Overcoming Obstacles to Effective Digital Education (Workshop 23)

Wednesday, 3 December 2008, 11:30am-1pm, Room 3

Internet Governance Forum, 3-6 December 2008, Hyderabad, India

Nathaniel Gleicher, Yale Information Society Project (Moderator)

Geidy Lung, World Intellectual Property Organization

Hong Xue, Law School of Beijing Normal University

Ginger Paque, DiploFoundation

Eddan Katz, Electronic Frontier Foundation

The panel featured a lively discussion about the challenges facing the expansion of digital education in the world today. It was well attended, with about 50 people in the audience, and the panelists’ presentations were followed by a string of probing questions. While the panel covered many aspects of digital education, it particularly focused on the impact that intellectual property laws have on the development and delivery of new educational techniques.

Nathaniel Gleicher discussed some of the fundamental roadblocks that stand in the way of the growth of digital education. He defined five commonly discussed types of challenges: economic, cultural, technical, institutional, and legal. He also noted that the rapid development of technology makes it difficult to define exactly what “digital education” means, suggesting that “scoping” constitutes a sixth type of road block. To deal with this challenge, legal and cultural expectations must remain flexible enough to adjust to the innovations of tomorrow.

Geidy Lung discussed the importance of maintaining protection for intellectual property, arguing that the present legal regime is well balanced to address future educational innovations. She also pointed out that, by creating incentives for writers to develop new educational resources, intellectual property ensures content for educators and students.

Hong Xue focused on the impact of copyright on digital education, suggesting that the current framework made it difficult for innovators to adapt existing textbooks to new media. She gave the example of the makers of a widely used English textbook in china who recently sued a company that developed an interactive program to help students practice lessons from the book.

Ginger Paque spoke primarily as an educator, suggesting that the most important element of education, even in the digital age, is still the teacher. Rather than trying to replace a teacher with technology, digital education should make one-on-one learning time between teachers and students easier to achieve.

Finally, Eddan Katz returned to the question of regulation, suggesting that countries should adopt expanded exceptions to intellectual property laws to allow for more flexible uses by educators and students. This would spur innovation in digital teaching methods and media.

Audience participation was diverse, ranging from questions focused on Ginger’s presentation of shifting teaching paradigms to a series of questions about the impact of copyright on the development of new digital education techniques. The panel was an important conversation about the challenges facing digital educators and students. Although the discussion addressed potential solutions as well as challenges, it would be very useful to continue this debate, perhaps focusing specifically on solutions to each of the roadblocks considered by the panel.