Faculty-Developed "Stuff" & Ownership

Anandam, a long-time valued friend, comments here in response to previous postings about ownership of faculty-developed Web-based courses. She addresses inequities in not giving credit to professionals who help faculty develop instructional materials, and ends with 3 interesting recommendations about "stuff" -- the various forms of instructional materials of potential use to learners and teachers:

"... 1) produce self-contained units/[modules to use familiar terminology] so that faculty can engage in assembling 'stuff' for their courses; 2) establish standards for the 'stuff' such that the assembling concept will work; and 3) put the units out there in public domain so that we can expand the pool of available 'stuff' for teaching and learning...."

Steven W. Gilbert, President
The TLT Group -- a Non-Profit Organization
The Teaching, Learning, and Technology Affiliate of AAHE
E-mail: gilbert@tltgroup.org
Web Site: http://www.tltgroup.org

Source: TLT Group E-mail Mailing List on March 26, 1998

I am writing this in response to the several postings on the topic of ownership of faculty-developed Web-based courses. To my knowledge, faculty-developed ["traditional"] campus-based courses have not raised the question of ownership. Those courses seem to exist in the mind of the faculty member and his/her notes, materials, references etc., etc. If individual faculty members succeeded in getting a publisher to publish his/her textbook, the institution doesn't claim ownership and, in fact, includes such publication in the criteria for evaluating faculty performance. Media support by way of overheads, slides, filmstrips, audio and video tapes was provided by the institution, and an institution's prestige was measured in part by the media support it provided for the faculty. Why don't we let this scenario apply to Web-based courses? For good reasons, I suppose.

It helps to look back at other trends that have occurred prior to the web situation. Production of video courses introduced additional cost, quite a bit I must say, to the institution. These courses are used for on-campus as well as for distance learning. It was at this juncture (early 70’s) that community colleges engaged in joint projects to produce the courses and began marketing them in order to recover some of the cost. With ownership residing with the institution, contracts were worked out with faculty for appropriate compensation. The primary method was for the faculty to write the textbook and/or the study guide to accompany the video courses and for the institution to find the publisher and for the publisher to pay a royalty to the faculty. To the extent video courses are still being offered, this model seems to work well except for one thing. None of the support staff were figured into this type of compensation. I don't think that was right, but that's the way things are.

Attempts similar to those for video courses have been extended to computer-based courses with far less positive results. In spite of millions of dollars spent on the production and distribution of computer-based instructional "stuff" by institutions, publishers and grantors, it has not reached the critical mass. While productivity tools such as WP [word processing], Spreadsheets, and web browsers have reached the critical mass, why hasn't instructional "stuff"? Publishers tend to circumvent the problem by following the textbook model which assures them a profit. In my estimate, that model perpetuates a linear method of teaching and learning. My opinion aside, courseware (computer-based "stuff" for an entire course) has not grabbed the fancy of faculty. I don't buy the idea of laziness or lack of motivation for this lack of interest. Most of the faculty cherish the idea of their creation or assembly of instructional "stuff" for their students and their personal intervention to assist the students. The main reason e-mail has become so popular is that it gives the faculty a sense of personal intervention.

The Web may provide us the opportunity to reach the critical mass if we follow three principles. 1) produce self-contained units/[modules to use familiar terminology] so that faculty can engage in assembling "stuff" for their courses; 2) establish standards for the "stuff" such that the assembling concept will work; and 3) put the units out there in public domain so that we can expand the pool of available "stuff" for teaching and learning.

One last point. Authorship of the "stuff" belongs to the team and each member should be given credit as is done for movies. Ownership in my mind entails financial transactions and as such belongs to the institution depending upon its investment in the project.

Kamala Anandam
Education Consultant
E-mail: kananda@ibm.net