A Fresh Perspective

Who ultimately should retain intellectual property rights over Distance Education (DE) materials and courses?
Answer: The Public

In my research over the past weeks, the articles and books primarily focused upon the debate over whether IP (intellectual property) rights of DE course materials reside with the instructors and/or with the institutions. Rhoades has reintroduced The Public back into the argument between professors/instructors and institutions of higher learning regarding property rights. This is the most intriguing and thought-provoking argument, in this writer's opinion, thus far in this research project. Rhoades worries about the commodification of education along the lines of big business and that academia is losing the trust of the public. What has led to making big business out of universities? According to Rhoades, part of the issue stems from the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980 which allows faculty and universities to own patents on their academic work. Also technological advancements such as the Internet, coupled with financial issues of higher education, have led to a “corporatization in higher education” (paragraph 9). He is concerned that The Public is left out of the equation of property ownership, although tax money has often times paid for the initial research and work. Therefore he proposes placing educational materials in the public domain as a more equitable solution to the property rights and ownership debate.

Nevertheless, this argument is not without its flaws. Despite Rhoades concern for the core values of academia, and the good of students as well as the overall public good, current copyright and/or patent law allows for claiming rights on ideas fixed in some format. Thus Rhoades' idea of placing DE course materials in the public domain does not necessarily protect them from someone with less benevolent intentions of co-opting those ideas, rewriting them in a slightly different form, and then seeking to garner the rights to those materials. Unless some other system can be put in place to protect course materials outside of the world of academia, his goal of placing academic works in the public domain may not materialize. Despite this, it is this writer's contention that Rhoades is onto something very important. What about the public and the taxpayers? Is it just that they should be left out of the equation of intellectual property rights?

Unfortunately in the meantime, students and instructors, as well as the public, might be better served by simply allowing the current situation to go on. Although stricken with debate, often it is the faculty who retain rights over the materials they have created. If an institution has given substantial assistance in the preparation of those materials, it should be entitled to royalties, if not outright ownership of the materials depending upon the amount of assistance. Each institution currently can have its own policy which dictates who retains the rights over DE courses and materials. It is a flawed system, and often unclear, however for the most part it keeps course materials within the realm of the university or college where they were created. And that allows students to continue to benefit from distance education classes and materials. With lifelong learning, we are all students at various times in our lives, and therefore we all stand to benefit.





Distance Education and Ownership by William Straub is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Literature Review, Part III

This week I read four more sources on DE (distance education). Although not all were directly related to intellectual property rights (IP), they were helpful for understanding the broader context of the IP debate as well as gaining a broader understanding of the role that libraries play in providing support services for DE.

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In their chapter on Copyright and Distance Education, Bielefield and Cheeseman (2007) postulate as to why distance education has become so popular, and then set the context for the Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization Act (TEACH). The majority of the chapter looks at the most applicable parts of Public Law 107-273, the TEACH Act, specifically Subtitle C – Educational Use Copyright Exemptions. They then quote from the law and comment on it, analyze it and explain it in terms of its application to libraries and educators. Some of the topics analyzed include “mediated instructional activities,” “accreditation,”and “ephemeral recordings,” among others. Institutions need to have a copyright policy in place and provide educational materials for faculty, staff and students supporting and informing compliance with copyright laws. Although Bielefield and Cheeseman's text does not explicitly cover intellectual property issues with DE, nevertheless it is useful for understanding the TEACH Act and how its interpretation has led to more oversight and control over DE classes by administration. They also elucidate the role of librarians in providing support and materials for DE including electronic resources, electronic and traditional reserves, and interlibrary loans. “As with other parts of the copyright law, librarians' knowledge of the TEACH Act will support their institutions in providing strong and relevant distance education programs” (Bielefield, & Cheeseman, 2007, p. 171).

According to Crews (2002-03), "[t]he TEACH Act is an opportunity, but it is also a responsibility... a benefit, but also a burden" (penultimate paragraph). In this article prepared for the American Library Association (ALA), Crews gives a brief history of the development of the Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization Act (TEACH) Act including looking at copyright law and its implications for face to face teaching and classrooms. This is then contrasted with DE teaching, which now must impose limits on how long students can access copyrighted resources. Educational institutions are more at risk for litigation than ever before, however TEACH does put fewer restrictions than the 1976 copyright law on the types of materials that can be used in instruction. Plus analog works can be digitized unless there are pre-existing digital formats available. Despite the limitations of TEACH, fair use still is applicable. Although TEACH does not specifically mention librarians, Crews outlines eight major ways in which libraries will be involved in distance education and how they are affected by these guidelines.

