Available under Creative Commons-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/f6522dce-7e2b-47ac-8c82-8e2b72973784@7.2
In mid 2007, following the agreement for a new IP Policy, many of the Flexible Learning Development projects began using the Wikieducator platform to develop educational resources. To date there are at least 15 full time Otago Polytechnic lecturing staff and 5 part time designers regularly using the Wikieducator platform 1 to develop their courses. This number is certain to increase as the teacher training schedules used by Otago Polytechnic include orientation and skills development in the use of Wikieducator as well as a number of other publishing platforms and media sharing services.
Benefits of using Wikieducator from the perspective of the Polytech include:
- Free content hosting
- Free and supported access to MediaWiki software
- Exposure, promotion and networking with other educational organisations
- Internationalisation and dialog with the Commonwealth of Learning
- Collaborative development opportunities and resource sharing
- Open access to learning resources
- Staff development of MediaWiki editing skills that are transferable to more popular MediaWiki based projects like Wikipedia, as well as the Polyech's own hosted MediaWiki.
Issues with using Wikieducator:
- Copyright issues - Wikieducator uses a site wide Share Alike copyright restriction without an option to mark a full project or individual resource with the Polytechnic's preferred CC BY license. This limitation in copyright potentially complicates the Polytechnic's developments on the platform, but work continues on a good will basis. To manage the risks in this, the Polytechnic's main page on Wikieducator 2 links to a copy of the Polytech's IP policy 3 which points out the use of CC BY that applies to all pages that are category tagged Otago Polytechnic 4. This position has not become a concern to the Wikieducator hosting organisation but clarification on the issue is needed. This issue is argued in detail in the article Open educational resources and practices 5.
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