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Digital Rights Expression and Management in the Supply Chain

the Perspective of

eLearning Management Systems

Jan Poston DayDirector, Standards and Interoperability

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The Networked Learning Environment

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Learning Management Systems Do Many Things

Connect people and resources– Library resources

– Publisher content

– Subscription databases

– Learning Object Repositories

Evaluate performance– Assessment technology

– ePortfolios

– Gradebooks

Encourage communication and collaboration– Discussion boards

– Email integration

– Virtual classrooms

– Instant messaging

Enable Authoring and Modification of Content– Authoring tools for students

and instructors

– Blog and wiki tools

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Content and its Lifecycle in the LMS

Author– Authoring for single use– Authoring for shared use– Different goals– Multiple Institutions

Aggregate– Pick and choose – Learning Object– License models vary depending

upon use case Contextualize

– Content within context– Modification of content through

use– Creation of new content

Archive– Ownership issues– Privacy concerns

Aggregate

Archive

Author

Contextualize

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Content Lifecycle: Contextualize

Course: Geography 101 Fall 2005 Copy-cleared by the Library

Assignments and content written by the instructor

Content and testbanks written by publishers

Content from aLearning ObjectRepository

Content developed bythe students andinstructor during the lifeof the course

Week 1

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Content Lifecycle: Archive

– Preserve for History – Re-use

– Use for multiple sections– Use for next term

– Share– The Holy Grail of eLearning– Creation of Learning Objects

Week1-n

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Digital Rights Management in Blackboard Academic Suite TM

Copy protection for publisher content through a technology called Course Cartridges TM

– Publisher sets rules for content including • Whether the data can be copied from one course to another

• For how long a student may have access to the content (e.g., 180 days)

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What Kind of DRE Standards do LMS vendors need/want?

Educational Issues– Standards that do not further erode the flexibility of current “Fair

Use” for copyrighted material• Avoid the Catch-22 – where the rights are tied to the media and not

the content itself

Operational Issues– DRE Standards that are not onerous to adopt – DRE Standards that do not conflict with other content-related

standards (e.g., SCORM, IMS CP, IEEE LOM)– DRE Standards that recognize the complex landscape of

content authoring and ownership, licensing models, distribution models, etc.

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