In a post-truth world what can we say? I sit in rooms where we discuss what learners should have, based on our best thinking about what kind of learning is good for them. They don’t want it. They want Brexit and Trump and passive learning with no hard exams. 10 million MOOC fans can’t be wrong.
Copyright is a hot topic in the heady world of lecture capture. It’s also Thing 11 in our online course 23 Things for Digital Knowledge
We are lucky to be able to learn from best practice at other institutions. The excellent Jane Secker ( UK Copyright Literacy) has been doing some research to find out what the issues are. She has surveyed UK HE institutions.
https://ukcopyrightliteracy.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/lecture-recording-survey-secker.pdf
The position regarding copyright ownership is enshrined in statute – the Copyright Designs and Patent Act 1988. Section 11(2) provides that copyright created in the course of an individual’s employment vests in the employer. Often this statutory right is backed up with provision in a contract of employment but our University of Edinburgh standard contracts are not explicit in this regard. As a result academic colleagues can sometimes be a bit surprised by this.
I expect we will need to support our colleagues with advice something like this ( adpated from Birkbeck)
Can I use copyright material in my lectures?
You may sometimes wish to use copyright work (e.g. an image, video clip or piece of text) belonging to another person or organisation in the course of your teaching. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988) currently states that copying for educational purposes is permitted, so long as it is not undertaken by a mechanical process. This essentially means you cannot scan, photocopy, or record (using lecture capture) copyright works without explicit permission from the owner.
In terms of lecture recordings, your options are as follows:
Are there exceptions that would allow copyright works to be used?
Showing a video, such as a clip from a film and playing music is permitted under the law, so long as it is solely for the purposes of education and the lecture is not recorded.
Similarly, you can use small amounts of copyright material for the purposes of ‘criticism and review.’ Clearly, good practice requires acknowledging your sources, and stating where it is being used for criticism and review. In this case the work can be included in a recorded lecture.
What am I allowed to include in a recorded lecture?
The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) Higher Education Licence allows small amounts of published copyright works (books and journals) to be copied for teaching purposes. This includes illustrations and images within the works.
In addition, if material that you find online is licensed under Creative Commons (CC) – a less restrictive form of copyright – then you will be able to show this material in a lecture that is being recorded. Again, the source should be acknowledged.
What about material from YouTube?
The copyright in material that you might show from sites such as YouTube lies with the creator of the video, so you would need to obtain permission directly from them (YouTube cannot grant this on their behalf). Some of these materials may be available for educational use or under a CC licence. Although it is permissible to show these recordings for educational purposes, and to provide links to the material, you should exclude this content from a recorded lecture. This can be done by pausing the recording whilst the clip is being played.
Streamed services such as the BBC iplayer or Box of Broadcast National (aka BoB National) may also be used in class but again are not to be included in recorded lectures.
What about using images in my teaching?
Although easy to download, online images are frequently subject to some sort of copyright, and unless you own the copyright yourself, it is usually NOT legal or acceptable to download them and use them in your recorded lectures.
There are several ways that you can legally use images in your recorded lectures:
What about other cases when you can show material you don’t own in lectures?
There are several other instances when you can use copyright material, including:
What are the risks associated with using copyright material?
You are responsible for making sure that your recorded lectures do not infringe copyright. University of Edinburgh, however, is at risk of prosecution for infringing copyright, either within recorded lectures, or by uploading materials to a VLE, public folders, or another website.
Although it may be legal to use these materials within a class, it does not necessarily make it legal to include them within a recorded lecture and/or upload these to a VLE.
The University is targeting an improved student digital experience by investing several million pounds in a state-of-the-art lecture recording system to cover 400 rooms in over the next 3 years.
We want to make sure that your thoughts and ideas on lecture recording are gathered so they can be used during our investigations with suppliers. Having your thoughts included within the process will make sure we make the most of this opportunity to enhance the experience for students and academics at the University of Edinburgh.
The ability to watch lectures again as an aid to revision is immensely popular with our students already and capturing video and audio recordings of lectures at scale will supplement the rich set of online resources that already exist to support learning.
