Who Owns On-Line Courses? Colleges and Professors Start to Sort It Out
The varying policies, on control and royalties, are increasingly the subject of contract talks
By DAN CARNEVALE and JEFFREY R. YOUNG
When Randy Accetta developed a televised writing course six years ago for Pima Community College, he didn't sweat the details of who owned the course. Now he thinks he should have: Although Mr. Accetta no longer teaches the writing course, the college still uses the videotapes year after year. Another instructor each semester is the "teacher of record," who deals with students and grades assignments.
Mr. Accetta receives no compensation and has no say in how the material is used, although the course, which airs on local cable-TV channels, has made him something of a celebrity in and around Tucson, Ariz. "Almost every day, somebody will stop me and say, 'Hey, you're the guy on TV,'" he says.
If he tries distance learning again -- most likely by teaching a course on line -- he says he'll think as much like a performer as a professor, pushing for royalties and other rights that he didn't get with Pima.
Because of the rapid growth of Web-based distance-education programs, those rights are becoming a hot issue, and institutions have been working to spell out who owns and controls the materials that appear on line. Some universities are sharing the spoils of ownership with faculty members -- as an incentive for them to create on-line courses -- while others are not.
But no clear blueprint has yet emerged. And some officials are beginning to look to other fields, such as the movie and recording industries, for ideas.
"We've been taking lessons from the entertainment industry," says Christine Maitland, the higher-education coordinator for the National Education Association, who tracks intellectual-property issues. "The unions in the entertainment industry have been fighting for the rights to be paid for repeated performances for years, and we're trying to learn how we can work with that."
In such an approach, a faculty member would own the rights to on-line instructional materials and could sell access to various on-line colleges. In fact, the day when professors make deals like rock stars and athletes may not be that far off, says Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College of Columbia University. Top professors might soon sell materials to a variety of colleges -- and even hire personal agents to arrange television appearances and other promotions to drum up business, he says.
In what Mr. Levine calls the "Hollywoodization of academia," he envisions professors following in the footsteps of the late Cornell University astronomer Carl Sagan, who talked about physics and space on television so often -- and so distinctively -- that his presentations became the punch lines of Johnny Carson's jokes on The Tonight Show. In the future, Mr. Levine predicts, faculty members whose on-line courses become popular will end up sitting across the desk from Jay Leno.
"There's talent that can be making more money than they currently are," Mr. Levine says. "I'm waiting for the first academic agent." He says the best professors will become something like free agents in a major sports league, able to work with whomever they choose. Except, unlike in professional sports, those professors will be able to play on more than one college team at once.
Mr. Levine cites a controversy that became public last month at Harvard University's law school. Harvard administrators are uncomfortable because one of their professors, Arthur R. Miller, supplied videotaped lectures for Concord University School of Law, an on-line institution. Harvard officials say Mr. Miller violated university policy by providing course material to another law school without permission.
Mr. Miller and Concord officials maintain that because he doesn't teach at the virtual law school or even interact with its students, in person or on line, Mr. Miller is not violating Harvard's policies. He says his arrangement with Concord is analogous to publishing a book or giving a lecture on television. "You name the medium, and I've conducted lectures through them," he says.
Mr. Miller and Robert C. Clark, the law school's dean, are now discussing how to handle the disagreement. They're also reviewing how Harvard's policy applies in the age of the Internet.
Jack R. Goetz, the law dean at Concord, says universities will have to loosen restrictions on their professors if they want to hang on to the best of them in the years ahead. Restricting faculty members' ability to teach on line will encourage them to leave, because they will see on-line teaching as a way to build a reputation that can attract outside work, he says.
Mr. Goetz notes that Mr. Miller is one of about a half-dozen professors who provide course material to Concord's law school but don't teach there. Harvard is the first institution to raise objections, he says.
But many professors aren't comfortable with a world of free-agent academics.
"One of the dangers I see in modeling contracts and agreements off of other industries is the insensitivity to the kind of language we tend to use in higher education," says Rodney J. Petersen, director of policy and planning at the University of Maryland at College Park. "The word 'employee' is not a popular term for a university professor," he says.
Mr. Peterson faced the issue himself this year in preparing to teach an on-line course at Maryland about intellectual-property rights for faculty members. "In the contract, I'm called a 'producer,'" says Mr. Peterson. "I would really like to think that I'm a scholar or an educator."
For some professors, the biggest issue is not profit but control over how the materials are used, says Erin Bale, publications editor for the NODE Learning Technologies Network, a Canadian distance-education organization. The group recently released a report on the issue after talking with various professors and administrators.
"It is much more a personal thing -- 'I worked hard on this, I put my knowledge and expertise into this, I want to own it,'" says Ms. Bale. And some professors worry that they might be replaced by the very materials they help create, she adds.
The issue is becoming a common aspect of faculty-contract negotiations, and often a contentious one. At Mott Community College, the ownership of on-line courses was the "thorniest issue" of a recent collective-bargaining effort, says Steve Robinson, president of the faculty union. In the end, the parties compromised. The college owns the videotapes and Web sites for electronic courses, but their intellectual content is the "unrestricted property of the faculty member," says Mr. Robinson.
In the University of Texas System, administrators have made it clear that, by default, faculty members retain ownership of any Web courses they create, says Georgia K. Harper, a copyright lawyer for the system. The university does claim ownership, however, when parties agree beforehand that someone is hired for the sole purpose of creating an on-line course.
That policy would not work for every college, Ms. Harper says. The best approach is to consider how traditional courses are treated. "Most educational institutions have a tradition of letting their faculty members own their academic material or not own it," she says.
One institution that is keeping its hands on those potential royalties is Burlington County College, in New Jersey. Martin A. Hoffman, the educational-technology specialist for academic programs there, says that for the most part, his institution owns the intellectual property that makes up all on-line courses created on the campus.
Mr. Hoffman says 17 on-line courses have been developed at the college so far. But he acknowledges that the ownership guidelines may have deterred some potential on-line instructors. "Because the practice is clear from the outset, I think some faculty choose not to develop on-line courses," he says.
Armen Gnepp, president of the Burlington County College Faculty Association, a union, says professors who want to create on-line courses aren't happy with the prospect of the college's owning everything they produce. He says the union will probably raise the issue at future contract talks.
"It has become more of a contentious issue as time passes," he says. "The faculty feel that if they create the material, then they own it."
Mr. Hoffman says, however, that if a professor has a problem with the issue of control then the administration tries to reach a compromise. The college has bowed to a professor's demand that he be the only one to teach a course. But the administration remains adamant that it has the final say over the use of its on-line courses.
Faculty members at the college do receive additional compensation for creating on-line courses, and the college provides them with staff support, computer equipment, and software. "Basically, faculty develop them, and we buy it from them," Mr. Hoffman says.
He adds that if a faculty member who created an on-line course left Burlington County College for another institution, that professor could easily re-create the course in a different format. "You can't copyright knowledge," he says.
At the University of Missouri at Columbia, faculty members have much more control. Dale D. Huffington, director of an academic department there called the Educational Technology at Missouri, says professors may own the on-line courses they create. They also can control how the on-line courses are used -- and may even leave with the course content if they move to another university.
Missouri does own the graphics and the artwork that are developed for on-line courses by university staff members. But if a professor is computer-savvy enough to create those features without assistance, Mr. Huffington says, he or she can control the entire course.
Elizabeth A. Geden, chairwoman of the University of Missouri Faculty Council, says university's liberal policy probably drives professors to churn out on-line courses. "I suspect if it were the other way, where faculty didn't retain control, it would dampen their enthusiasm."
http://chronicle.com
Section: Information Technology
Page: A45
