Project Details
Description
Project funded by the British and Irish Law Education and Technology Association (BILETA)
The survey was co-designed by the investigators, with Dr Guido Salza, a sociologist, taking the most practice role. Teachers from all academic disciplines were recruited on a voluntary basis in 38 institutions based in three different countries: the United Kingdom (17; 4 nations), Italy (12), and the Netherlands (9). Despite the common European framework, these countries offered an appreciable variety of contextual characteristics in terms of public expenditure, graduation rates, teaching staff, and student-teacher ratios that could generate a richer picture in our data. Moreover, all HE institutions in these three countries experienced several months of online instructions during the pandemic.
The survey aimed at exploring if interviewed HE teachers experienced or were aware of potential copyright and privacy issues in their online teaching activities. It should be stressed that data collection was subject to stringent practical temporal and financial constraints. Therefore, we cannot make claims that our results reflect the overall position of the relevant HE teacher populations. Nonetheless, this exploratory study lays the groundwork for more extensive empirical work. The key issues identified within the limitations of our sample lead to potential hypotheses that can form the basis for and which can guide further research and analysis. More specifically, for the first time, we make information available information about teachers’ copyright awareness in the use of e-learning platforms during the pandemic.
We adopted the following strategy to improve the dependability of our sampling. We assumed that individual universities play the most important role in selecting among e-learning services and allocating resources to instruct staff and students. Indeed fact, political institutions are only loosely involved in the practical organisation of e-learning, and teachers’ degrees of freedom ultimately depend on the basket of services procured or purchased on the market by each university. For this reason, any uncontrolled dissemination of the survey among teachers would have increased selection bias and possibly recorded only individual experiences limited to a few institutional arrangements.
In an attempt to account for relevant university-level characteristics, a list of 40 HE institutions for each country in the study was carefully compiled to meet a number of criteria. First, we prioritised institutions that offer a wide range of teaching subjects to observe differences in teachers’ copyright awareness across disciplines. Second, we built a balanced sample between research-intensive, teaching-intensive, and mixed institutions. Third, we targeted small, medium, and large institutions.
In April 2021, the selected universities were contacted through their deans and encouraged with a letter of presentation explaining the aims of the study’s aim. Thirty-eight institutions responded positively. After the clearance from the appointed office, we circulated an invitation for teachers to participate in our survey. Individual teacher data collection took place from 6 May 2021 to 6 July 2021. We collected a total of 215 responses. One hundred eighty respondents fully completed the survey, while 194 completed the questionnaire at least in its fundamental parts. Twenty-one did not get through the background information and thus were excluded from the sample.
The survey was co-designed by the investigators, with Dr Guido Salza, a sociologist, taking the most practice role. Teachers from all academic disciplines were recruited on a voluntary basis in 38 institutions based in three different countries: the United Kingdom (17; 4 nations), Italy (12), and the Netherlands (9). Despite the common European framework, these countries offered an appreciable variety of contextual characteristics in terms of public expenditure, graduation rates, teaching staff, and student-teacher ratios that could generate a richer picture in our data. Moreover, all HE institutions in these three countries experienced several months of online instructions during the pandemic.
The survey aimed at exploring if interviewed HE teachers experienced or were aware of potential copyright and privacy issues in their online teaching activities. It should be stressed that data collection was subject to stringent practical temporal and financial constraints. Therefore, we cannot make claims that our results reflect the overall position of the relevant HE teacher populations. Nonetheless, this exploratory study lays the groundwork for more extensive empirical work. The key issues identified within the limitations of our sample lead to potential hypotheses that can form the basis for and which can guide further research and analysis. More specifically, for the first time, we make information available information about teachers’ copyright awareness in the use of e-learning platforms during the pandemic.
We adopted the following strategy to improve the dependability of our sampling. We assumed that individual universities play the most important role in selecting among e-learning services and allocating resources to instruct staff and students. Indeed fact, political institutions are only loosely involved in the practical organisation of e-learning, and teachers’ degrees of freedom ultimately depend on the basket of services procured or purchased on the market by each university. For this reason, any uncontrolled dissemination of the survey among teachers would have increased selection bias and possibly recorded only individual experiences limited to a few institutional arrangements.
In an attempt to account for relevant university-level characteristics, a list of 40 HE institutions for each country in the study was carefully compiled to meet a number of criteria. First, we prioritised institutions that offer a wide range of teaching subjects to observe differences in teachers’ copyright awareness across disciplines. Second, we built a balanced sample between research-intensive, teaching-intensive, and mixed institutions. Third, we targeted small, medium, and large institutions.