There are many proven benefits to making recordings of lectures available including supporting students for whom English is not a first language and ensuring that our face to face lectures are available in an alternative format for students who require it. Not having to take notes at speed allows students to focus more on what is being said and use valuable contact time to ask questions, knowing that notes can be reviewed and improved later.
We have created 18 use cases for lecture recording. We want you to look at these use cases and think ‘how should this work?’ We want you to think of this in terms of usability and your workflows when using the service.
The creation of policy around lecture recording at this scale will form a separate piece of work, these workshops are about the functionality.
We also want you to tell us which use cases are your priority.
Finally, ‘what are we missing?’ We want you to suggest any use cases not covered.
https://www.events.ed.ac.uk/index.cfm?event=showEventDetails&scheduleId=22280&start=51
Back in the days of Web 2.0 we used to describe things as ‘perpetualy beta‘. For me this perfectly describes Wikipedia. It’ll never be finished: we must add to, and improve it, early and often. Users are co-developers and it’s developed under open source principles of collective intelligence.
Wikipedia/Wikimedia are Thing 10 in our ‘23 things for digital knowledge‘ programme and today is Ada Lovelace Day.
Yesterday I wrote a provocation piece for the Dangerous Women Project. Today a bunch of colleagues and students engaged in dangerous practice and we were featured on the telly. I’m the one wearing the Creative Commons badge.
Since we are thinking about Twitter on ‘23 things for digital knowledge‘ and we have learned about privacy, and we have read our social media guidelines and we are going to learn about copyright and OER; I thought it was worth having a good look at the Twitter Terms of Service.
I note in the first point: ‘ If you are accepting these Terms and using the Services on behalf of a company, organization, government, or other legal entity, you represent and warrant that you are authorized to do so.‘ I wonder, if we tweet from a work account, has our university/dept authorised us to tweet on its behalf?
On privacy: ‘You understand that through your use of the Services you consent to the collection and use (as set forth in the Privacy Policy) of this information, including the transfer of this information to the United States, Ireland, and/or other countries for storage, processing and use by Twitter and its affiliates.’ Good thing we understand our privacy settings.
On copyright: ‘By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).’ The right to reproduce, adapt, modify, distribute. That’s a lotta license!
I am participating in the University of Edinburgh digital skills course ‘23 things for digital knowledge‘.
The first thing to do is to think about blogging. I have been blogging for about 10 years now. I have always had a university hosted blog rather than a personal one. I enjoy the opportunity for reflective writing that it gives me and for thinking ‘out loud’ about ideas I am still forming or testing before they become formal work positions or plans. I see blogging as part of open practice in sharing ideas but also giving insight into the thinking behind some of the decisions I make in my leadership role.
I have no idea how many people read my blog and I’m not sure I want to know, but occasionally I get messages and comments or retweets and links, so that’s always nice.
Task: Use your blog to write a short post about:
A) what you hope to gain out of the 23 Things programme.
I have participated in 23 things programmes before, but the lovely thing about them is, the things are different in each institution and I plan to learn something new.
B) were you aware of the University’s Social Media Guidelines for Staff and Researchers or the student Social Media Student Handbook? What do you think of the guidelines/handbook?
My thoughts on the social media guidelines for staff and researchers are that they seem very focussed on protecting the university from any risk that might result from what we might write, but there is nothing about the risks we might personally be taking in putting ourselves ‘out there’ and nothing about how the university will support us if, while we are using social media, we should happen to attract trolls, abuse, harassment etc.
Last week I attended the ALT Conference where there was a rather splendid keynote talk about trolls by Josie Fraser. It contains some good advice which I think should be part of these guidelines.
Given the dreadful things Labour party members seem to be saying to each other online these days, I wonder whether the university should have a good behaviour pledge too.
A few years ago I was very pleased to participate in the #23things social media training programme at University of Oxford. The course is designed to get you trying out 23 social media things and reflecting on how you might use them and what you think.
While I worked through the course I kept a regular blog which you can read here: https://blogs.it.ox.ac.uk/melissa/tag/23things/
I recommend the course, and I am delighted to say we now have an Edinburgh version! You may all now have the chance to do the things you do best. http://www.23things.ed.ac.uk/
The #23things idea is a reused course design and once you are on the course you become a collector of #23things forever.