Rhoades (2001) is concerned that instructor's works are becoming commodities, and that this issue affects all faculty. Ownership usually depends on a number of factors, and faculty usually do not retain rights to their published works. Instead, the publishers own the rights. Collective bargaining units, i.e. unions, can help faculty gain more protection for their time and efforts. Unfortunately, the public who has paid for much of this work with their tax money is left out of the equation. Rhoades offers four possibilities regarding property rights ownership of academic works. First, instructors can and should publish their works and collect royalties, and then the works should be placed in the public domain to make them available for free in libraries. This would help scholars' works be more widely read and cited, plus it would allow for the tenure process to continue. Second, set aside funds raised from intellectual property into a public trust, akin to what some universities already do with patent monies. Third, whatever the public pays, discount that amount as a subsidy. Fourth, bar the sale of intellectual products by universities. For example, university should agree not to sell distance education materials developed by their staff and faculty. This is because the intellectual property belongs to The Public, and not to the academic institutions.

An article by Yang (2005) clearly demonstrates how librarians are involved in DE. Yang conducted a novel survey of ARL (Association of Research Libraries) libraries to determine how they were following ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) standards and guidelines for DE. The study found that two-thirds of ARL libraries support DE activities, three-quarters offer ILL (interlibrary loan), most offering free document delivery, although some charge students shipping fees for books. Twenty-one percent of ARL institutions have full-time DE librarians. More than half of the librarians had helped create online materials for library instruction. Overall libraries try to meet the requirements of the ACRL DE guidelines, however a number of issues impede this, including: lack of time,lack of institutional priority and support, no central DE office on campus, and no access to student contact information and thus the inability to assist students unless they contacted the library first. Although Yang's article does not specifically mention property rights or ownership issues of DE, it is important to understand the extent to which librarians are an intrinsic part of DE endeavors.





Distance Education and Ownership by William Straub is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Preliminary Summary of Research thus Far

Copyright law dictates that the original author(s) or creator(s) retain the rights to an original creation. Words and speeches are thus not themselves copyrightable unless or until they are “fixed in any tangible medium of expression", that is, written, or made manifest in some form (Copyright Section 102(a) and Title 17). It would seem that an instructor should retain the rights to any and all lecture notes, exams, and digital files of any sort created by her or him.

However, when a person is working for remuneration of some sort, then according to the law, the employee is conducting “work-for-hire.” The laws state that the results of such work belong to the hiring entity. This is in contrast to when a person is acting as an independent contractor, and the person will retain rights to their work. This makes sense and seems fair.

There is a faculty exception that applies to instructors and professors in colleges and universities that maintains that the copyright and property ownership of course materials and writings belong to the faculty member. This faculty ownership right enables the possibility of faculty writing and publishing scholarly works in order to maintain the tenure system, and thus continuing the tradition of “publish or perish.” It is worthwhile pointing out that this “faculty exception” does not apply to elementary or secondary school educators. All of their lesson plans and course materials are considered to be “works-for-hire” and thus are owned by their respective school districts or employers. (Although the justice of this differentiation between higher education faculty and professionals at lower levels may rightly be questioned, and certainly deserves further study, this current research project will continue to focus on higher education.)

This tradition of faculty ownership does not necessarily apply to works published or posted in digital format, in online course management systems, or on the Web. Thus the debate over intellectual property rights: are they retained by the faculty member creator or by the institution? Instructors and faculty argue that their rights are being infringed upon, and they call upon academic freedom as well as creator author rationale. But institutions of higher education have their justifications also.

Whereas the copyright law of 1976 allows for the distribution of some copyrighted materials for the purposes of face-to-face instruction in an educational setting, online courses are inherently different because items can be copied so easily and distributed outside of the educational setting. The Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization Act (TEACH Act) (2002) makes a clear distinction between distance and face-to-face education in regards to copyright issues. Although it is clear that TEACH imposes strict guidelines on how copyrighted material may be included in DE classes, it is only after careful analysis that one may realize the large influence TEACH has on intellectual property rights. TEACH results in institutions having to being much more careful about copyright and holds them more accountable for infractions than ever before. This includes the mandate for educational institutions to inform and educate staff, students and faculty about copyright and include such information in any and all distance education courses. Therefore colleges and universities have had to play a greater role in distant education classes compared to face-to-face standard classes. An administrator now must have oversight of actual distance education course materials or else the school itself, and not only the instructor, may suffer heavy penalties ($150,000 for a single copyright infringement infraction [DiRamio & Kops, 2004]).

