OER re-use and the Creative Commons: the plight of the practitioner

There was an interesting discussion on the OER Forum the other day about the Creative Commons (CC) license and what it really entails when it comes to practice. I just thought I’d share the initiator of the discussion so that it could continue on this blog.

I’m of the strong opinion that there is still confusion, even amongst practitioners who are using OER regularly, about what can and cannot be done within the CC framework.

Here's a specific question which was thrown at me by someone I tried to convert into an OER user:

"...can I re-use (as is) an image licensed under CC BY-NC-SA in the course material I'm developing (with proper attribution) and release the whole course material under CC BY?...".

The argument (or the catch) is that when the image is used in the course material, the course material becomes a derivative work of the image which should comply with the NC and the SA (please correct me if I'm wrong on this point as it's the starting point of the confusion; maybe a paragraph of text would be a better example rather than an image). As such, if the course material is released under CC BY, then who ever is using it under CC BY can also (in theory) use the image under CC BY as well (the second point of confusion)?; but the image is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA!

My answer to this question would be to state explicitly

"Unless otherwise specified.... this course material is released under CC BY"

which indicates that the whole course material is released under CC BY except for the components which are licensed under different licenses. This is a lesson I learnt the hard way while developing my OER based course material http://www.ishantalks.com/2012/06/oer-based-odl-course-material-web.html.

I’m no lawyer and don’t claim to be an expert in interpreting the CC licenses. To my understanding, the whole concept of the CC license is based on it being usable by lay people to express their intellectual property rights. However, looking at the complexities, it becomes apparent that this is not always the case.

The only thing which is CLEAR is that the whole thing is still a bit GRAY! 

Or else we can always only use CC BY or Public Domain resources. But this is quite a challenge in practice as some of us might already know ;D.

OER Based ODL Course Material - Web Database Application

Being one of the youngest Open Distance Learning (ODL) institutions in Asia, Wawasan Open University (WOU) recently embarked on the journey towards predominantly adopting and adapting Open Educational Resources (OER) as self directed course material for its adult learners pursuing their undergraduate degrees.

The School of Science and Technology (SST) along with the Institute for Research and Innovation (IRI) initiated a pilot project which would investigate the adaption of readily available OER material under the Creative Commons license to be used as course material for undergraduate learners in the Information Technology (IT) discipline. As a result, the middle level course TCC242/05 Web Database Application, which deals with the Open Source Linux, Apache, PHP and MySQL architecture, was developed completely re-using existing OER. The course has completed one full presentation cycle (beginning January and ending June 2012) with the students sitting the exam.

The complete course material released under CC BY-SA can be found at http://www.oerasia.org/OERResources/WebDatabaseApplication.pdf