What are the challenges there, particularly with respect to copyright and intellectual property?
Fitzgerald: Copyright is a huge challenge on the Net in the UK. That’s why people like me are about multiple media, not multimedia. This rush to put all the course readings on the Web and let people download them is actually unhealthy. It’s not a particularly effective or efficient way to organize the student’s access. First, you have to see that the student has access to a printer, so chances are you may have to take books out of your library to make room for printers, then employ people to make sure the printers are working! Second, this is part of the issue of the quality of effort. An institution can make an effort to ensure the students have access by giving them copies of materials. We did that at Thames Valley University. We paid the copyright fees. We were just careful about how we gave the students access to material. The copyright charge, which we then paid, was significant. But we paid it. What I found was that this was an extremely efficient and effective educational method