Understanding this context and the financial implications of the TEACH Act seems to be essential for understanding the greater role institutions are playing in the development and control, and thus claims on at least partial ownership, about distance education curriculum and course materials. Add to this the fact that academic institutions need to provide secure, time-limited technology, often in the form of servers running content management systems (CMS), for hosting distance education courses in order to meet TEACH guidelines. No longer is teaching a one-person act. Many courses require assistance from instructional designers, Web masters, technical support staff to maintain the CMS, and technical staff knowledgeable about accessibility compliance for students with disabilities, besides office support staff, and one can more easily see why institutions of higher learning claim at least partial ownership for their investment of institutional resources including time, money, and energy.

Instructors and faculty members counter these institutional arguments by claiming that the college or university already is saving money by not having to provide, furnish, or clean classrooms, which more than makes up for the cost of the server(s) and CMS software. Compared to the cost of building new classrooms and school buildings, distance education is more cost effective, according to instructors. They disagree vehemently with administrators claiming ownership over course materials when institutions have provided very little or no technical support or assistance with developing a materials.

And the debate continues....


This coming week, for my research I plan to consult a few more sources and continue the summary of my findings.






Distance Education and Ownership by William Straub is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Literature Review, Part II

Literature Review concerning Intellectual Property Rights In Higher Education Distance Education (DE) Courses - part two

Twigg (2000) summarizes the results from a Pew Symposia on property rights and distance education classes attended by 14 administrators from institutions of higher learning. The goal was to determine what institutions should offer in their policies on intellectual property rights. Why is there a shift towards institutions claiming property rights? Many institutions see course content as being a possible revenue “gold mine” that could be repackaged and sold, and many fear instructors might take these assets and create competition. Meanwhile professors are concerned that their instructional skills are being relegated to content development, and they fear losing positions to lesser skilled and far less remunerated “instructional designers.” Twigg argues that instructors are not so easily replaced because online classes demand even more skills and user interaction than face-to-face courses. Arguments about ownership can be helped by copyright law, but arguments hinge on the question of “works made for hire” and the historical “academic exception” to this. Copyright determines ownership, yet ownership is not the answer–“it is a red herring” because ownership does not necessarily include the legal ability to actually use the material (n.p.). Rather the real question is: who needs to do what with the work? The default position should be that ownership of course materials remains with faculty, however there is a need for policies to have built-in “triggers” for colleges or universities to receive royalties if they invest “substantial contributions” in these projects. Institutions should support faculty; this should not be a fight.

DiRamio and Kops (2004) discuss the huge impact that distance education has had on the learning environment and then look at three major aspects: (1) shared governance and education policies, (2) ownership and property rights issues of DE, and (3) issues of copyright and course materials for DE. The authors suggest separating debates on copyright and fair use from those concerning intellectual property, ownership, and control. They also recommend implementing TEACH for it affords many benefits. DiRamio and Kops conducted a study in which they interviewed higher education institutions and found that more institutions than not lacked formal distance education policies as well as documents concerning ownership of intellectual property. This problem afflicts two-year colleges more than universities, and in response the writers point out some of the issues of not having policies and urge well-thought-out policies. They also analyze copyright laws and and implications of TEACH for fair use. One problem is that the copyright law of 1976 was not necessarily applicable to distance education. For this current research, perhaps the greatest importance of this article is in summarizing McSherry’s study from 2001 in which the idea is presented that faculty should probably forgo discussions on copyright concerning distance education materials and instead claim that they are part of their “public persona” and thus are protected utilizing a “privacy-celebrity legal strategy” (p. 44).

After noting that scholars are “highly mobile” and comparing higher education institutions versus faculties’ concerns over who maintains control of educational content, Zhang and Carr-Chellman (2006) contrast two models for developing institutional courseware (p. 175). They note that this disagreement over control stems from differing viewpoints: faculty believe institutions are there to support educators in their research and quests for knowledge, whereas administrators believe faculty are there to serve the institution itself (p. 176). They admit that instructional designers (IDs) often assist faculty in these endeavors (“collaborative creation”), so courseware is different than face-to-face instruction (p. 177). The first model comes from the Association of American Universities (AAU) whose stance is that the university should own the intellectual property created by professors and that this is intrinsically different from patents (pp. 177-178). Whereas the Association of American University Professors (AAUP) argue that Policies from three university systems are then compared. University of Texas faculty have traditionally owned their own materials, and they should continue, but admit the institution should get royalties if they have contributed. Penn State is concerned about competition from other institutions and thus the institution maintains property rights. The University of Wisconsin maintains ownership of courseware only when: “a) work-for-hire or b) assigned duty, or c) with substantial use of institutional support of involvement” (p. 181). Zhang and Carr-Chellman laude UW for defining “substantial use.” They finish by asking an essential question: what is the goal or mission of higher education -- advancement of knowledge and education or procurement of patents and copyrightable works?

