Introduction to Learning Theories

What is a theory?

Once you have carried out an analysis and identified learning goals, before reinventing the wheel, it’s important to look for existing resources. In Part 3: Finding Online Resources we will look at the different types of online learning resources and how they can be used.

By the end of this section you will be able to find and evaluate online resources. You will be aware of the broad range of resources available online and you will understand how to comply with copyright and licensing laws. You will explore “Open” resources including OERs and MOOCs. And you will be able to evaluate resources based on quality, accessibility, and usability.

Copyright & Licensing

Before embarking on the lengthy and time-consuming process of creating an online course, it’s worth looking at what is already available. To use existing content you must have a good working knowledge of Copyright & Licensing.

The next section is taken from the OpenLearn Course Digital literacy: succeeding in a digital world and licensed under Creative Commons

There are a number of sites that offer space to share original material. For example, YouTube is popular for video and Flickr is a popular photo sharing sites.

If you want to use someone else’s material (often referred to as third party content), you need to be thinking about getting permission to do so, whether that’s through an exception such as Fair Dealing (more later), a Creative Commons licence or by contacting the rightsholder.

If you need to contact the rightsholder to seek permission, make sure you allow plenty of time for a response and explain the context of your use and the media in which you want to reproduce their content.

When you share your own original material online, you should also be thinking about how you can best protect your own copyright and avoid confusion by any potential users of your content.

For the remainder of this section you’ll be finding out more about copyright law and how it is used. You’ll also learn about Creative Commons licences, which offer a quick and easy way to protect your own rights when you share original material.

Intellectual property refers to anything unique that someone has created and may want to protect. Examples include written content, images, photographs, sound recordings and video.

Copyright is an Intellectual property right (IPR) protected in statute in the United Kingdom under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988). Other countries have their own legal systems for protection of copyright works. The law of copyright prevents the unauthorised copying of original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic content (often referred to as ‘works’) in any medium and in any territory. Such content would include software (programs and underlying code), novels, poems, plays, films, musical works and sound recordings, drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures.

Copyright in the UK offers legal protection automatically to original works and comes into force as soon as a work is created (authored) and put in writing or otherwise (fixed). There is no need to register, seek approval or apply for copyright to exist. This is known as ‘no formalities’ and many countries have the same system. This was agreed by the Berne Convention, which also agreed to protect each country’s copyright works in their own country. The convention enables countries to trade and be secure that their copyright (IPR) is protected from any unauthorised use worldwide. This is particularly important when working with the internet and seeing content on other sites which may be hosted in places other than the UK. There are further details on the Gov.uk How copyright protects your work website.

Copyright Licensing Agency (2009), Copyright information provides helpful explanations of copyright.

Intellectual Property Office (2014), How long copyright lasts provides a table showing the length of copyright protection for different types of original work.

Given the ease with which online material can be reused, whether it belongs to you or someone else, it is very important to be aware of the implications for copyright owners and users.

Copyright Holders

Unless assigned to another party by contract (e.g., employment or publisher) the copyright holder is usually the person who has created (authored) an original work. This might be a picture, photograph, song, text or a piece of software. As long as it is saved in a fixed form, they control the rights (IPRs) to that content. As you’ve already discovered, the author’s rights are automatic from the time the work is created.

To make it clear that work is owned by an individual, it is often a good idea to record ownership of the work itself. You can do this using the copyright symbol, ©, on the work itself, for example ‘© Jane Bloggs (date)’. If you are the copyright holder, you should consider in what ways you would allow use of your work without asking for your permission. You can also add this to your work using Creative Commons licences for example. It is a good idea to add on your contact details so that users can contact you to request permission which is not covered.

Copyright Users

A copyright user is anyone who uses someone else’s original work. It’s easy to find material online, but it’s also important to ensure you have permission to use it as you intend which may include presenting it via a different media. Copyright protection exists in all media (and all territories) including the internet. Just because you find material online, you should not assume that you have the permission of the copyright owner to reuse it. You do have the right to read and look at it online though. Unless the rightsowner has specified permission on their work, you will need to seek permission to copy it and share it online or distribute it further.

To make it clear that work is owned by an individual, it is often a good idea to record ownership of the work itself. You can do this using the copyright symbol, ©, on the work itself, for example ‘© Jane Bloggs (date)’. If you are the copyright holder, you should consider in what ways you would allow use of your work without asking for your permission. You can also add this to your work using Creative Commons licences for example. It is a good idea to add on your contact details so that users can contact you to request permission which is not covered.

A copyright user has the responsibility to:

• Contact the copyright owner to ask permission to reuse their material, unless a permission exists on their work such as a Creative Commons licence to copy and share their work
• Credit the original creator of the work in the form of an acknowledgement. This will state the name of the work you copied, the author, the url or page numbers (if applicable) and the date of the original publication, for example ‘extract from Pring, S. (2015) ‘Springtime walks’, Spring into action, 1 April [blog] Available at http://springintoactionblog.wordpress.com (Accessed 1 April 2016)’.

There are a number of exemptions under copyright law such as Fair Dealing in the UK and Fair Use in the US. These are ‘defences’ which mean that, while there is provision to use content without permission, this use can be challenged by rights owners if they do not agree with the interpretation of Fair Dealing.

The exemption for education allows learners and academic researchers to access and copy the work of others (as they wish) as long as that original work is properly credited and the use is fair. Note: use of a whole work (for example, a book) may not be fair under this provision. Learners and researchers use reference lists and bibliographies to credit the contributions of others in the development of their own ideas.

Creative Commons licences, set out in easy to understand language and symbols, provide a means for establishing specific rights without the need to contact the copyright owner. This is explained in the next section.

Copyright laws are all about protecting the (mostly) economic rights rights of the individual creator and preventing unauthorised use. They provide a legal framework for copyright owners to pursue those who copy or use their material without credit, which is known as plagiarism.

Copyright laws have been in existence for many years and can be slow to change. Digital technology, such as the internet, provides the means for rightsholders to share their works more easily. However, many rightsholders wanted to share their works (and at the same time benefit from others sharing) but were concerned about protection of their works and needed assurance that they were only going to be used in ways that they agreed with.

Creative Commons was founded in 2001, and provides a set of licences which are guaranteed by the rightsholder to be non- revokable providing the user abides by the easy to read licence terms. These licences operate both online and offline. Creative Commons licensing has proved successful and easily identifiable by its logo and symbols, which are internationally recognisable even if the licence itself is written in a local language.

So rights owners can make their works freely-available under an appropriate CC licence and any rights not granted still rest with the copyright holder (rights owners). In this way their copyright is protected as well as being shared. Using Creative Commons in this way also promotes their works and could result in some income streams which are still available to licence under a commercial licence if they need to. A rightsholder may withdraw their work from a CC licence at any time. However, those works already accessed and being used still enjoy the non-revokable licence.