In April 2021, the selected universities were contacted through their deans and encouraged with a letter of presentation explaining the aims of the study’s aim. Thirty-eight institutions responded positively. After the clearance from the appointed office, we circulated an invitation for teachers to participate in our survey. Individual teacher data collection took place from 6 May 2021 to 6 July 2021. We collected a total of 215 responses. One hundred eighty respondents fully completed the survey, while 194 completed the questionnaire at least in its fundamental parts. Twenty-one did not get through the background information and thus were excluded from the sample.
Layman's description
While the work of data collection and analysis has been collaborative, we have decided to write two distinct papers on the copyright and on the privacy issues.
Copyright paper
Guido Salza, Guido Noto La Diega, Bernd Justin Jütte, Giulia Priora, ‘Zooming in on Education: An Empirical Study on Digital Platforms and Copyright in the United Kingdom, Italy, and the Netherlands’ (submitted to EJLT)
Two years down the line since the first lockdown, as we ease COVID-related restrictions, it has become apparent that distance learning is no longer a temporary tool to use in times of emergency: it has become the default mode of provision of learning in Higher Education (HE). There is still limited evidence as to the impact that this shift is having on fundamental rights such as intellectual property (IP), right to education, and academic freedom. Previous research has shed light on how the pandemic has affected the copyright-related behaviour of digital platforms and universities: this paper adds to this picture by exploring the experiences of HE educators. As educational materials are the subject of a complex web of laws and private ordering, we were interested to see how these public and private rules play out in practice. For example, the Terms & Conditions of some distance learning platforms purport to prevail over any relevant exception and limitation; are these terms enforced and enforceable? Notably, we wanted to assess how the pandemic provided private platforms with the opportunity to exploit legal lacunae and technological power to affect the quality of the teacher experience in remote settings, and ultimately how they can impact the quality of education. Against this backdrop, this study pursues four objectives: (i) to contribute to evidence-based and stakeholder-informed law reform; (ii) to support the building of the post-pandemic university; (iii) to recentre the copyright scholarly debate on education; (iv) to raise copyright awareness.
As our interest lies in the ‘law in action’, we have considered it useful to adopt a quantitative socio-legal methodology consisting in a survey, as detailed in the next section, and informal conversations with key stakeholders such as deans and librarians. As the relevant rules depend to a large extent on the national implementation of EU laws, and since the HE systems vary significantly across Europe, we have analysed and compared the jurisdictions the main researchers were based in, namely the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Italy.
Thanks to the survey, we have gathered evidence about (i) which distance learning platforms are being adopted and how they are used; (ii) copyright literacy; (iii) experiences of copyright-related issues, including takedowns and remedies. The analysis of the responses to the survey has informed the selection of the issues that we are going to deal with in this paper, namely: the ‘platformisation’ of education (section 3), exceptions and limitations (section 4), as well as content moderation and redress mechanisms (section 4). We believe that the study of these aspects will contribute to illuminate more general issues of copyright and education policy in the time of COVID and post-COVID.
Privacy paper
The work done together inspired further research and collaboration on the topic of law and digital education. Ducato and Priora, also thanks to this project, are the editors of a special issue of JIPITEC about "Law and the Digital classroom", which will be published by the end of 2022. The following paper will appear in this issue.
Chiara Angiolini, Rossana Ducato, Alexandra Giannopoulou, and Giulia Schneider, ‘Between platforms and AI: the role of privacy and data protection for building the digital classroom in the post-pandemic’ [2022] JIPITEC
The provision of education online is recognized as an urgent benchmark within the broader digital society priority setting. Educational institutions have identified a rapidly expanding need to establish appropriate digital learning infrastructures. The creation of and the migration towards digital classroom facilities is not a technologically standalone effort. Rather, the embeddedness of digital classrooms in current education policies involves the consideration of broader socio-technical, legal, and governance affordances. This challenge has been acknowledged by European policymakers, who are now attempting to create the appropriate conditions and the respective normative environment for enabling the human right-centered development of digital education and its AI-based tools. The exponential growth and shift towards educational technologies (EdTech) has become noticeable during the pandemic. Decisions taken in urgency appear to be taking root as foundational education infrastructures in the modern digital classrooms. Simultaneously, these decisions are instigating critical discussions on the issues that current EdTech tools present and how appropriate ones can be built in the future. The trend towards the externalization of digital education through the use of third-party service providers is becoming the norm in what is now called ‘platformized’ education. The suitability of these intermediary service providers has to be assessed across criteria that include but are certainly not limited to legal compliance. The assessment efforts of these mediums reveal an array of socio-legal challenges that modern digital educational institutions shall have to address. In this paper, we focus on the data protection and privacy issues raised by digital classrooms from a European perspective. The goal of this contribution is twofold. Firstly, it provides an overview of the main problems that the use of EdTech tools raises in relation to privacy and data protection (e.g., the choice of the legal bases of processing, the definition of data protection roles, the data sharing conditions) as well as the risks related to e-proctoring and possible forms of surveillance based on the massive processing of data collected. Against this backdrop, the article discusses alternative solutions to guarantee the highest level of data protection and privacy. Among these solutions, particular attention is given to the means that can enhance the bargaining power of universities vis-à-vis the EdTech providers (for instance, collective contractual schemes, certification, and trust marks) as well as more radical proposals to establish a public digital education infrastructure. The analysis does not focus only on compliance (certainly a necessary basis): the ultimate goal of the paper is to contribute to the development of ideas for building EdTech systems that allow students and teachers to exercise their informational self-determination jointly with their right to education and academic freedom.
