensing requirements, but to the Copyright law of South Africa. Consequently, it would be sufficient to merely refer to the content being original work such as published research, Masters and Doctoral studies and opinions by scholars linked to the university. What is also prominent in this policy is “encouragement” to share research in order to increase the research output and credibility of the university. In addition to the university’s Intellectual Property Policy highlighted above, the university has entered into a “Blanket License Agreement” with the South African Dramatic, Artistic and Literary Rights Organisation (DALRO). This agreement makes provision for the following:
“The blanket license will enable lecturers to prepare study material without having to wait for copyright permission before it can be printed or distributed.”
This implies that content such as module guides and readers need to be submitted to the university’s legal department for record keeping and reported to DALRO. Royalties are then paid over by DALRO to the applicable parties. In conclusion, from the South African perspective, there does not seem to be only one way of complying with copyright regulations. CC licensing does not seem to play a major role in the educational environment.
Thoughts and ideas about responsible sharing Making open textbooks available as online publications free for students to download for educational or non-commercial use would be a good starting point to reduce the cost of education. Open educational resources need to be properly designed within a wider context which takes cognisance of support learning, and within a culture of collaboration. By releasing institutional materials under an open license, this will enable the institutional portal to grow, to be associated to a repository for teaching materials that are shared globally and thus ultimately contribute to increasing the pool of global open education resources.
Over the past month South Africa was challenged with the concept “decolonisation” of education and university content. The main arguments were that universities are more likely to refer to content, approaches and material from European countries and the USA and not enough emphasis is placed on authentic African research and research findings. By making content available online with a “free to share” CC licensing, more African specific research and content may become freely available to students and universities to engage with on different levels.