Awareness and perception of creative commons licences by lecturers in Faculty Of Education, University of Ibadan, Nigeria

Abstract

The Creative Commons (CC) is a viable means by which access and individual author’s right can be protected with the author specifying terms on which his work can be used. However, many authors of intellectual knowledge properties have still not taken full advantage of the Creative  Commons and the numerous licences created through which their works could be used. The study investigates awareness and perception of CC licences by lecturers in Faculty of Education, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. The descriptive survey design was adopted in this study. The population included 150 lecturers from 11 departments of the Faculty of Education, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. The census technique was adopted for this study, because it permits the entire population in the study to be selected for the data collection since the population is not too large, thus having enough time to conduct the research and questionnaire was the main data collection instrument. Descriptive statistics, frequency counts and percentages, means and standard deviation, the Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation (PPMC: Pearson r) and multiple regression were used to analyse data. Findings revealed that lecturers in the Faculty of Education were moderately aware of CC licenses. Participation in conferences and workshop ( x̄=2.84; std dev. x̄=1.149); professional forums/platforms ( x̄=2.79; std dev. x̄=1.111); write ups/literature ( x̄=2.68; std dev. x̄=1.184); the library ( x̄=2.66; std dev. x̄=1.136) and more aid awareness of CC licenses by lecturers. Lecturers hold moderate negative perception about CC licenses. There was significant influence of CC licence awareness on its perception by lecturers.The study therefore concludes that adequate awareness and positive perception of CC licences among lecturers will determine to a great extent if lecturers will use the CC licenses or not. Training, awareness programmes as well as policies that promote the use of CC license should be adopted by the university management to encourage lecturers to use CC licenses.

Key Words: Awareness, Perception, Creative, Commons, License, Lecturers, University.