1 Digital Rights Expression and Management in the Supply Chain the Perspective of eLearning Management Systems Jan Poston Day Director, Standards and Interoperability

2 The Networked Learning Environment

3 Learning Management Systems Do Many Things Connect people and resources –Library resources –Publisher content –Subscription databases –Learning Object Repositories Evaluate performance –Assessment technology –ePortfolios –Gradebooks Encourage communication and collaboration –Discussion boards – integration –Virtual classrooms –Instant messaging Enable Authoring and Modification of Content –Authoring tools for students and instructors –Blog and wiki tools

4 Content and its Lifecycle in the LMS Author –Authoring for single use –Authoring for shared use –Different goals –Multiple Institutions Aggregate –Pick and choose –Learning Object –License models vary depending upon use case Contextualize –Content within context –Modification of content through use –Creation of new content Archive –Ownership issues –Privacy concerns Aggregate ContextualizeArchive Author

5 Content Lifecycle: Contextualize Course: Geography 101 Fall 2005 Copy-cleared by the Library Assignments and content written by the instructor Content and testbanks written by publishers Content from a Learning Object Repository Content developed by the students and instructor during the life of the course Week 1

6 Content Lifecycle: Archive –Preserve for History –Re-use –Use for multiple sections –Use for next term –Share –The Holy Grail of eLearning –Creation of Learning Objects Week1-n

7 Digital Rights Management in Blackboard Academic Suite TM Copy protection for publisher content through a technology called Course Cartridges TM –Publisher sets rules for content including Whether the data can be copied from one course to another For how long a student may have access to the content (e.g., 180 days)

8 What Kind of DRE Standards do LMS vendors need/want? Educational Issues –Standards that do not further erode the flexibility of current Fair Use for copyrighted material Avoid the Catch-22 – where the rights are tied to the media and not the content itself Operational Issues –DRE Standards that are not onerous to adopt –DRE Standards that do not conflict with other content-related standards (e.g., SCORM, IMS CP, IEEE LOM) –DRE Standards that recognize the complex landscape of content authoring and ownership, licensing models, distribution models, etc.

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10 Focus on Content eLearning Management Systems support content authored by a variety of individuals and organizations –Individual faculty authors –Co-authored –Publisher content –Subscription databases –Learning Object Repositories –Student authors Content is frequently modified by the instructor or students over time Each piece of content has copyright and a licensing model – whether the author has declared it or not