Copy to the Left, Copy to the Right

Had a most interesting if rather galling experience recently.

I had the opportunity to pick up some distance learning courses at a school where I used to teach to offset a little underemployment. All courses I have taught before, one of which I wrote myself from scratch.

So I went into the online course shells and found them blank.

So I did what I did every semester I had been teaching there and asked about having the master shell from a prior semester copied over (usually just an active shell from a faculty of record, though they were getting master shells set up). I was told they couldn't do that without the express permission of the person who created that course, even though one of them was my own course and most probably still quite derivative thereof. This was new. Annoying, but new.

So I complained to the few key people about the apparent poor implementation of a rule, the conflation of ownership and usage right, and the need for departments to clarify and track who does and does not want to share so that no one has to scramble to track down owners (especially if resigned, deceased, or otherwise indisposed). I also sent out e-mails asking everyone who had taught the course last semester or was teaching it this semester if I might have a copy of the course materials for the online shell. My hopes were not high because it was two weeks before the beginning of the semester. How many full-time faculty are answering their e-mail at that time?

The responses to date, though few in number, have been most stunning. A few faculty have actually become offended that I would have the temerity to ask to use the materials *they* had developed for *their* classes. One replied with a bit of jovial condescension that reeks of that academic arrogance that will some day drive me out of academe. And more importantly, my department chair got an angry call from the administration for my having the gall to question the academic integrity of this rule which was not set by the administration, but by the Faculty Association itself. To their defense, I was probably overreacting a little, when it is now one week out and I suddenly discover I have to create three courses from scratch.

My former office mate (old classrooms split into faculty cubicles), who has also taught the course I developed did offer me his copy, but we couldn't find a version of it in the online archives, and others have taught it since then.

This is a large school and the courses are entry level. One of the courses has ten different faculty members teaching sections this Fall. So it is not an issue of one person controlling the course and being jealous of a section farmed out to an adjunct. Moreover, as I noted above, one of the courses I have been refused a copy of is one I created myself and openly shared with any faculty who were teaching it. I would even mirror it on a public Web site so that the information was not locked away in proprietary course management software. It is this last element that really got me miffed.

I should point out that to date no one has replied with any counter arguments to my arguments beyond the administration telling my chair to shut me up, which does not, so far as I recall, qualify as a reasoned response.

So, rather than going on a tirade here, I am going to itemize my arguments over a series of postings. Suffice to say for now it revolves around conflating ownership rights and usage rights and the problem of faculty failing to communicate and share resources in order to ensure academic integrity and continuity between course sections. It seems the school has everyone jealously doing and hoarding their own work, thus increasing the workload of all faculty due to duplication of effort, and selling it to them as a benefit for them, at the cost of both the growth that comes from the interaction of ideas and minds and of the potential quality of education being provided to the students.

Hope that threat is enough to egg you on to read through the rest of the series. It is goign to be mixed with other things. I still have over a week of stuff queued up to post. I've had to step up to twice a day to get through it all.

For my own part, I have stopped asking for copies of the online materials from anyone and am rewriting the courses from scratch (Did I mention I was underemployed this Fall? Okay, and I found an archived copy of my old course that still uses the same texts, complete with all support materials ... which is good because I had to fight tooth and nail to get the publisher to provide me with a Mac-compatible version thereof.) with a specifically stated Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license on all materials. That means my permission to copy the course materials into new sections is inscribed right in the documents, and it means that permission to copy course materials and any derivatives thereof remains with any copies made. May ruffle a few feathers, but it is an approach that has just recently survived its day in court, so I intend to stick with it.

Last time I checked, being and educator is about sharing knowledge. I know a bunch of people who are getting copies of Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten this Christmas. Or maybe The Missing Piece.