Copyright paper
Guido Salza, Guido Noto La Diega, Bernd Justin Jütte, Giulia Priora, ‘Zooming in on Education: An Empirical Study on Digital Platforms and Copyright in the United Kingdom, Italy, and the Netherlands’ (submitted to EJLT)
Two years down the line since the first lockdown, as we ease COVID-related restrictions, it has become apparent that distance learning is no longer a temporary tool to use in times of emergency: it has become the default mode of provision of learning in Higher Education (HE). There is still limited evidence as to the impact that this shift is having on fundamental rights such as intellectual property (IP), right to education, and academic freedom. Previous research has shed light on how the pandemic has affected the copyright-related behaviour of digital platforms and universities: this paper adds to this picture by exploring the experiences of HE educators. As educational materials are the subject of a complex web of laws and private ordering, we were interested to see how these public and private rules play out in practice. For example, the Terms & Conditions of some distance learning platforms purport to prevail over any relevant exception and limitation; are these terms enforced and enforceable? Notably, we wanted to assess how the pandemic provided private platforms with the opportunity to exploit legal lacunae and technological power to affect the quality of the teacher experience in remote settings, and ultimately how they can impact the quality of education. Against this backdrop, this study pursues four objectives: (i) to contribute to evidence-based and stakeholder-informed law reform; (ii) to support the building of the post-pandemic university; (iii) to recentre the copyright scholarly debate on education; (iv) to raise copyright awareness.
As our interest lies in the ‘law in action’, we have considered it useful to adopt a quantitative socio-legal methodology consisting in a survey, as detailed in the next section, and informal conversations with key stakeholders such as deans and librarians. As the relevant rules depend to a large extent on the national implementation of EU laws, and since the HE systems vary significantly across Europe, we have analysed and compared the jurisdictions the main researchers were based in, namely the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Italy.
Thanks to the survey, we have gathered evidence about (i) which distance learning platforms are being adopted and how they are used; (ii) copyright literacy; (iii) experiences of copyright-related issues, including takedowns and remedies. The analysis of the responses to the survey has informed the selection of the issues that we are going to deal with in this paper, namely: the ‘platformisation’ of education (section 3), exceptions and limitations (section 4), as well as content moderation and redress mechanisms (section 4). We believe that the study of these aspects will contribute to illuminate more general issues of copyright and education policy in the time of COVID and post-COVID.
Privacy paper
The work done together inspired further research and collaboration on the topic of law and digital education. Ducato and Priora, also thanks to this project, are the editors of a special issue of JIPITEC about "Law and the Digital classroom", which will be published by the end of 2022. The following paper will appear in this issue.
Chiara Angiolini, Rossana Ducato, Alexandra Giannopoulou, and Giulia Schneider, ‘Between platforms and AI: the role of privacy and data protection for building the digital classroom in the post-pandemic’ [2022] JIPITEC
The provision of education online is recognized as an urgent benchmark within the broader digital society priority setting. Educational institutions have identified a rapidly expanding need to establish appropriate digital learning infrastructures. The creation of and the migration towards digital classroom facilities is not a technologically standalone effort. Rather, the embeddedness of digital classrooms in current education policies involves the consideration of broader socio-technical, legal, and governance affordances. This challenge has been acknowledged by European policymakers, who are now attempting to create the appropriate conditions and the respective normative environment for enabling the human right-centered development of digital education and its AI-based tools. The exponential growth and shift towards educational technologies (EdTech) has become noticeable during the pandemic. Decisions taken in urgency appear to be taking root as foundational education infrastructures in the modern digital classrooms. Simultaneously, these decisions are instigating critical discussions on the issues that current EdTech tools present and how appropriate ones can be built in the future. The trend towards the externalization of digital education through the use of third-party service providers is becoming the norm in what is now called ‘platformized’ education. The suitability of these intermediary service providers has to be assessed across criteria that include but are certainly not limited to legal compliance. The assessment efforts of these mediums reveal an array of socio-legal challenges that modern digital educational institutions shall have to address. In this paper, we focus on the data protection and privacy issues raised by digital classrooms from a European perspective. The goal of this contribution is twofold. Firstly, it provides an overview of the main problems that the use of EdTech tools raises in relation to privacy and data protection (e.g., the choice of the legal bases of processing, the definition of data protection roles, the data sharing conditions) as well as the risks related to e-proctoring and possible forms of surveillance based on the massive processing of data collected. Against this backdrop, the article discusses alternative solutions to guarantee the highest level of data protection and privacy. Among these solutions, particular attention is given to the means that can enhance the bargaining power of universities vis-à-vis the EdTech providers (for instance, collective contractual schemes, certification, and trust marks) as well as more radical proposals to establish a public digital education infrastructure. The analysis does not focus only on compliance (certainly a necessary basis): the ultimate goal of the paper is to contribute to the development of ideas for building EdTech systems that allow students and teachers to exercise their informational self-determination jointly with their right to education and academic freedom.
