Join the discussion on the ownership of student work reliant on the inputs and support of educational institutions.
I do not think institutions have a right over student’s work. Students pay fees and institutions are funded by the tax payer. Any output should be put out to the public domain as long as the student agrees. The creator must be protected. The helplessness of seeing your intellectual property removed from an institution you pay to attend has got to be demoralizing for a student and not encourage further education nor creativity.
I agree - I think students should retain copyright over their own work. In the case of OERu, we encourage learners to use a CC-BY license for comments and interactions on our platforms (the default license in our TORs) which give permissions for using the content on our systems. However, students retain ownership of their copyright.
Hi Colleen, I’m going to challenge your point for the sake of argument. MIT’s policy is similar to that of a lot of work places where copyright is held by the employer and not the employee. I’m not saying I’m for or against this practice, but rather that this is a consistent practice. That is if you consider that the student is being treated like an employee provided with grant funds (salary) and resources (found in the “work environment”). The policy does go on to say “MIT does not assert rights to a student’s thesis if it was authored without sponsored research funds and without significant use of MIT-administered facilities/funds.” This means that students who are self-funded and using their own materials can retain the copyright on whatever materials they produce. Considering these points, I’m curious as to what you think.
I’m also curious about how you would respond to the second stimulus question from the “Ownership” section:
Would it be fair and reasonable to consider joint ownership (i.e. institution, educator and learner) of the intellectual property in the event that the idea is commercialised?
I would add to that question by asking what proportion of the profits should go to the institution, the educator, and the student, and why?
On point 1, I also do not agree institutions to assert copyright over student work. Unless the origin of the idea also come from educators or institutions it would be fair to consider for joint ownership.
Hi @fazilahcf
I’m with you on this point. We should respect the rights of students to assert copyright over their own work and ethical practices of joint ownership of works generated together. A key point about copyright is that there is no ownership of the idea - but rather ownership on the expression of the ideas, for example a publication.
Kurumların öğrenci çalışmaları konusunda bir hakka sahip olduklarını sanmıyorum. Öğrenciler ücret öderler ve kurumlar vergi mükellefi tarafından finanse edilir. Çıktılar öğrenci kabul ettiği sürece kamuya açık olarak verilmelidir. Yaratıcı korunmalıdır. Fikri mülkünüze katılmak için ödediğiniz bir kurumdan kaldırıldığını görmenin çaresizliği bir öğrencinin moralini bozmalı ve daha fazla eğitimi veya yaratıcılığı teşvik etmemelidir.
@Muraty İyi tartışma noktaları ve paylaşım için teşekkürler. Katkınızı Google çeviri aracılığıyla okudum.
Regarding the #Lida103 scenario - “an assignment in a course on entrepreneurship where the educator provides detailed feedback on a draft business plan submitted as an assignment” and the student subsequently enhances the business plan to set up their own business then ownership should not be joint with the institute unless special funding for a joint venture was pre-arranged as in this case at [University of Canterbury for Invert Robotics company]. If the institute simply supplied the appropriate tools and pedagogical supports enabling the student to develop the business plan then the student should own the output which would then be a marketable student success story for the institute.
Tina, that pretty much reflects my sentiments as well. Speaking personally, I joined the teaching profession to share knowledge freely. If a student can leverage the “teaching moments” for success in the real world, that’s good education by my reckoning ;-).
I understand we must keep the lawyers in business protecting copyright, but learners should be no different than anyone else when it comes to being the copyright owner of original works they produce including music, creative arts, literary works. And, they should be able to control further use of their work. I perused through the Copyright Act of Canada (https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-42/index.html) but did find a direct reference to ownership by higher educational institutions of student work. Here’s what I found:
13(1) Subject to this Act, the author of a work shall be the first owner of the copyright therein.
Work made in the course of employment
13(3) Where the author of a work was in the employment of some other person under a contract of service or apprenticeship and the work was made in the course of his employment by that person, the person by whom the author was employed shall, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, be the first owner of the copyright, but where the work is an article or other contribution to a newspaper, magazine or similar periodical, there shall, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, be deemed to be reserved to the author a right to restrain the publication of the work, otherwise than as part of a newspaper, magazine or similar periodical.
