development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

[Stephen Downes <Stephen.Downes AT nrc-cnrc.gc.ca>]

David Wiley wrote:

Three quotes, which illustrate my point:

1.

Four (4) votes for “d) that the materials should only be used in the context of a formal educational institution (e.g., not to be used for self-study by individuals not enrolled as students in a formal school)”

2.
> I’ll
> expose an assumption I am making. I believe that the best way
> to make inroads with an education license is to have it mean, as
> reasonably as possible, what people commonly think an “educational
> license” means.
3.
> > (i) You do so in a manner that is directly related to and
> > of material
> > assistance to the primary teaching and learning activities of an
> > educational institution, and 
> > (ii) You do so solely for educational purposes. 
> > An “educational institution” is a school or other organization
> > primarily and directly engaged in facilitating teaching and learning.

Simple reflection shows you cannot have all three. The proposal
outlined in (3) is not what is commonly understood by 'educational', as
evidenced in (1), since 4 votes out of 15 is clearly a minority (and
the lowest scoring out of the five options). Given (1), you can either
have (2) or (3), not both.

I know people hated the strong tie to formal learning, but that’s what educational use means to the US legal system as reported to us by Kevin Rothman, the pro bono lawyer attached to the cc.edu project. And I see very little point in producing a license which is both (a) out of touch with what the common person thinks it should be, and (b) out of touch with what the courts think it should be.

Quite right.

Which is why my initial reaction to the proposal was: there is very
little point in producing this.

If 'educational use' is going to be tied to some U.S. court's narrow
interpretation of the meaning of the term, then I'm not interested, and
would indeed caution people to avoid creating or using material branded
with such a restrictive license.

As I’ve said before, a careful reading of this language will show that, while using the court’s historical conception of “education,” this language enables a significant amount of informal learning not available in other education licenses.

Also, notice the final phrase “An ‘educational institution’ is a school or other organization primarily and directly engaged in facilitating teaching and learning.” An organization like Open Education or somesuch might be able to play an interesting role in increasing the numbr people who would qualify under this language.

Waiting for your responses.…

My response is that after all the discussion, negotiation and
conciliation which seemed to lead to a consensus view, I am
disappointed to find that we are back to the starting point with the
original proposal. Such a state of affairs would in other people lead
to a state of cynicism about the process and the product.

-- Stephen