The technology community is fond of referring to announcements that
fundamentally alter a sector or service as a "game changer". Recent
examples include the debut of the Apple iTunes store in 2003, which
demonstrated how a digital music service that responds to consumer
demands was possible, and Google’s Gmail, which upended web-based email
in 2004 by offering 1 gigabyte of storage when competitors like
Microsoft’s Hotmail were providing a paltry 2 megabytes.
My weekly technology law column (Toronto
Star version, homepage
version) recently covered the U.S. government
announcement of its own game changer, though
it attracted far less attention than iTunes or Gmail. Led by the
Departments of Labor and Education, it committed US$2 billion toward a
new program to create free online teaching and course materials for
post-secondary programs of two years or less.
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Appeared
on February 27, 2011 in the Toronto Star as U.S. digital project
signals the rise of versatile e-textbooks
The technology community is fond of referring to announcements that
fundamentally alter a sector or service as a "game changer". Recent
examples include the debut of the Apple iTunes store in 2003, which
demonstrated how a digital music service that responds to consumer
demands was possible, and Google’s Gmail, which upended web-based email
in 2004 by offering 1 gigabyte of storage when competitors like
Microsoft's Hotmail were providing a paltry 2 megabytes.
Last month, the U.S. government announced its own game changer, though
it attracted far less attention than iTunes or Gmail. Led by the
Departments of Labor and Education, it committed US$2 billion toward a
new program to create free online teaching and course materials for
post-secondary programs of two years or less.
There are other open educational resource initiatives - the State of
California's Digital Textbook Initiative has led to the open
availability of dozens of texts - but nothing that approaches the scale
of the new U.S. program. By injecting $500 million per year for four
years, the initiative will offer "free, high-quality curriculum and
employment training opportunities within reach of anyone who has access
to the Internet." As a condition of funding, all materials will carry
the Creative Commons BY licence, which permits their free derivative
use for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.
Interest in open educational materials has been mounting steadily in
recent years as educators and funders seek to leverage the millions of
articles that are freely available under open access licences and to
develop flexible materials that can be used on any platform and updated
or amended without running into publisher or copyright barriers.
Cost is obviously also a significant consideration since school budgets
face increases in book and royalty costs that often far outpace other
expenditures. The shift toward an open educational resource model may
still provide payment to authors, but it adopts a different approach
from the conventional royalty-based system. Authors are often paid
upfront for their work in return for unlimited access and the ability
for others to build on their works.
From a Canadian perspective, there are genuine risks that domestic
materials will be forgotten as schools gravitate toward the U.S. funded
free alternatives. In fact, a recent study commissioned by the
Department of Canadian Heritage on the academic publishing industry
acknowledged that the availability of alternative and digital resources
represented a substantial risk to the publishing industry.
For Canadian educators, the challenge will be to supplement the freely
available materials with Canadian context. Some Canadian universities
have already jumped on the bandwagon: Athabasca University in Alberta
is aiming to replace many of its course materials with open educational
resources, while the BCcampus initiative brings together 25
post-secondary institutions to contribute and share open educational
resources.
Recent developments provide an exceptional opportunity for both federal
and provincial governments to build on the open educational resource
movement by committing funding to new initiatives as well as efforts to
"Canadianize" freely available materials. Moreover, granting
institutions such as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada could work on integrating their funded research into
course materials.
Non-governmental organizations such as the Canadian Legal Information
Institute, which provides free access to thousands of legal cases,
could build a "universal casebook" that offers free access to all cases
studies by Canadian law students (I am a CanLII board member).
Creating and adopting these new materials will not happen overnight,
but it seems likely that years from now students will look back at the
little-noticed announcement in January 2011 as the moment when access
to educational materials was forever changed.
Michael Geist holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and
E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. He can
reached at mgeist@uottawa.ca or online at www.michaelgeist.ca.
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The National Post runs a feature
on the legal profession's views on Bill C-32. Several lawyers are
quoted expressing concern with the digital lock rules. The
article
concludes "ultimately, most lawyers suggest that the fair dealing
definitions and exceptions should be broadened and consumers should
have the right to break digital locks for personal use."
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The Wire Report reports
that the Conservatives and the Bloc are negotiating a deal on C-32 that
would allow for the bill to pass in return for several reforms
including the removal of fair dealing for education and the exception
for broadcasters.
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