The following comment by Brian Lamb perplexed me:
Educators might justifiably argue that their materials are more authoritative, reliable, and instructionally sound than those found on the wider Web, but those materials are effectively rendered invisible and inaccessible if they are locked inside course management systems.
Even if these materials are locked inside CMSs, how are they “invisible and inaccessible” to the students taking the courses? The second issue is that they usually don’t have to be “locked inside” in the first place, and it makes much more sense if they’re not. Postsecondary educators (and their students) have access to vast stores of peer-reviewed and other published articles via their libraries’ online article database subscriptions, and can embed links to specific articles into their courses. And these don’t require copyright clearance, since the students need to log in to read them.
Apparently I’m not getting what Lamb means here. Perhaps he’s talking about some other form of materials, such as learning objects.
[Later] Ah, now I get it — Lamb is discussing the reusability of course materials. Hence his observation regarding “locked inside” resources. However, if course developers would use the library database permalinks then this wouldn’t be an issue — and copyright wouldn’t be infringed, either.