Type of content

Examples

Rights

Related difficulties

Data generated in use

Analytics

Logs, summary reports, visualisations of data.

Access to analytics and log data is usually subject to the commercial contract between institution and host.

State privacy law requires access to be controlled in specific ways.

Use of data may require approval by an Ethics committee. Release of data or even publication of inferences may require the explicit prior, voluntary permission of the participants.

Responses by learners

Responses by teachers

Assignment submissions, quiz answers, comments, ratings

Marks, feedback, comments, discussions

Title and rights relating to student work are uncertain. Some institutions require participants to assign copyright to the institution. Copyright of teachers’ work is usually vested in their employer.

Learners and teachers arguably have moral rights as authors over substantial works that they create.

Overreaching claims discourage community-building, professional development, and quality improvement.

Some contributions are so fragmented that it is impracticable to get permission for reuse and repurposing, but may still be valued by the participants.

Instructional design

Sequence and configuration of activities and instructional material

Copyright is usually assigned to the institution under the terms of employment of the course developer.

Existing objects

Media

Course objects

slides, notes, videos, games, simulators.

SCORM packages

Media are used under statutory permissions in the (national) Copyright Act, (institutional) collective licences, or (institutional) license agreements with copyright owners of individual objects. Copyright is held by authors, publishers or assignees.

It is hard to track and ensure compliance with a multiplicity of rights holders, agreements, permissions and restrictions, complex jurisdictional, institutional, temporal, commercial and professional constraints in the licenses and permissions.

Statutory permissions fall far short of expectations of teachers and learners.

Platform

Platform configuration

A working configuration is jointly created and maintained by LMS administrators and system adminstrators, as employees to the institution and the host. US copyright law does not protect configurations.

The configuration is a joint responsibility of two organisations.

Configuration may be protected as a Trade Secret.

Application Interfaces

LMS application

Database engine

Webserver

Operating system

OAuth, LTI, TinCan

Moodle

MySQL

Apache

Debian

Software is used under license, e.g. CC, GPL, Apache licence. Software may include components copyrighted by many authors. Patents, designs and trademarks also apply.

License terms for software usually cannot be varied. Software must be selected with license terms that suit business requirements, including standby facilities and support processes.