My 23 things: “One last thing”, “The order of things”, “Things can only get better”, “The way you do the things you do”, “A Jedi craves not these things”, “They do things differently there”, “These are a few of my favorite things”, “Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you’ll look back and realize they were big things.”, “If you never did you should. These things are fun and fun is good.” “One thing and another”.
A year ago this weekend my father died. Peter worked for pretty much his whole career at University of Edinburgh, at Kings Buildings, in the Darwin Building. He was a molecular biologist, although at Oxford he had studied Physics. I know that his time at Oxford (Wadham) was very happy and he was delighted when I chose to spend some of my career there.
My memories of being a child visiting his lab include the smell of the foyer, the enormous slices of wood from Forestry, playing with plastic molecule models and spinning around on the office chairs.
Peter was the expert in using Edinburgh’s electron microscope and he took pictures of tiny, tiny things*. The microscope was a huge heavy piece of kit which needed to be absolutely still and absolutely flat in order to work properly. In their wisdom Edinburgh colleagues decided to put it on the top floor of the tallest tower which was known to sway in the wind.
Using his knowledge of physics Peter built a sling in which the microscope could sit, making it possible to use. He must have saved the University a fair bit of money because this thing was not cheap.
I am not quite sure what my father’s research was, I suspect it was research into microscopy. I’ ve found a few journal articles and I remember stories of Anne Mclaren and Martin Pollock so his work must have been linked to early genetics. When I was a teenager at school he arranged for me to have my first summer job making fruit -fly food in Mary Bownes’ lab**.
As the executor of his estate I now have a collection of these early electron-micrograph images. If I get time I will digitise them and add them to Wikimedia in the hope they will be useful to someone.
I know that Peter earned royalties from them during his career, but I can find no evidence of an ongoing relationship with an image agency, so it is time for them to become OER. I’d love to hear from anyone who might be able to identify which of the images are of more interest than others.
Fun update to this blog post: Clare (Project Archivist, cataloguing the papers of Sir Kenneth and Lady Noreen Murray )*** has found a picture of Peter in this line drawing by Edith Simon, which has been digitised (he’s top row, fourth from the right, in case you can’t distinguish him from the other beardy scientists).
*Highton, P (1968) The minimum mass detectable by electron microscopy
** Time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like a banana.
*** I have updated Noreen’s Wikipedia page in the past.
A recently published OEPS Case study by Beck Pitt
Creating a Culture of Open: University of Edinburgh describes our approach to developing an open culture at University of Edinburgh. I wrote a similar one my self a few years ago: Open Aproaches at University of Oxford.
…I would always suggest a vision should be supported by a policy, and a policy should be supported by a service and a service should be supported by recurrent funding…
Melissa Highton is Assistant Principal for Online Learning and Director of Learning, Teaching and Web Services at University of Edinburgh. Melissa and her colleagues support all of the learning technology activity in the institution including the development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), open educational resources (OER), the open education portal Open.ed which was launched in early 2016, online and blended learning technologies and courses, digital skills development and audio visual support at the institution. Melissa regularly blogs in an institutional capacity, sharing ideas and what is happening at Edinburgh:
…I think it’s important to let people see how the people who are shaping activity at the institution think and to be transparent about that.
The Centrality of Openness
Since joining The University of Edinburgh two years ago Melissa described how the team had furthered the openness agenda that is central to “high-level strategy” at the institution:
…what we’ve done in the last two years is really to tighten up the thinking about OER and what those various different definitions of OER mean. Edinburgh has a lot of MOOCs activity which is open in some ways but not in others.
We are looking at how the material in the MOOCs and other learning material, our day-to-day learning materials, and the content of our collections and various assets of the institution can be supported in making sure that the licenses on them are open licenses and that they are available for reuse.