Nobel Laureate and Columbia Professor, Joseph Stiglitz delivers an extremely thought-provoking and instructive streamed lecture on intellectual property rights sponsored by Duke University. Although not directly about distance education, his thoughts on property ownership strike at the very core of the issue of intellectual rights. Stiglitz argues that patents and rights commonly believed to foster creativity and advanced science may actually be slowing innovation. This has tremendous economic implications for the United States compared to other countries as well as for people who are economically challenged and dying from diseases who cannot pay exorbitant prices for medicine. Other examples are given of globalization and intellectual property issues including looking at the history of patenting the automobile and airplane, besides Microsoft, “bio-piracy,” and the WTO. Stiglitz speaks out against the inequities of the “intellectual property regime” although he admits that theft of intellectual property is stealing. He posits that “knowledge is a public good” and that “academics…want [their] ideas disseminated.” Alternatives to the patent system including a price system and guaranteed purchase funds are offered.


references (bibliography)





Distance Education and Ownership by William Straub is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

References

Bielefield, A., & Cheeseman, L. (2007). Copyright and Distance Education. In Technology and copyright law: A guidebook for the library, research, and teaching professions. (2nd ed. pp. 161-171). New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.

Bobbitt, W.R. (2006). Universities, faculty, and the battle over intellectual property: Who owns what's inside the professor's head?. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press.

Crews, K. (2002-03). New copyright law for distance education: Meaning and importance of the TEACH Act. Retrieved June 26, 2009 from http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/wo/woissues/copyrightb/federallegislation/distanceed/distanceeducation.cfm#newc

DiRamio, D.C., & Kops, G.C. (2004, March/May). Distance education and digital intellectual property issues. Planning for Higher Education, 32(3), 37-46. Retrieved June 26, 2009 from Education Full Text database.

Kromrey, J., et al. (2005). Intellectual property and online courses: Policies at major research universities. Paper presented at the National Educational Computing Conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 27-30, 2005. Retrieved June 7, 2009 from http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/uploads/NECC2005/KEY_6920072/Kromrey_IntellectualPropertyNECC2005_RP.pdf

Lipinski, T.A. (2005). Copyright law and the distance education classroom. Lanham, Md.: The Scarecrow Press.

Locke, J. (1690). Second Treatise of Civil Government, Of Property, chapter V, sec. 28.

McMillen, J.D. (2001). Intellectual property: Copyright ownership in higher education: University, faculty, and student rights. Asheville, NC: College Administration Publications.

McSherry, C. (2001). Who owns academic work?: Battling for control of intellectual property. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Rhoades, G. (2001). Whose Property Is It? Negotiating with the University. Academe Online. Retrieved June 21, 2009 from http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2001/SO/Feat/rhoa.htm

Russell, C. (2004). Complete copyright: An everyday guide for librarians. Chicago: American Library Association.

Stiglitz, J. (n.d.). “The economic foundations of intellectual property.” Webcast of lecture delivered at Duke University Law School, Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Available http://realserver.law.duke.edu/ramgen/spring07/lawschool/02162007.rm

Talab, R. (2007). Faculty distance courseware ownership and the "Wal-Mart" approach to higher education. TechTrends, 51(4), 9-12. Retrieved June 7, 2009 from Education FullText database.

Technology Education and Copyright Harmonization Act (TEACH). (2002). Retrieved July 3, 2009 from http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=107_cong_bills&docid=f:s487es.txt.pdf

Twigg, C. A. (2000). Who owns online courses and course materials? Intellectual property policies for a new learning environment. Pew Symposia in learning and technology (2nd, Miami, Florida, February 17-18, 2000). Retrieved June 7, 2009 from ERIC database.

Yang, Z. Y. (2005). Distance education librarians in the U.S. ARL libraries and library services provided to their distance users. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 31(2), 92-97.

Zhang and Carr-Chellman. (2006). Courseware copyright: Whose rights are right?. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 34(2), 173-186.

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last updated: July 19, 2009, 7:02 p.m.