I do not know if a student is the same as an employee under copyright law. There is a contract of sorts that a university goes into with a student, but should this include the right to any work produced? Students should be able to assert copyright over their own work.
Typically there is a contract between a registered student and the university (which may or may not make contractual provisions for ownership of copyright.)
Personally I am of the view that learners should have the right to assert copyright over their own work. That said, there are “commercially sensitive” research initiatives where, for example, post-graduate students work with the research teams. In these cases, typically there are separate contracts or policies which determine ownership of copyright - Its all about regulating economic rights 8-).
Agreed! Follow the money. 
In Central universities of India intellectual property is created by the use of resurces and facilities of university. Hence, this property is owned by the university and creator of intellectual property jointly. In exceptions thesis and dissertations are owned by students. so, creators of ideas either by students or faculty are owned by themsleves only. Institutions have no right of ownership on student generated ideas.
Interesting - under the joint ownership model at your university, can the creator choose to apply an open copyright license in your system?
1. Do you think there are grounds for institutions to assert copyright over student work? If so, provide examples and justify your reasons.
There are times when students work/research are under a contract with a private company and therefore the work they provide belongs to the employer, because of the contract they signed. For the private company, it is outsourcing a research and development employee that have access to labs and mentors to perform actions that the company order.
But if a student is not tied up with a contract to do research, they can then choose to publish their research to be open or to publish it with restrictions. I guess it depends of the nature of the research (and the personality of the student) to decide if the work should be in the open or not.
2. How do you feel about others sharing copyright and/or intellectual property rights over your creative work as a learner?
In my opinion, I would feel proud that someone wants to take my creative work and pursue more creativity with it. It means that what I created resonated to this person therefore I feel connected. In the context of learning especially, I think that the sum of what we can learn from each other or from what we can create together can reach a higher level of complexity and a broader approach to what could be created by only one preson.
So yes, I think sharing is motivating, produce more ideas and bring innovation.
3. What are the impacts of ownership and copyright over learner work as they relate to the quality of learning?
When you can see what other learners produce (for example when you assess your peers) you can discover that one does not interpret the same things as you. This is where it is getting interesting as you get the ability to build new arguments from these new views. I have experienced this myself and when other learners work is shared, students can reach deeper learning, reflecting on things that she/he would have never come up with.
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I think students should own the rights to their work. My observation is that we don’t (at least I don’t) often hear about students disputing over copyright, unless there is a financial factor involved? i.e a student’s work is used to make profits (that are not share with the student).
Before I reached University level, I wasn’t aware or didn’t understand the meaning of “intellectual property rights”. I Found it difficult to grasp the concept that an idea can be seen as a property and can be owned… so before that, it was normal to me that others share my work.
Now that I am doing this OER course on copyright and ownership, I would say it depends on how I see the work I produce. Is it something I want to be shared to help others improve, some kind of acknowledgement? Is it something I intend to make profit out of?..etc
I can see it having a domino effects on the quality of learning. The more restrictions there are the less creative and innovative the learning.
I suspect that most students are not aware of their own copyrights - I think we should encourage all learners to participate in courses like LiDA103. It wouldn’t be hard - as an OER course, all post-secondary learners could participate for free ;-). All we need is academics to recommend participation or for institutions to adopt the Learning in a Digital Age courses for local credit. We even publish the assessments and rubrics for free reuse on a global scale 
It should be retained to students their copyright over their own work most specially if the work is of their original in compliance to institution requirements. It could be a joint ownership if the institution has made modification for the improvement of their work and make it commercialized.
I think that both parties have the right of the work produced by the student, because students won’t be able to create anything (or a particular work) without being students in that educational institution and the institution with its facilities to learn and minds/lecturers provides such facilities to students to create a work based on what is mentioned here. Likewise, we can also say that lecturers at the educational institutions have the right over both;the students work as well as the institution itself.