This work hasbeen significant for Edinburgh University because it aligns very well with the University mission, as a civic university, to make knowledge open not just within the University but also within the city, Scotland and for the rest of the world…
University of Edinburgh’s mission develops the aims of the Edinburgh Settlement which encouraged university students and professors to work together with local communities to improve life and opportunities for all: “The OER vision for University of Edinburgh has three strands, each building on our history of the Edinburgh Settlement, excellent education, research collections, enlightenment and civic mission.” [REF]
These three areas are central to informing policy and practice at Edinburgh. As Melissa described it, the focus is very much on creating an “open culture” where open practices can thrive. Simultaneously there was also a clear drive for a more open approach from both staff and students. The Edinburgh University Students Association were “very clear that they wanted a lot of the material to be open” whilst educators were keen to be more open in their practice but needed support to do so.
Enabling Openness
University of Edinburgh developed a policy for all staff and students regarding the sharing, use and creation of OER. This policy is grounded in the University’s mission and was described by Melissa “enabling” as well as highlighting the “…value in sharing.” It provides guidance on attribution, encourages use of the CC BY license and advises where to share materials. You can read more about the development of Edinburgh’s policy in this complementary case study Active Evolution: Enabling Cultural Change at Edinburgh University (forthcoming)
To facilitate both the policy and open practice, it was also critical to provide support for staff and students so that they could ask questions about creating, sharing and using OER. It was similarly important to bring together expertise from library services, IT and other areas of the university. Melissa talked of the positivity that staff had regarding OER and open practice but noted that there had been an “open literacy barrier” previously with uncertainty from staff and students as to what license they should use, where OER should be shared etc. This is where the support service has a vital role to play:
I think what we’ve done at Edinburgh is to plan right from the beginning that any vision and policies will be supported by a support service which is available to all the members of the university.
In conjunction with this service, Edinburgh’s new open.ed portal [http://open.ed.ac.uk] also provides a go-to place for resources, information and advice on open education:
Open.ed has provided a focus for people to see all that activity together rather than it being disparate around the institution … it helps colleagues to feel part of something when they can see all the activity that’s going on from other people … has been very good for establishing an open knowledge network within the institution…
Sustainability through openness
Developing an “open culture” brings specific benefits to an institution in the long-term. Melissa described how creators of content at Edinburgh, by using an open license or providing information about how they would like their material to be used and attributed, facilitates both short and long-term reuse of the material both within but also without the institution:
…for the whole of the future now I know very clearly what we can do with that material … so in terms of sustainability having the material clearly licensed under an open culture license has significant benefits to the institution in terms of time and effort and ownership of our own content.
Clear licensing also avoids having to duplicate effort or avoid using a resource:
If we pay attention now to the licensing on our material, it saves us the time and effort of checking licenses of legacy material. And the time we would have to spend … is a cost and it’s people’s time…
The idea of an “open culture” is brought sharply into focus here: in order for openness to be sustainable it must be embedded into practice, not only that of content creators but also other members of staff such as IT experts who choose whether an open or proprietary system will be used. The importance of infrastructure and the need for everyone to ensure that open is a priority was the theme of OER16 and focus of Melissa’s keynote Open with Care… As Melissa described it in our interview:
…not being open is a risk and not being open will cost us money in the future.
Where next for Edinburgh?
Edinburgh will be continuing to develop its existing open services, OER and offerings over the coming months, with a particular, continued emphasis on its students as “global citizens.” Reuse and adaptation of both colleagues and others materials from around the world facilitates this aim by:
…giving us an opportunity to diversify and internationalise our curriculum by taking some of the best examples from other places in the world and adapting them to our local context and including them in our curriculum…
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A 17th Century map of Iceland became our most popular OER for football fans during Euro 2016. The image ‘Gerardi Mercatoris Atlas, Cosmographicae Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura ‘ which belongs to our Centre for Research Collections was added to Wikimedia in February as part of our Wikimedian in Residence partnership project. It was then used to illustrate an article about Iceland on English and German Wikipedia. It has now been viewed more than 2 million times.
Iceland’s Euro2016 matches were on 14 June (1-1 with Portugal), 18 June (1-1 Hungary), 22 June (2-1 victory over Austria), 27 June (2-1 win over England), and 3 July (2-5 defeat to France). Around each of these events people all over the world were keen to learn about this surprising nation. Viewing numbers ( numbers of hits) show appreciable spikes for the matches against Portugal, England, and France.
On German Wikipedia spikes against each of the matches regularly exceeded 100,000 page views.
The biggest spike was for the victory over England!