Distance Education and Ownership by William Straub is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Purpose, Disclosure, and Literature Review

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Purpose
This blog will document my research exploring copyright, intellectual, and property right issues concerning distance education specifically for postsecondary institutions in the United States. The number of distance education and online courses has continued to increase dramatically over the past decade. Yet the number of tenured faculty is decreasing, meanwhile adjunct and associate faculty are being given greater teaching responsibilities. Surely questions of rights to course materials are not going away in the foreseeable future. Copyright Law gives us some clues but leaves many questions unanswered causing some educators and/or colleges and universities to turn to license agreements in order to secure royalties. This brings up issues including fair use, definitions of what is an employee (“work-for-hire” versus “independent contractor” status), the fairness of academia providing “substantial resources” enabling instructors to develop and create course materials, intellectual freedom, and the societal implications for these decisions, among others.

Although this research will include copyright and fair use issues, the current study will be limited. At least for the first two weeks of this course, this blog will not investigate such topics as what types of materials instructors may include from copyrighted sources for use within distance education classes, nor will it look at fair use regarding student rights and responsibilities when using copyrighted materials for their own distance education projects and assignments. However depending upon time and other factors, perhaps these topics will be explored in weeks to come.

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*Please note that the references (bibliography) have been placed on a separate linked page in order to facilitate updating as well as ease-of-use by the reader.

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What does distance education have to do with libraries and librarianship?
Distance education affects many libraries, and thus it is fitting that the American Library Association (ALA) as well as other library representative organizations have been developing policy statements on the topic. Academic libraries, in particular, provide instructional resources for students enrolled in distance classes including interlibrary loan, print and electronic reserves, reference services, as well as having access to view recorded lectures that the student may have missed. Just because a course is being taught online does not necessarily eliminate the need for students to have actual physical libraries. In fact, some academic librarians complain that they are spending as much or more time assisting students enrolled in distance education classes from other institutions than they are assisting students enrolled in local classes. Librarians, with their knowledge of Copyright Law as well as their background with information sources, are often called upon to assist with distance education programs. At least one community college placed the library director in charge of the distance education program, at least temporarily, while hiring a full-time director of distance education. Therefore libraries and librarians, especially in the academic field, may be called upon to help write and perhaps spearhead, if not at a minimum implement, policies regarding intellectual property rights and copyright ownership regarding distance education courses and materials. School librarians and media specialists in K-12 settings are also being asked to help with distance education endeavors which have increased 19% over the past years according to Talab (2007, p. 10). Even public librarians are being called upon to assist students enrolled in distance education classes.

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Disclosure
Before looking at what some of these scholars have to say about property rights of distance education materials, it seems only fair to disclose this writer's background and interest in this topic. With such a controversial issue, it would be rare to find a writer without any bias, so here is mine.

I have been an educator for almost 20 years, although much of that was part-time. I have taught high school for three years and adult education in subsequent years. For eight years I taught as an associate faculty member at a community college in addition to working part-time as a laboratory assistant and technical support staff for the department of disabled student programs and services at the same institution. I taught computer skills and study skill classes for people with disabilities, everything from teaching students who were blind how to utilize screen readers, to helping students get through their retraining program after suffering an on-the-job accident. Part of my job included overseeing the program to close-caption educational videos as well as implementing the live captioning of distance education broadcast (cablecast) televised lectures. I have presented training sessions for faculty and staff on creating accessible online documents including those produced for the institution's Blackboard online course management system (CMS). Over the years, I have developed the gamut of educational materials including numerous lesson plans, quizzes, tests, assignments, etc. both in print form and online.

A few years ago I remember coming across an article that questioned whether the copyright of course materials created by instructors belonged to the instructor or to the institution for which she or he worked. I was aghast at the notion that I might not actually have the right to the course materials I had developed, almost all of which I had developed and created on my own time during nights and weekends using my own funds and materials. Why would I spend my free time and personal resources to create this material? Partly, it was fun to develop new and creative lesson plans and materials. Besides the enjoyment, it was a challenge and a learning experience for me, plus I could see the benefits for my students. When I would leave my teaching job for another with another school, I always left behind some of my teaching materials in the hopes that the materials would serve other students and colleagues. Perhaps I was naïve, but it just seemed like the right thing to do. In the interim, I have not taken the time to read much about the topic of instructor property rights. But I never forgot that someday I needed to study this in more depth. This is my chance.

Now that my background is known, in order to better understand these issues let us now turn to what some of the scholars and other thoughtful individuals have to say.

