Open Educational Resources and Creative Commons Licenses

Abstract

ACDE Vice Chancellors’ Workshop, 22 August 2009, Nairobi, Kenya, Paul G. West, Director, Knowledge Management & Information Technology, Commonwealth of Learning (COL) // Copyright – this is sometimes referred to as a “thorny issue”. I will not cover the bigger issue of intellectual property, I will not even mention patents and trademarks, nor will I talk much about “all rights reserved”, which you will see written on all the text books you are NOT allowed to copy for your learners. // Over the last few years, COL has published a number of documents aimed at helping Commonwealth Education Ministries improve their awareness on the topic of copyright. Some of these have focused on finding ways to reduce the cost of importing copyrighted materials and making use of the so called flexibilities in the internal copyright agreements. // You will find a free introductory book on our website that you can download and use for yourselves, and share with anyone else. It is free and it has been published under a Creative Commons license. // These are the options I will touch on now – all rights reserved and creative commons.