The rapid expansion of the digital knowledge ecosystem has intensified intellectual property(IP) infringement among university students, transforming it from an isolated legal violation into a pervasive socio-educational challenge. Although students a...
The rapid expansion of the digital knowledge ecosystem has intensified intellectual property(IP) infringement among university students, transforming it from an isolated legal violation into a pervasive socio-educational challenge. Although students actively participate in digital creation and content use, their awareness of copyright norms and their compliance in practice remain limited. Existing university-level IP education in Korea largely focuses on legal and technical information, offering insufficient support for developing practical judgment and preventive competencies.
This study proposes a preventive and value-oriented instructional model within general education to address these gaps by fostering digital citizenship, ethical decision-making, and lawful content-use behaviors. Through a comprehensive review of domestic and international research, institutional reports, and university-level instructional cases, the study identifies structural limitations in Korea’s current IP education and contrasts them with more integrated, practice-based approaches implemented in the United States, Japan, and Europe.
Drawing upon the value–attitude change framework, social learning theory, and preventive education perspectives, the study develops a conceptual model emphasizing value internalization, practice-based learning, and decision-making competence. This model presents academic and policy implications for restructuring general education curricula to address IP infringement as a preventable behavior, while offering directions for institutional support and future empirical validation.