Copyright is enshrined in law in the form of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and related legislation. All Universities must comply with this to protect their academic reputation and also avoid the potential financial penalties of infringement. There are particular dangers with regard copyright of electronic content, so an understanding of Copyright law has been important to me both at Cardiff University and before that at the University of Birmingham.
In particular, some of the most relevant Copyright rules of thumb I have discovered include:
In my previous role at the University of Birmingham my remit was largely one of raising awareness in the School of Education, ensuring that colleagues knew about Copyright rules, knew what to do to comply, and were aware of the penalties for not complying. Practically, this meant including copyright information in training sessions, sending e-mail reminders on a regular basis, giving one-to-one tutorials on linking to the electronic library, and pointing colleagues towards available legal resources such as Box of Broadcasts or JISC MediaHub.
Copyright compliance became an even higher priority during the rollout of the Canvas VLE for a number of reasons, including both the higher profile nature of a new system and the openness of Canvas, which allows content to be made public. I also decided that the transition to Canvas provided a perfect opportunity for the School to 'start from a blank slate', audit all content and ensure compliance going forward. So while I would not be policing all materials in Canvas as such (I feel ultimate responsibility must reside with academic colleagues) I took it upon myself to incorporate a number of important copyright related tasks into the Canvas Rollout Project:
This approach was not only effective but also efficient within the scope of the Canvas rollout project, and I feel that the role of a learning technologist should be one of awareness raising rather than 'policing'. Ultimate responsibility for decision making should lie with academics; my role is to ensure that they are equipped to make good decisions around copyright.
Nevertheless, in my current role I have more direct involvement in the authoring and creation of online content, as I work with academic colleagues to produce online web content for eight modules across the CPEL suite of programmes. This can often be a challenge as these colleagues are very inexperienced in writing online content and draw on a wide range of materials from a variety of online sources.
To help raise awareness I have provided training on copyright and also included a page on Copyright as part of the production toolkit that I created for CPEL content authors. However, this prevention approach hasn't proved very effective and copyright issues have had to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis as part of the authoring process itself. Related tasks I carry out as part of the instructional design / quality checking process include:
Sometimes issues can be dealt with fairly straightforwardly; for example where images have been included for aesthetic purposes, it is normally fairly straightforward to find or purchase a legal alternative. I use a Shutterstock membership to purchase and download a range of images for these purposes, while I also use open repositories such as Xpert and Wikimedia Commons to source freely-licenced content. Sometimes, especially for tables and diagrams, it may be necessary to create our own alternative diagrams, which I create using Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Fireworks.
This policing of copyright can be very time-consuming, and cause bottlenecks in content creation, as content often can't be progressed to proof-reading or translation stages until the issues are resolved. However it is important to deal with these issues and to make colleagues aware of their responsibilities around online content. I hope that as the project progresses academics will become more aware of the parameters in which we are working and will become more adept at sourcing suitable content. To aide this I will make copyright information more visible as part of the process but, I think more importantly, will try to shift the focus from policing 'issues' to raising awareness of how to source high quality open and freely-licensed resources and content as I feel that this may be more effective in changing behaviour. With this in mind I am planning to create a page of advice and resources for content authors and also run a training session on how to find open and freely-licenced content.
The University's of Birmingham's Code of Practice on Plagiarism had a significant bearing on practice around online submission and marking in the School of Education. I managed the implementation of online submission in the School over a number of years, and plagiarism was a major driver behind this initiative, as Turnitin software was seen to be useful as a mechanism of detection, in line with point 4.1 of the Code of practice, which states that
The University reserves the right to use all legitimate means at its disposal to detect plagiarism where it arises.
I felt that it was important to ensure that the School met the requirements of the following paragraph (4.2) and advised the students concerned in advance
how this process will be undertaken and of the particular submission requirements (if any) involved.
This meant, in particular, ensuring that a statement was placed in the programme handbooks of all programmes doing online submission initially, and, very soon, all handbooks in the School, as I became aware that some assignments not formally submitted electronically were being retrospectively processed through Turnitin, whether en masse or in individual (suspicious) cases.
I realised that this somewhat sporadic (and some may say arbitrary) use across the School could be challenged as inequitable and used The Code of Practice as a driver for further expansion of online submission in terms of equity and fairness for all students. By the academic year 2014, all assignments on all programmes in the School were submitted online and processed through Turnitin as standard.
As well as the detection and deterrence aspect of Turnitin, it has long been recognised that the software can help with awareness raising and education about plagiarism and good academic practice, the importance of which is enshrined in the Code of Practice, point 3.1:
The School must ensure there is provision of guidance on what constitutes plagiarism during the induction process.
This element of School practice around Turnitin came into sharper focus in the summer of 2014 as the University reviewed the plagiarism related practice across the institution and identified the provision of advice and support around good academic practice (and the promotion of University-level guidance) to be a priority.
As a result of this I worked with the school plagiarism contact (point 2.4 in the Code of Practice) to coordinate the School's response, which included requiring students to complete the University's online plagiarism course. This was linked to within pre-course and induction materials across the school, and I oversaw the dissemination of this, for example in the Online Induction Module plagiarism task.
Another aspect of student awareness raising and education around plagiarism was the provision of a draft Turnitin dropbox, which gave students the opportunity to check their assignments for plagiarism and referencing issues before submitting. My input was to coordinate this process, obtaining approval from School senior management and College Board, presenting at relevant meetings. I also developed technical guidance and general plagiarism advice on interpreting the Turnitin report; this is evidenced in the attachment 'Draft-Dropbox-Instructions'.
This range of innovations in the School of Education had a really positive impact on assessment and the student experience, and it is interesting that while we often see policies, particularly at University level, to be a burden on us in Colleges and Schools, and as learning technologists often a barrier, they can at times provide a catalyst for positive change and be an agent for enhancing learning, teaching and assessment. In this way policies can help provide leverage for implementing enhancements that we know will have a positive impact even, at times, when the original purposes of the policy are more prosaic or bureaucratic. Ultimately though, and more to the point, all learning technology interventions should be towards a purpose and I as a professional should be working towards helping our organisation achieve its goals; by keeping abreast of policy and procedure I am more able to do this.