Enforcing Copyright in the Book Publishing Industry in Ghana

Mahama, Anatu Kande

doi:10.1007/s12109-011-9251-2

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…It is therefore also acknowledged that in many institutions, there is a lack of clarity from the institution's part (Caswell et al, 2008 In Pratham Books' observation and experience, people only have a passing knowledge of copyright, which is greatly insufficient. Often, even stakeholders in the book-publishing sector are poorly informed of copyright (Mahama, 2012 While copyright law remains the prime preserving agent of authors' rights (McCoy, 2009), the CC movement has been making an impression in the educational and publishing sphere as an alternative or supplement to copyright (Garcelon, 2009). For OER providers, CC licenses are a more favorable option than seeking copyright protection due their cost-free nature (Collins, 2013) and the ease with which the community can understand them (Kapitzke, Dezuanni & Iyer, 2011 With the increasing number of educational institutions creating OERs, agreements requiring content-creating academics to consent to give away their intellectual property to the university has become more common (Hawkridge et al, 2010;Ncube, 2011 (Hawkridge et al, 2010).…”

Section: Copyrightmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Open Educational Resources (OERs) in Primary Education in Developing Nations: A Case Study of India

Ganapathi¹

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This research aims to identify how open educational resources (OERs) can contribute towards primary education, and what role they might play in increasing childhood literacy in particular, which has been identified as a prime component in ensuring educational attainment in primary school. Literature in the area largely addresses OERs and their potential to widen participation in tertiary education with a focus on developed nations, with little discussion about how OERs can be utilized in primary education. This thesis is particularly interested in the role OERs might play in primary education in developing nations where a range of challenges contribute to the low levels of literacy. In nations like India and South Africa, which are the locations of the case study organizations selected for this research, decentralized rural populations, combined with high levels of poverty, child labor and low levels of literacy and awareness cause poor attendance and access to schools. This research suggests that OERs aimed at developing literacy in primary school-aged children can overcome the distribution and access issues that contribute to low attendance and engagement with education in these nations. OERs have the capacity to bypass low levels of educational infrastructure by distributing high quality resources online in low definition formats suitable for downloading and under open licenses on platforms suitable for users to repackage, translate and re-purpose according to their particular need or audience. While there are a range of sustainability challenges for organizations with a social mission to use OERs to increase the equity and access of educational materials, these organizations have found innovative solutions taken from other online successes such as gaming and social media. Making use of volunteers and users in a community of practice to ensure that content is translated, quality is maintained and there is volume on their sites has some risks but also enables the maintenance of an open repository of materials for use, re-use, adaptation and sharing. This thesis contributes to the existing literature by shedding light into understanding these challenges from the experiences and perspectives of three case study organizations that provide OERs for children.

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