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A Literature Review
McMillen's (2001) 69 page book on intellectual property and higher education covers copyright as it applies to academic institutions and then looks at ownership and the “made for hire” doctrine in detail. The text also explores fair use and the debate over faculty lectures being copyrighted. Explanations and analysis of actual Supreme Court cases round out this excellent text. For example, to answer the faculty lecture copyright question, McMillen Quotes from the 1976 Copyright Act, and then offers an opposing theory which is scrutinized and compared with several other court cases (pp. 42-43). McMillen carefully explains how instructor's lectures are most likely covered under Copyright Law even when the lectures are not written down or fixed, yet he allows for the possibility this may be overturned in future cases. This discussion then segues into ownership issues regarding faculty lectures and ownership rights with a similar analysis of various sides of the arguments bolstered by actual law cases. Although this text is not written primarily about distance education, it still gives an excellent grounding in rights law and it does include coverage of Web-based courses (pp. 36-38) as well as a case study involving online education (pp. 68-69). Note that apparently McMillen's references at the end of the book are not complete.

The main focus of Kromrey, et al. (2005) is an analysis of how copyright and intellectual property right policies from 42 universities have changed over time from 1992 to 2005. After a background assessment of past studies, as well as applicable Copyright Laws, and a discussion of works for hire versus faculty exemption amidst academic freedom, the findings of their own study are presented. Their areas of concern include the fact that numerous universities claim the rights to distance education materials no matter how they were made or who was responsible. Half of the universities surveyed defer property rights of lectures, tests, syllabi and other course materials, but only a few offer these rights to instructors when these materials are posted online. Besides the fact that all the institutions surveyed now offer policies regarding ownership rights, the creators of this study were also heartened that almost all institutions are willing to share royalty privileges with the actual faculty creators. Their final conclusion is that universities must protect the rights of faculty or else they stand to lose the creative and beneficial materials altogether. Thus greater cooperation needs to prevail for the continuation of scholarly work.

Lipinski's (2005) accessible book on distance education and copyright includes a clearly written analysis of arguments based on court cases regarding who owns the copyright for distance education courses and course materials (pp. 6-16). An examination of “works for hire” is contrasted with “independent contractors.” He then provides an explanation and analysis of court cases leading to a faculty authorship exception to the employer owned results norm. His well-written work also includes appendices with copyrightable and distributable model distance education copyright policy and TEACH question and answer compliance audits which would be useful for a variety of institutions.

Within a 118 page book, Bobbitt (2006) offers a good historical background on property and intellectual property law, starting with the general and moving into more specific areas. The historical overview spans from 15th century Venice, Italy with its initial patent laws utilized by Galileo, through American colonial times, initial copyright and patent law, First Amendment and supreme court issues and into the Twentieth Century analyzing relevant case laws. Bobbitt's detailed explanation of relevant cases regarding “work-for-hire” and workplace intellectual property issues provide grounding in the foundational arguments for understanding more recent higher education intellectual property disputes. Although published in 2006, surprisingly all of Bobbitt sources are pre-2000 and thus his work is in need of updating.

Comparing the commodification of education to the increase of big-box retail stores, Talab (2007), also explores the “work-for-hire,” fair use, academic freedom, and the need for institutional policies arguments. Like other authors, she explains how the number of tenured faculty continues to decrease while associate faculty increase in number and are teaching a greater number of classes. Talab acknowledges that higher education institutions should receive some of the royalties when they have dedicated “substantial resources,” but overall concludes that “faculty must retain intellectual property rights” as foundational for democracy (p. 9).

references (bibliography)

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Plan for this coming week
As this initial literature review has shown, some of the major themes running through these texts include: the “work-for-hire” versus the faculty exemption for higher education instructors; the applicability of Copyright Law yet the lack of it fully answering the question of intellectual property rights; and the issues of justice and fairness regarding time, energy expended, work performed, and remuneration for that work. Over the next week, I plan to continue researching these issues by summarizing in greater depth what has already been discovered, besides expanding upon this growing body of sources, each with its own perspective. I also plan to analyze and critique the different viewpoints to try to bring some clarity to the question of ownership of the actual courses and course materials for distance education in higher education.






Distance Education and Ownership by William Straub is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Introduction

When a college or university instructor or professor resigns and takes on a similar position with another academic institution, what becomes of the instructor's online content, lectures, and course materials? Who owns the rights to these materials: the instructor who created the materials or the institution for which she originally worked?





Distance Education and Ownership by William Straub is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.