Core area 3: The wider context

Candidates should demonstrate their awareness of and engagement with wider issues that inform their practice. This should include evidence of: a) understanding and engaging with legislation, policies and standards; b) policy.

Reflection

For each area you should: ✔ Describe what you have done relevant to the section; ✔ Reflect on this; ✔ Provide supporting evidence.

  • What have I learnt from doing what I describe above? Or
  • What went well/what could have gone better? Or
  • What would I do differently another time? Or
  • What was the impact on my users/students/learning?

a) Understanding and engaging with legislation, policies and standards

Description:

As part of the CDI process at La Trobe we aim to ensure and encourage teaching/coordination/academic staff to ensure that key federal legislation and policies are adhered to. One key area of legislation that we aim to adhere to and train staff to comply with is related to copyright. In Australia we abide by the Copyright Act 1968. Essentially this means that staff are limited when using materials (dramatic, musical, artistic works including film, written and other works) they can incorporate. While there are fair dealing exemptions for Universities these are also limited (for example 1 chapter or 10% of a book, ability to broadcast film in a presentation setting but inability to rebroadcast/retransmit film materials to other distribution channels). For a further overview of Australian copyright the following links are useful:

When undertaking CDIs the library team are involved with the subject development as a way to both support staff with subject improvements but also to ensure that content and materials included in the subject meet copyright legislation restrictions and ideally are incorporated in appropriate ways. Some key ways that myself and the educational design team support the library in this approach is to:

  • Encourage academic and teaching staff to organise eBooks and place their resources and reading lists in a system called Talis. This system makes readings/articles/resources available to students online, tracks usage and reports for copyright purposes.
  • Use creative commons images and materials where possible and encourage staff to do the same by promoting the Creative Commons search website.
  • Remind staff that if wishing to use videos and multimedia materials these should either be University created, freely available online or be sourced and housed through library means and systems so that they can both edit the files, make them available and ensure copyright is upheld at the same time - this is particularly important due to Part VA and VB notices around rebroadcast/retransmission of video materials (such as within the LMS).
  • Refer to the library website and to library staff if unsure of how to best include works or to source copyright free material.
  • Encourage staff to upload their own created content to our University video storage system DORIS and to choose the relevant copyright permissions notice when uploading, and where sourcing existing content to include in DORIS, to fill out associated copyright disclosure forms which are linked within the system.
  • Undertake training updates with the library to ensure I remain up to date on legislation.

Reflection:

I have learnt that encouraging staff to comply can be tricky and is often dependent on how clear it is as to what they need to do, how well and how easily the systems support them to readily and easily meet copyright and also meet their needs more generally, and how much time the processes will take (as staff are typically time-poor). For example, we have had teaching staff actively decide against using Talis as they feel that accessing the resources via this process means too many clicks for the student and students will likely not bother with the readings. Unfortunately their default backup option often becomes embedding a pdf file such as a downloaded article, which does not adhere to copyright legislation. An approach that seems to work at least some of the time has been to note the additional benefits to using Talis - that a library member can set this up for you and can help source resources - this becomes a drawcard for staff given they are time poor, to have active support in helping them source and include resources for them rather than them having to do it themselves. Other benefits I have also indicated to teaching staff include the fact if links break or students have trouble accessing the resource, students can go directly to the library and technical teams for support rather than the academic teaching member as the system is managed by other teams and it is their role to ensure the links are working correctly.

I would recommend that if this is a key institutional directive that ensuring the institutional policies and support processes being clear and provided upfront to staff - many staff weren't aware of the level of support that the library could provide and some staff being sessional may not be given adequate induction to both University supports but also institutional policies and procedures. Another option that I think might assist that I have been slowly working to develop are principles and guidelines for staff linked to checklists that might assist making processes when developing online content clearer and easier to work through.

We can do more in this field - informally I have tried to cite sources when noting images when working with academics, however our existing templates and processes don't easily support this route and academics will often find their own images or replace ones we have included down the track. We are working on new templates and there may be space to feed this into the process, though perhaps it should be through means of educating academic teaching staff while designing with them. Either way, it's really important that we cite sources appropriately in order to demonstrate and model good practice to the students - if asking students to reference sources appropriately and consider copyright in their work then we need to 'walk the walk'. Including references can also provide students an example/model for their own assessments, therefore acting as a teaching and learning opportunity informally. Where possible I aim to show staff the option of using the Creative Commons search function for images, this could and probably should be built into our curriculum development process more formally. These and processes for gaining copyright for materials should ideally form part of our default communications with staff. Our team are currently working on new templates and one element I am keen to ensure is that our templates include directions and support for staff and encourage them to cite sources more clearly.

A key relationship here is working more closely with library teams to better understand copyright. An option might be to co-produce a quick sheet guide for us and for staff, or source existing support resources from library if they exist already. Another option might be around co-running a workshop with the library for teaching staff - this would allow us to preface the importance of these processes.

Supporting evidence

Screenshots of Talis setup, screenshots of images from CC sources where possible (e.g. shells using Pixabay, note template section for acknowledgements), screenshots of copyright documentation process.

b) Policy (optional)

Examples of policy issues you may address include: Policies and strategies (national or institutional) ● Technical standards ● Professional codes of practice

Description: TEQSA requirements and institutional policy. Refer to the minimum online presence and audit inclusions, CIMS changes and accreditation, timeliness of feedback. Our templates and CDI process have aimed to support these, e.g. SLG block (but consistency, workload and accessiblity issues), internal checklists I/we have been building; undergoing audit/evaluation; setting up assessment settings according to feedback policy;

https://policies.latrobe.edu.au/document/view.php?id=223

https://policies.latrobe.edu.au/download.php?id=223&version=1

Reflection: Our current minimum policy needs work, it doesn't necessarily reflect all the TEQSA requirements. Our current templates are part way towards meeting policy but could do more - some of these limitations however are related to other systems, lack of integrations, technical issues with the LMS. Things within our control are checklists and support resources both for building consistent processes within our team but also across other support teams and for training academics to meet policy more clearly. Our support guides and checklists should aim to link/reference relevant policy and our workshops should make this clear.

Supporting evidence Minimum online presence policy, internal checklist documents, SLG block, template design work, new design principles