Key findings
Dissemination
Preliminary findings have been presented at the following dissemination and knowledge exchange events:
• Noto La Diega and Ducato, ‘Questioni aperte in tema di diritto d’autore e privacy nell’Internet delle piattaforme per la didattica a distanza’ (AISA VI convegno annuale “La borsa e la vita. Scienza aperta e pandemia”, Palermo, 14 October 2021)
• Noto La Diega, ‘Zooming in on Copyright in Remote Teaching: A Socio-Legal and Comparative Study’ (112th Annual Conference of the Society of Legal Scholars, Durham University, 2 September 2021)
• Noto La Diega and Schneider, ‘Didattica a distanza e “benessere digitale”: profili di tutela dei dati personali e diritto d’autore’ (141° Mercoledì di Nexa, 9 June 2021)
• Priora, ‘Remote Teaching Today and Tomorrow: an empirical study on copyright perception by educators in Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK’ (BILETA Conference, 14 April 2021)
The privacy paper will be presented at a workshop on “Law and the Digital Classroom” facilitated by Priora and Ducato, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, 12 July 2022.
The two papers will be discussed at the Global Meeting on Law & Society (LSA), Lisbon, 13-16 July 2022.
The final findings will be presented by all the team members at a Connecting Legal Education (CLE) event by the end of the semester, as agreed by its coordinators Professor Michael Doherty (Lancaster), Emma Flint (Birmingham), and Dr Verona Ni Drisceoil (Sussex). CLE is the Association of Law Teachers’ weekly hour-long online hangout.
Preliminary findings have been presented at the following dissemination and knowledge exchange events:
• Noto La Diega and Ducato, ‘Questioni aperte in tema di diritto d’autore e privacy nell’Internet delle piattaforme per la didattica a distanza’ (AISA VI convegno annuale “La borsa e la vita. Scienza aperta e pandemia”, Palermo, 14 October 2021)
• Noto La Diega, ‘Zooming in on Copyright in Remote Teaching: A Socio-Legal and Comparative Study’ (112th Annual Conference of the Society of Legal Scholars, Durham University, 2 September 2021)
• Noto La Diega and Schneider, ‘Didattica a distanza e “benessere digitale”: profili di tutela dei dati personali e diritto d’autore’ (141° Mercoledì di Nexa, 9 June 2021)
• Priora, ‘Remote Teaching Today and Tomorrow: an empirical study on copyright perception by educators in Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK’ (BILETA Conference, 14 April 2021)
The privacy paper will be presented at a workshop on “Law and the Digital Classroom” facilitated by Priora and Ducato, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, 12 July 2022.
The two papers will be discussed at the Global Meeting on Law & Society (LSA), Lisbon, 13-16 July 2022.
The final findings will be presented by all the team members at a Connecting Legal Education (CLE) event by the end of the semester, as agreed by its coordinators Professor Michael Doherty (Lancaster), Emma Flint (Birmingham), and Dr Verona Ni Drisceoil (Sussex). CLE is the Association of Law Teachers’ weekly hour-long online hangout.
Notes
Co-Investigators: Dr Rossana Ducato (Aberdeen), Dr Giulia Priora (NOVA), Dr Bernd Justin Jütte (UCD), Dr Chiara Angiolini (Siena), Dr Alexandra Giannopoulou (IViR), Dr Giulia Schneider (Cattolica)
Research assistant: Dr Guido Salza (Trento)
Research assistant: Dr Guido Salza (Trento)
| Status | Finished |
|---|---|
| Effective start/end date | 1/01/21 → 1/03/22 |
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