What is the intellectual property status of material on SkillCity, and who owns the SkillCity site?
- Our research on intellectual property reveals that the author owns the copyright of material on SkillCity. The federal government (through AUTC) is funding development of the site, but that does not give them copyright of the material on the site.
- What has been interesting is that those individuals who have contributed most to the site have said that they just want their material used. They express no concern about being given credit. Noted authors, Graham Gibbs (UK), Baden Eunson (Melbourne), Barbara Millis (US), and Isa Engleberg (US) readily and enthusiastically offered free use of their published material for SkillCity (though we will still need to negotiate with their publishers).
- For those who need to keep track of where their material goes, websites do record 'hits' for each page and downloads. Commonly available software makes this data digestable for those of us who are not computer experts. So, in the future, we could send each author/donor (and each reviewer, too) a record every year of how many times their submission has been looked at and how many times it has been downloaded. This mechanism would provide much more precise information on use than one might get from traditional printed forms of dissemination.
Thinking of donating materials to SkillCity? See our Information and Guidelines for Donors section with more information on your intellectual property and copyrights.
Most of the material on SkillCity seems to be about teamwork? What about other communication skill areas?
- Material prepared for SkillCity over the last couple of years has centred on teamwork to give the development team a focus in configuring the site and establishing submission methods and formats.
- Team members urged this groupwork/teamwork focus when we originally applied to CUTSD (AUTC's predecessor) in 1999, even though the Wollongong-based seed project covered five communication skill categories. Now that we feel that we have sorted many bugs out of the technological and organisational aspects of this process, we are accepting material from other communication skill areas.
- We will also be eliciting submissions from the National Communication Association in the US, which has 7000 members. Their vice president, Prof. Isa Engleberg, has expressed keen interest in the Project. We have also begun negotiations with the meta-data site, MERLOT, whose chief executive officer acknowledges the need for addressing generic skills and not just disciplinary teaching materials.
Using the CSUE 2002 conference to both fill SkillCity with teaching materials and get them reviewed sounds like a great approach. How can I get people at my university - who are not attending CSUE 2002 -- involved in SkillCity?
- Thank you for your support. Employing a conference as a kind of 'barn raising' to fill a website and introduce a community to sharing materials online has been used in recent years with some apparent success. MERLOT has had at least one developers' conference. A site for case study material for problem-based teaching in science now has a hundred entries, and it grew out of a National Science Foundation-funded conference specifically for developing content for the site. A major purpose of any conference is to share developments in the field. The SkillCity website is meant to facilitate precisely that. We are glad that you are considering joining us in this undertaking!
- Workshops at your university related to generic skills or 'graduate attributes' could employ SkillCity for displaying and/or sharing relevant materials. Or, you could have a 20-minute session where participants visit and provide reviews for materials on SkillCity. That might make a nice alternative to ordinary workshop handouts, which too often gather dust on lecturers' bookshelves. SkillCity can also be introduced as a shortcut to online resources, in general. Few lecturers have the time for the sort of concerted search that is needed to find - and search within -- a range of valuable university and conference websites. SkillCity was funded to provide those links and thereby model means to share generic skills/graduate attributes material online. Our hope is that creative use of SkillCity in your university setting will help to build a community of academic staff who attend to graduate attributes by employing, reviewing, and even donating materials.
For more information about CSUE 2002 please click here.
