Professors Say Massive Open Online Courses Threaten Academic Freedom 284
McGruber writes "The Chronicle of Higher Education has the news that American Association of University Professors (AAUP) believes that faculty members' copyrights and academic freedom are being threatened by colleges claiming ownership of the massive open online courses their instructors have developed. The AAUP plans this year to undertake a campaign to urge professors to get protections of their intellectual-property rights included in their contracts and faculty handbooks. According to former AAUP President Cory Nelson, 'If we lose the battle over intellectual property, it's over. Being a professor will no longer be a professional career or a professional identity,' and faculty members will instead essentially find themselves working in 'a service industry.' [Just like their graduate students?]"
headline a bit inaccurate (Score:5, Informative)
They're not claiming the existence of MOOCs threatens academic freedom, but that the universities' IP grab, claiming ownership of course materials in order to license them to for-profit firms like Coursera, does so. The traditional IP agreement is that universities own a share of patentable inventions developed using university facilities, but do not own copyrights on materials, such as books, articles, course slides, tutorials, presentations, etc. produced by professors, which are supposed to be free of any university legal interference.
Re:Academic name recognition (Score:5, Informative)
I've participated in a few 'MOOC's in the past, and have thought about a few more. The ones up until now all seem to be adaptations of courses offered by universities, and using the university's name recognition and NOT the professor's to attract students. It would be interesting to see how many people would be attracted to a class by "Dr. Joe Schmoe" and not "XXX 200 from Harvard University as taught by Dr. Joe Schmoe".
It's not a question of "advertising" a course (though with some famous professors it might occasionally be).
The point is that the professor is preparing his/her own version of a course, making all the materials, and now the university will claim ownership over all of it. In years past, when a professor taught "History of Western Philosophy" or whatever at university X, he/she designed a syllabus, made up his/her course materials, etc. Then, if the professor had to move to another university for whatever reason, he/she would take those materials and offer "History of Western Philosophy" at university Y, essentially with the same stuff (perhaps modified a bit to curriculum standards at university Y).
Now, with MOOCs, universities are claiming ownership over much of the course materials created. So, if a professor leaves university X, university X could still keep using all that stuff for the course. Professor X might not even be able to use the stuff he/she created at university Y, since it may be under copyright, etc.
Obviously this is not a clear issue, since the work done for university X was done while the professor was an employee there, so I get how the university can claim some ownership.
On the other hand, for lots of early-adopter profs with online materials, they have invested a lot of their own time and energy doing something that hasn't been immediately adopted everywhere at minor universities. If they do all the work to make their own distinctive courses but then can't take that work with them if they have to move to university Y, it really can hurt their teaching ability at a new job.
Re:It's the SCO effect (Score:5, Informative)
"Professors Say Massive Open Online Courses Threaten Academic Freedom" : LOL , more like threaten future royalties.
Not really. If you read OP more carefully, what they're actually saying (bad, BAD OP for getting the headline wrong) is that the colleges are actually threatening academic freedom, not the online courses.