Understanding open educational resource licensing in Australia

One of the great barriers to the development of Open Educational Practices (OEP) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in Australia is copyright licensing. Without a better understanding of open access licensing and its interaction with Australian copyright law, universities, including distance education providers, will be unable to develop, adopt and distribute Open Educational Resources (OER) or deliver MOOCs effectively. Sharing educational and research resources is now high on the agenda for Australian higher education institutions but there is a lack of initiatives and policies to support OEP. Without support for sustainable OEP, the Australian higher education sector will be unable to meet any form of open education agenda and Australia will not be competitive in a rapidly evolving higher and distance education environment. In this paper it is argued that the rapid development of MOOCs worldwide has caused some misunderstandings in Australia about the provision and use of educational resources under the Copyright Act. The issues are explored through the discussion of outcomes from a number of recent projects funded by the Australian Government's Office of Learning and Teaching. The discussion highlights some of the challenges inherent in educational resource provision, copyright and open content licensing.