How to ensure user rights in education? Copyright reform and open educational resources

Accessing open educational resources (OER) while pursuing a balance between user rights and the interests of industry can turn out to be quite a challenging process, especially when aiming at an entire European audience. But how can this digital objective transfer into a European reality?

Date 2015-11-18 Author EUN
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Trying to find some pertinent answers to this question, on 17 November 2015, Centrum Cyfrowe, a Polish think tank focused on citizens' participation through the use of digital technologies, along with COMMUNIA, a European association advocating for policies that expand the public domain, and ExplOERer, an EU co-funded project, organised a policy debate hosted by MEP Michał Boni. The debate sought to discuss and debate common ground between copyright rules and open education resources in the European framework.
 
More specifically, the event tackled the freedom to use educational resources in teaching as a fundamental issue in education. Such freedom can be ensured either by copyright rules or through the sharing of OER. Furthermore, it aimed to refer to the modernisation of copyright regulation following the European Commission's Communication on required actions in the reform planned for 2016.
 
When speaking of copyright and intellectual property, both panellists and the audience agreed upon the intrinsic links to digital skills accessibility both for teachers and students and also to online behaviour, pointing out that when seeking such reform and openness of educational resources, a joint effort is required in order to achieve this European digital goal.
 
Find more information at OERPOLICY.EU.
 

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