Image from Pixabay CC0.

Rich media for learning.

This post started life as a question to the ALT members list. Alison Christie, a learning technologist at Abertay University, Dundee asked the community for their preferred sources of images for educational purposes. There is still a good deal of concern and uncertainty around copyright management and ALT’s keynote from Jane Secker helped to provide context in this area in the summer. Jane’s book was reviewed here recently too. The replies to Alison’s query quickly resulted in a wide range of sources for locating images from the personally curated to the commercial. This post is timely as this week is Copyright week.

Summarised below are the responses from the list described by one contributor as “ a bag of sweeties”:

More suggestions will continue to come in so do check out the ALT members list, it is a rich collection of tips and help. This post will also extend the original request on the list in order to summarise for ALTC blog readers the other sources of media out there for use in a range of contexts by presenting an overview of what the video production industry offers to education users of film and imagery.

Stephen tells me, “I used to run video production inside an HE setting (for the OU-BBC partnership) but now I deliver similar outputs in a commercial framework and I am an ALT member. The table below represents our current sources. There is a common perception that material that is paid for is more expensive than material whose license is “free” in the sense of zero-priced. I have found this to be not necessarily the case. The commercial rights holders price the rights they are selling on a rate card basis – this is the technical term for a price list for different volumes and types of material. The rate cards are in fact nearly always negotiable. And there is a saving on overheads when you are dealing with a transaction interface that is set-up to transfer the rights to you efficiently. The biggest costs in producing video are actually of research time, clearance and editorial effort. ”

“This year” he continues “my company Digital Learning Associates will access around 500 hours of rights-indemnified material for around 1000 units of education video we are making for clients to use in HE and K-12.. It isn’t meant to be a comprehensive supplier list, but it shows a different slice through the content matrix. We have the clearances negotiated for us by ITN Productions, which is a specialist supplier of such services and has a dedicated Education-facing brand ITNEDU.”

“Some faculties are set up to do their own research and delivery of rich media for teaching and learning assets. For those that do it well, the experience of working in digital media is enriching to staff and students.” continues Stephen.

If you are creating media, it is worth investigating how to licence it using Creative Commons licenses as this project did. Understanding how to licence your own creations is an important skill set in a world where digital creation is more commonplace and online presence ever more significant. Media literacy is a key skill if we are to enable learners to navigate the online world of fake news out there. You may also want to include some critical skills for news site evaluation in your delivery!

I made this chart about news sources: pic.twitter.com/qdUWz4StAb

— Vanessa Otero (@vlotero) December 13, 2016

Stephen says, “On the crucial question of securing clearance rights for media use, the scale and legal experience of specialists can help to reduce cost and risk of obtaining licenses. It’s worth emphasising that all material has rights attached: there is no such thing as license-free content. The policy issue for education users is how much compliance and documentation they wish to have. Copyright is an emerging and justiciable field and the overheads of operating compliantly in it are high.”

According to Stephen, “It is not always the case that departments have the resources, focus and skills to locate and process material to the highest standards. Using contractors can sometimes give useful leverage on quality, value and speed. In the video production industry there are many specialised education contractors, and publishers, universities and online brands all chose to use them from time to time. They bring an intense focus on media disciplines, technologies and styling – which is valuable for some types of education output. These producers in turn have their own approaches for sourcing and clearing archive material commercially, where this is editorially or financially necessary, to ensure their clients acquire appropriately licensed content with legal indemnities.”

Stephen Haggard, Director, Digital Learning Associates.

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