Greg Walters is the Learning Technologist based at the University of Glasgow (UofG) Library. He has been involved in the e-learning sector since 2005 and developed a range of under and postgraduate online courses for the Higher Education and commercial sectors. Part of Greg’s role at UofG has involved developing and communicating rights management policies and procedures to support online learning development at the University of Glasgow, specifically relating to Blended and Online Learning Development (BOLD) initiatives and MOOCs. He is part of the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL) Copyright & Legal Issues steering group which formed in November 2018.
What’s happened?
Back in November 2017, I wrote an blog entry for Copyright Literacy titled “Is learning about Copyright as simple as noughts and crosses?”, which focused on my journey of developing the Electronic version of Chris and Jane’s excellent Copyright Card. Since my last blog entry I’ve still been involved in exploring methods of delivering copyright training through face to face and online methods, as both academic and information services staff are engaged with copyright via their professional practice. This exploration led me to develop and deliver five pilot one hour interactive Copyright workshops from July 2018 – September 2018 to staff from library services and learning technologists.
Developing & delivering the pilot workshops
To ensure participants received a well equitable educational experience, I developed learning outcomes not only to cover what they would learn during the workshops, but to also help inform the accompanying materials. This approach led to seven copyright based tips based on the learning outcomes and key areas highlighted in literature, e.g. use of images in online materials. These tips were delivered during the first 15 – 20 minutes of workshops and made available to participants via an online page containing interactive copyright based resources I developed, after the session had concluded. To generate engaging discussion amongst participants, I wrote a series of copyright based scenarios which were accompanied by the cards (taken from Chris and Jane’s excellent card game). A different scenario and accompanying UK exception cards were given to each group of participants, enabling discussion of different copyright areas and exploring the UK exceptions. The last 5 – 10 minutes of the workshops were concluded with a Q& A session which allowed focused discussion around copyright related queries raised by participants. After a workshop had concluded an email was sent out contain links to the supporting materials mentioned earlier and an anonymous online survey which gathered participant feedback.
Before continuing, I do have a piece of anecdotal advice regarding the promotion of the copyright workshops. This may seem like common sense, but I found it very useful to communicate with key staff in each of the areas, i.e. line managers, Learning Technologists who engage with the audience you’re intending to deliver your workshop to. They were able to raise awareness via email and departmental newsletters.
Feedback from five pilot sessions and taking this forward to an academic audience
Based on the anonymous online feedback from the 42 participants from across all 5 pilot workshops, they were well received as the average ratings for enjoyment, usefulness and the group based activity was 4.5 out of 5. This was reflected in the qualitative feedback left by participants, which was complimentary towards the group based scenarios and use of UK exception cards as a means of exploring copyright. The tips, especially the ones focusing on searching for images effectively using Google Advanced Image Search and Tineye were well received as participants could employ these best practices in their professional practice. There was some useful anonymous constructive feedback provided by participants, which was used to help improve some areas of the workshops, this can be viewed below.
- Consider the audience you’re delivering to. This may seem obvious but participants will have varying levels of copyright literacy and might require less or more time for the group based scenario activity. If you have participants who are more experienced in copyright, then you may want to consider having another scenario on hand for them to discuss in case the get through the first one quickly.
- Provide background context and highlight why copyright is important to audience at the start of workshop. I further refined this, by catering my copyright examples to a specific audience, i.e. the use of images in learning materials for an academic audience
- Initially I verbally explained the learning outcomes to participants on the first two sessions. However, based on the feedback from participants, they appreciated having slide to refer to at the start of the session which gave them a written explanation of the learning outcomes
Having refined the pilot sessions, based on the anonymous feedback from participants, it was time to deliver the copyright workshops to an academic audience.
Delivering to an academic audience and the future direction of copyright workshops
Over a two week period in November 2018, I delivered 3 separate copyright workshops which were attended by a total of 38 academic staff from the College of Social Sciences in UofG. Like the initial 5 pilot sessions these were well received, again the scenario based activity proving to be popular along with the tips. With this format established, I aim to deliver these sessions to academic and professional services staff across UofG.
I have two directions I aim to explore in terms of delivering copyright workshops to staff at UofG. The first avenue I would like to explore is delivering a full one hour session which is scored, comprises of four rounds and uses more resources taken from the copyright card game created by Chris and Jane.
The second form of workshop I intend to explore is based on a piece of anecdotal feedback from a participant who suggested it would be beneficial to have focused theme, i.e. lecture recordings, or the use of images. I think there is a lot of scope for workshops to be delivered around these and other copyright related areas, possibly these could be short 15 – 20 minute sessions with Q & A or follow the format I’ve already created?
This draws my current blog entry to a close, when I’ve explored the other avenues of copyright based workshops, I will feed this back to the community. In the meantime please make use of the resources I’ve developed below by clicking on the links provided and any feedback would be welcome.
We were delighted to hear about Greg’s progress with the digital version of Copyright the Card Game. Meanwhile we have been busy working on v3.0 of Copyright the Card Game, with a few new cards and our own set of matching icons. Watch this space but we hope this will be ready to release in March and it will be available to download from the website.
Copyright Literacy 
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