There you have it – copyright and digital teaching materials in one compact nutshell. As we said at the outset of this resource, we know our copyright journey is a continuous one. We will be continually adding to this – and hopefully the updates will come with your help. If you have anything you’d like to share around copyright – be it a resource, a frequently-asked-question, or a narrative of your experience navigating and working with copyright and digital pedagogy, please complete our feedback form.
You can take comfort in the knowledge that copyright is not always clear-cut and it isn’t something you can easily build into your teaching practice. There is effort in ensuring you are using others works in a fair and equitable way – and that protection is one that you would like to be afforded yourself if the situation were reverse. However, we are balancing on the tip of more and more openness, particularly when it comes to digital teaching materials, and as that spirit of collaboration and creative commons licenses expands, it is our hope that copyright and use of materials will become more clear.
And don’t forget, there are many people who will help ‘clear the copyright cobwebs’ for you. Within higher education, there is usually a copyright specialist available through either a copyright office or the library system – don’t hesitate on contacting them- that’s what they are there for.
Data is constantly being created, uploaded, downloaded, shared – and for many of us – and more importantly, our students, it is critical to reflect on the rights and responsibilities of the data creator before doing so. And we, as creators of this resource, have hopefully made the case that protection of intellectual property is critical, and the creation of new knowledge depends upon it.