How do educators of Massive Open Online Courses find out about Copyright? [1490] Home : #OER17

Public Group Active 7 years, 7 months ago

Wed, Apr 5 2017, 3:00pm – 4:20pm

Authors: Tina Papathoma

Room: Conf. Hall

Theme: Policy & Practice

Type: Presentations

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Description

Educators who teach Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) need to learn new forms of teaching and learning practice because these learning environments use new technologies and are different from conventional Higher Education courses. Empirical studies indicate that change in professional practice requires conceptual and practical knowledge as well as the development of socio-cultural and self-regulative knowledge (Eraut 2004). While creating MOOCs, educators meet challenges with regards to the material (e.g. text, images, videos) they are allowed to use. This paper focuses on how educators find out about ‘copyright’ (Copyright © UK 2000) when they teach MOOCs. Data were gathered through a multi-case study involving interviews with twenty-eight people with teaching roles on seven MOOCs in History and Politics. Data analysis used Tynjälä’s model (Tynjälä et al. 2016) of integrative pedagogy to identify the different types of theoretical, practical, sociocultural and self-regulative knowledge that educators gain about ‘copyright’ in a MOOC.

The analysis shows that individuals did not engage in formal training (theoretical knowledge) about ‘copyright’ when teaching a MOOC; neither were they aware about restrictions of copyright to use their own material (e.g. textbooks or other published work). Nonetheless, they learned about copyright by experience, while they were designing and running their MOOCs (practical knowledge). They also reflected on their learning experience about copyright as invaluable because this ‘hula hoop’ of legal services made them identify ownership and license of every single piece of media content in their courses (self-regulative knowledge). They worked collaboratively in order to solve the copyright issues by writing new text to use in their MOOCs, sharing each other’s expertise (sociocultural knowledge) that they could then re-use for other purposes. When they faced challenges they integrated theoretical, practical and self-regulative knowledge to solve problems. For instance, when they could not use images because of ‘copyright’, they were producing their own images that they were then free to reuse.

Knowledge about ‘copyright’ is required in order to teach a MOOC. This study shows that educators are not aware of the aspects of copyright when teaching a MOOC. Acquiring that knowledge is important for educators to do a more effective job. The participants in this study used more informal than formal ways of learning about copyright. Aspects of theoretical knowledge were not as evident in interviewees’ learning, extending the process of preparing a MOOC and requiring them to work outside normal working hours. Theoretical knowledge would be equally important to acquire practical knowledge more effectively. These findings suggest people should be provided with training about potential legal issues before producing video, image and text content. This training will accelerate the MOOC process; institutions and educational platforms will be benefited too.

References:

Eraut, M., 2004. Informal learning in the workplace. Studies in Continuing Education,, 26(2), pp.247–273.

Tynjälä, P. et al., 2016. Developing social competence and other generic skills in teacher education: applying the model of integrative pedagogy. European Journal of Teacher Education, 39(3), pp.368–387.

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