HEFCE IPR in E-Learning report 2006/20 - Will it have an impact?

The Higher Education Funding Council for England have published a report on IPR in e-learning programmes aimed at senior managers within HE and FE. The report focuses on HEI ownership rights and the importance of making staff, students and third parties aware of their rights whilst being respectful to such groups. It highlights many common situations that can occur amongst these stakeholders and ways around such situations and ways of reducing the risk of disputes occurring between such parties.

Despite the report being informative and useful for institutions, it is unclear whether the recommendations of the report will be implemented within an institutional environment. In the past, the majority of senior managers have been uninterested in IPR and it is unknown whether the report will get digested and have an impact within institutions.

The report highlights a number of legal frameworks and the relationships of institutions, employed staff, students and collaborative third parties. For a long time now a set of clear guidelines for staff, students, other institutions and third parties has been needed to ensure that each stakeholder is aware of the IPR issues and legal situation. The report states that "Every HEI needs to establish a clear, preferably plain English, IPR policy and disseminate it widely across the organisation, including IT guidelines and codes of practice for staff and students" and I agree. This is becoming increasingly important due to the increase in e-learning usage and the increased need to share research and teaching material through systems such as Institutional Repositories and social networking/software sites.

The report also highlights the assistance that is available to institutions in order to combat the problem of rights unawareness and in order to distinguish a clear and plain english IPR policy, including JISC Legal. I'm not convinced whether institutions make use of this support or whether they follow some of the recommendations highlighted in the document. It could be another case where important issues get brushed under the carpet and don't get dealt with because of the lack of knowledge. This report aims to bridge the unawareness gap and to educate managers and other staff about a range of rights issues.

The full report can be found at: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2006/06_20/ and is 81 pages long, however, the first 31 pages is the written report and the latter 50 is in Annex's of model licence agreements that could be used within institutions.