Co-Chair’s Welcome and Update

Welcome to the third annual report of the Copyright and Online Learning (CoOL) SIG of the Association of Learning Technology. The CoOL SIG was formed in November 2020 and this report covers the period January to December 2023. We are honoured to continue to act as the Co-Chairs for this group and the report outlines the fantastic achievements of the copyright and online learning community over the last 12 months. While the CoOL SIG’s activities have centred on our Copyright and Online Learning webinars we have also worked on various projects and initiatives outlined in more detail below.

We were delighted to be Highly Commended for the ALT Digital Leadership Award, presented at ALT-C in September 2023. This recognised our work to establish the CoOL SIG but also to provide leadership to the community in their time of greatest need. ALT noted that “Jane and Chris’s leadership ensures copyright is not a barrier to online learning” and we were very grateful to be recognised in this way. We’d like to thank everyone who has been involved in the webinars and the CoOL SIG since its creation.

We have continued to see an interest in copyright and online learning at many educational institutions. This year we’ve also seen a significant interest in copyright and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and ran two webinars on this topic. We also pleased to run Icepops in collaboration with the University of Glasgow, extending the conference over 3 days. 

We’ve served the group as Co-Chairs now for 3 years, so have indicated our willingness to support a new chair or co-chair or continue in the role if no one comes forward. We are working with ALT on the process of reviewing chair and committee positions and will be in touch with more information shortly.

Finally, we have been thinking about our friend and colleague Greg Walters at the University of Glasgow who has been instrumental in setting up the CoOL SIG and supporting our events. Greg had a stroke in August 2023 and has been in rehabilitation since then. Thanks to everyone who has sent messages of support to Greg via us and we continue to wish him well on his road to recovery.

Chris Morrison and Jane Secker ALT CoOL SIG Co-chairs 

Overview of activities 2023

During 2023 the group committee continued to meet regularly (see Appendix 1 for members) and held 3 meetings (March, July and December) including an AGM in July at Icepops 2023 which took place at the University of Glasgow. We highlighted several areas of activity for the group and have several working groups to coordinate our activities in the following area:

• Accessibility and copyright – the group continued to meet and presented at an accessibility conference at the University of Nottingham in 2023. 
• Copyright education and training resources – In 2022 this group started work on creating a list of copyright good practice, organised using a taxonomy. This work is still ongoing. Jane and Chris working with Learning on Screen produced a Code of Fair Practice for the Use of Audiovisual Works which has been an important resource for educators and copyright specialists and was the topic of an ALT webinar (Webinar 62: Launch of the Code of Fair Practice for Audiovisual Works). 
• The ALT Ethical framework was launched in 2021 and there is a small working group keeping a watching brief on this and feeding into the developments. A webinar on this topic is planned for 2024 with Natalie Lafferty and Sharon Flynn. 

Report on events

Copyright and Online Learning Webinars

• Our webinars continue to be hosted on the ALT YouTube Channel and our website. 
• Number of webinars: 66 in total since March 2020 including 10 webinars held in 2023
• Topics covered: open textbooks, Copyright and AI, Launch of the Code of Fair Practice for Audiovisual works, Copyright News from IFLA’s Policy Officer, Becoming a Copyright Specialist and the IFLA publication Navigating Copyright for Libraries.  
• Evaluation report summary: In September 2023 we undertook a short survey to collect feedback on our webinar series to find out what people thought of the topics we had covered, the frequency of the webinars and the impact they might have had on organisations and individuals. A summary of the survey’s findings is available and we are planning a webinar on the findings in January 2024. 

Icepops 2023

The Icepops conference ran at the University of Glasgow on 19-21 July 2023 over 3 days. Day one focused on e-lending and e-books and was organised by colleagues at CREATe. On day two keynotes were given by Dr Amy Thomas and Professor Nicola Whitton. The presentations and further details are available on the Icepops 2023 website. Over 80 people attended the event and feedback was highly positive. A review of Icepops was written by first time attendee Megan Kilvington from the York St John University.

Overall the three days were deemed to be an overwhelming success and Icepops was supported CREATe at the University of Glasgow and the CILIP Information Literacy Group. Tours of the Glasgow University Library were held on 9th September 2022 and we ran an AGM for the ALT CoOL SIG where we discussed findings from an evaluation survey on the webinars. Icepops raised over £2000 worth of profit for the CILIP Information Literacy Group who underwrite and support the event.

Fair Dealing week 2023

Two events were organised for Fair Use / Fair Dealing week in February 2023. An ALT CoOL SIG webinar was held on Monday 20th February hosted by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. We were joined by Amanada Wakaruk (University of Alberta, Canada) and Kyle K Courtney (Harvard University). SCURL also ran an online event on 23rd February. A summary of the events with links to the recordings is available on the website. 

Other conferences 

Jane and Chris presented about Copyright and Online Learning and the work of the SIG at a number of external conferences including the following events: 

• Keynote Panel members at RIDE2024, University of London, March 2023
• LILAC Conference, University of Cambridge, April 2023
• UCL Teaching Intellectual Property – panel discussion – June 2023
• Playful Learning Conference – workshop – July 2023
• Bodleian Libraries Staff Development Conference – September 2023
• ALT-C conference Award Winners panel – September 2023
• Panel discussion at Film Education event organised by CREATe / CIPPM University of Bournemouth, November 2024

Social Media and Communications 

We set up a Twitter account and a Mailchimp newsletter / mailing list in 2021. There are currently 228 followers to the X (formerly known as Twitter) account.

The Mailchimp newsletter had 94 subscribers when it was migrated to a new JISCmail list in line with ALT policy in November 2022. There are now 196 members of this list which is used for all group communication. 

We also continue to use LIS-Copyseek (a closed list with over 600 members) to promote our events and also the Copyrightliteracy.org website. The CoOL SIG has a logo, and t-shirts are available to purchase in the ALT Store. 

Collaboration and networking

The group recognises there are many existing groups in the copyright space and so has tried to work in collaboration with as many of these as possible. The organisations include:

• Scottish Confederation of University & Research Libraries (SCURL) – several committee members are also members of the SCURL Copyright and Legal Matters group 
• LACA (Libraries and Archives Coalition) – Jane Secker has stepped down as a member of LACA and Chris Morrison has now joined this group and keeps them up to date with ALT CoOL SIG activities.
• IFLA – during 2023 an excellent working relationship developed with Matt Voigts the IFLA Copyright Policy Specialist, including Matt joining two webinars. Sadly he will be leaving his post at IFLA in January 2024. 

Appendix 1: Committee members

Co-Chairs: Jane Secker (City, University of London) and Chris Morrison (Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford)

Co-Secretary: Karen Crouch, (SOAS)

Marketing and communications officer: Deborah Ferns (University of Strathclyde) and Hannah Crago (University of Essex) Greg Walters (Glasgow University) until July 2023. 

Legal expert: Emily Hudson (King’s College London / University of Oxford )

International networking: Kyle Courtney (Harvard University), Irene Barranco Garcia (University of Greenwich)

Other Officers: Stephen Penton (City, University of London), , Chris Jones (University of Reading), Kate Vasili (Middlesex University), Neil Sprunt (University of Manchester), Erica Wine (Coventry University), Caroline Lloyd (University of Nottingham) Elizabeth Charles (Birkbeck, University of London), Shazia Arif (Brunel, University of London), Stephanie Charlie Farley (University of Edinburgh) – stepped down April 2023, Lorna Campbell (University of Edinburgh) – stepped down April 2023, Bart Meletti (Learning on Screen / University of Glasgow). Neil McCormick (University of Edinburgh) – joined April 2023.