[A2k] TrustDR and DRM in E-Learning * Feedback requested

[Michelle Childs]

Any one interested in e learning and institutional repositories may want
to look at and give feedback to the UK research project outlined below.
Michelle

Request for Comment and Feedback

The TrustDR project, funded by the JISC in the UK, is tasked with devising
some practical solutions to the problem of managing IPR (Intellectual
Property Rights) in e-learning materials * especially in the context of
institutional repositories of learning objects. To do this the project is
working its way through a demanding problem area that includes
educational, technical, legal, cultural, political and
organisational issues. The project team have decided that the right
approach to this task is that of taking a critical and creative attitude
to problem solving. The work of the first half of the project is now
publicly available for comment, we would really value your feedback about
the documents you can find at this website:

http://www.uhi.ac.uk/lis/projects/trustdr/work_in_progress.html


Some of our emerging conclusions are listed below:

It is understandable that many people associate DRM (Digital Rights
Management) just with technology (digital), however it is our view that
most of the work involved is legal and cultural (rights management). In
this domain it would be very, very easy to spend a lot of money on useless
(and pointless) technical measures. We propose that most of what we need
can be (and needs to be) achieved with *lo-tech and no-tech' solutions.

The law is not as restrictive as many people think, we advocate an
approach that says *what do we want to do?* not *what do we have to do?*

The TrustDR project final outputs aim to give users the ability to tell
their lawyers what to do and to tell their IT support people what they
have to do to make this work.

As with DRM in any industry it is important to understand the real nature
of the business and how it works, in our case we need to clearly
understand the  *business of e-learning* and the true role of learning
materials in education. If this means upsetting a few cherished myths then
so much the better.

E-learning, as it is currently practised, continues to fail to reach its
potential, mostly for cultural and organisational reasons. Tackling the
legal issues in learning materials can be a powerful way of transforming
the educational workplace to make better use of e-learning.

John Casey
Learning Materials Manager
TrustDR JISC Project Manager


--
Michelle Childs -Head of European Affairs
Consumer Project on Technology in London
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