Re:Digital Rights- Syllabus, Online Content etc.

["Siegfried Angerer" <sseaprod@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings
Questions over the ownership of online course content, syllabi, resource
lists, instructional video and audio, reference and book lists and all other
matters including student tutorial email and chat-room support materials and
texts, have been a major stumbling block in the development of competent
online learning materials for some time.

Concerning the original question posted some time ago, the delivery of an
extensive syllabi that includes internet links, book lists, lecture and
tutorial topics and many other learning and teaching resources, I reiterate
several points made many month ago.

These very extensive documents are called online active framework documents.
Their scope, breadth and depth extend far beyond the brief course
descriptions normally published in a standard faculty handbook for several
reasons.

-         The online active framework document is in fact the scoping study
that defines all aspects of the online course to be developed. It allows
flexible learning management to precisely calculate the cost of online
course development as well as define what needs to be included, what is
already available, who has developed what, who needs to be contacted for the
purposes of collaborative and cooperative development agreements, who owns
what, what negotiations with which institution need to be considered, which
author, publisher or academic requires to be contacted in order to clarify
rights, legality, research - teaching and learning cooperation etc. In
addition, these extensive framework documents form the core business and
project management plan for all online course development tasks, covering
the actual online content development cycles, scheduling and budgeting.

-         Whereas this document is called a syllabi in the current
discussion round, I always refer to these documents as an active framework
document for several reasons. The word syllabi is rather limited and does
not cover the full extend of the student centred deep learning methodology
that defines an active framework document. In the case of an active
framework we are looking not only at the standard course and resource
description available in any good faculty handbook. No! We are developing
the essential learning and teaching structure for a student centred deep
learning environment that aims to address as many student questions, issues
and problems that are commonly identified among defined student types. It
also includes the extensive learning resources, help and study support
features for the common learning types. For this reason, as the original
posting clearly identified, the online document is very extensive indeed. In
fact, a good online framework generally takes me about 3000 hours to write,
develop and produce - that's a full year. It generally costs from $25,000 to
$55,000 (AUS) to develop. It generally does not have to be revised for at
least two years and because students and other staff are asked to keep it up
to date, the entire document is always active and always adjusting to
current teaching and learning needs.

For this reason I formulated the opinion, bolstered by the MIT Open Content
Foundation, that these active frameworks (syllabi) must be free to all. They
do not comprise the actual course, but they contain everything you need to
study the course (even if you are not enrolled).

However, just because these documents are free does not mean that the
author(s) and contributors should have their IP removed and replaced by
ownership claims made by the institution. In fact, it is nonsense for an
institution to even want to own these types of resources. The reasons are;
if the institution wishes to own it then it also owns the cost of upgrade
and maintenance. This means that a document that is active and continuously
adjusting to current teaching and learning needs will require a continuous
upgrade and maintenance budget. If this business scenario is translated over
several hundred courses within a University it is conceivable that a large
proportion of the annual budget will be diverted. Since the annual upgrade
and maintenance cost is generally about one third of the original cost of
the product an institution can send itself bankrupt within a matter of years
if it truly wishes to follow silly business practices.

No! It is far more sensible for an institution to fund the initial
development and benefit form increased student loadings, increased teaching
and learning productivity, higher quality assurance and secondary revenues
earned form associated publishing, research and collaborative initiatives
that result from the delivery of this free resource.

This includes, placing the institution library in charge of managing the DRM
and DOI aspects, a recognition that author(s) rights must be guaranteed
under DOI whilst the institution is recognized as the publisher responsible
for DRM. This rule must apply regardless of whether the syllabi is free or
not,  delivered under external contract staff, part-time or any other
contract staff, tenured contracted staff or whatever other employment
relationship exists between the institution (publisher) and the author
(academic - writer).
Please note: At present I favour and encourage all academics to registered
their works with an independent DOI registration service prior to placing
any of their work on any University owned server.

Ps
Since I develop these extensive resources to be published by an education
provider and I specifically stipulate that these are to delivered free to
everyone, I must have a good reason for it. The reason is that it is in fact
more expensive for institution to keep this material behind it's firewalls
because it will be unable to benefit from massive productivity, QA,
marketing and public relations gains.

Regards
Siegfried Angerer
Director SEA Pty Ltd (R&D Trust)
Online Learning and Teaching Developers and Consultants to the Education &
Industry Training
Ph 613 96455388
Email: sseaprod@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
No 2 College Pl.
Albert Park 3206, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia