Australian Universities Review | September 2012
The Australian Universities’ Review (AUR) is published by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) “to encourage debate and discussion about issues in higher education and its contribution to Australian public life, with an emphasis on those matters of concern to NTEU members.” AUR has been in continuous publication since 1958. AUR is published twice a year, in February and September, and is on the ERA Ranked Journal List.
The current issue features a report on Deakin University having been accused of “institutional plagiarism” in its use of materials from a Flinders University medical course in 2008.
Copyright agreements were signed for this franchising arrangement, but it is alleged that moral intellectual property rights were not respected because the originators of the materials were not acknowledged when slides and case studies were presented to Deakin students. After objections from a Flinders academic the situation was partially rectified in 2011.
The authors conclude that this case is a timely warning about the need to think carefully before using other universities’ materials in the ‘Cloud Learning’ initiative.
