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I am no lawyer (thank goodness) but it strikes me that a statement that "works created 'whether or not in the course of your employment' [are] 'the absolute property of the College'" is counter to Section 11 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and therefore arguably an unfair condition of employment.

And what would happen if an individual had part-time employment contracts with two colleges, each of which sought to impose this condition? In practice, many teachers in further and adult education do work for more than one institution, and will in practice create resources that they will use with students across the various institutions where they work. Who owns the copyright in these resources? (I have been asking this question for at least 15 years and never received an answer:-) )

Terry Loane


On 09/03/2015 13:38, Tavis Reddick wrote:
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For staff working in publicly-funded educational institutions, presumably terms and conditions of employment have an impact on enabling/disabling support for open educational resources (and other aspects of open education, like open source coding).

 

I am aware of a quite restrictive example (for support staff, not specifically educators) which refers to works created “whether or not in the course of your employment” being “the absolute property of the College”. This would seemingly prevent private contributions to the world of OER for those staff.

 

Even assuming that the institution’s terms followed the standard practice for copyright creation of resources, there may be scope for expressing a preference that the licence these would be made available under would be an open, rather than a commercial one.

 

Are there any model terms and conditions of employment which demonstrate how OER can be positively supported (in the UK and beyond)?

 

 

Tavis Reddick

Enterprise Systems Support Technologist

ICT Services

Stenton Campus, Glenrothes

Fife College

01592 223313

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www.fife.ac.uk

 




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