May 20, 2008
A Professor Who Has Problems With a Company That Profits From His Lectures
Michael P. Moulton, an associate professor of wildlife ecology and conservation at the University of Florida, is part of a legal battle against Einstein’s Notes, a company that sells students study kits and lecture notes for his classes. His publisher brought a copyright suit against the company.
Q. What’s wrong with a company’s selling lecture notes taken by students in your classes?
A. It wasn’t just the notes. They were selling answers to my study questions for the exam. It used to be that students had to find the answers themselves, the old-fashioned way. Now they can pay to not go to class. The students are the ones who suffer, even if they think getting an easy A is not suffering. What bothers me the most is sometimes the notes will get things wrong. I’ve had students bring me the notes when I mark something wrong on their exam, saying I should count questions correct because that’s what Einstein’s Notes said.
Q. Do students who buy the study kits have an advantage?
A. They’re at a huge advantage. My grades have gone up, and it’s because a lot of students buy those notes. They’ve created a culture where students believe that if they don’t buy them, they’re not doing everything they can to get an A, and if they don’t keep their grades up, they might lose their scholarship.
Q. Isn’t it reasonable for students to want to do well?
A. I’m not marking them down for this. It’s just tough love maybe. I want them to do some hard work to earn their grades.
Q. What kind of other study resources can students use?
A. I post the audio of my lectures online for free. I’m going to start posting a skeleton of the notes on the Web site, too. I’m going to stop giving out study questions though. If they don’t want to come to class I can’t make them come, but I’ll be damned if I help [Einstein’s Notes] sell answers to questions if they don’t want to come.
Q. I understand that you’ve registered a copyright for your lecture notes. Why?
A. There had been a lawsuit here years ago against another note-selling company, and it came out favorably for the people selling the notes. I thought if I copyrighted my notes, I’d have a stronger hand of cards to play.
Q. Einstein’s Notes is accused of copying parts of the textbook you wrote for this course and selling the material on index cards. Is that affecting your sales?
A. I don’t know. This has nothing to do with money. It has everything to do with not following the rules. —Catherine Rampell
Posted on Tuesday May 20, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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I think some of Moulton’s reasoning is a bit backwards. If student grades are increasing, the response shouldn’t be to take away their resources, it should be to improve the quality of teaching and raise the difficulty of the class.
While I agree that the commercial interests are problematic, the notion that shared study guides — a hallmark of higher ed — are bad is nonsense: if a study guide causes a dramatic swing in grades, that should reflect poorly on the instructor who’s students couldn’t succeed without the study guide.
The finger is pointing in the wrong direction.
— Brad May 20, 10:44 AM #
Brad- you seem to miss the point. Doing well is not at all about memorizing answers. Doing well is about struggling with material and learning research skills.
At the same time, perhaps the professor needs to evaluate his approach to testing so that students who simply memorize study notes receive lower scores than students who demonstrate an ability to approach the material more critically.
— NW May 20, 12:06 PM #
If simply having the notes is improving the grades in the course, then the course is poorly designed. It sounds like the students are simply asked to regurgitate answers to some pool of questions on the test. Ask the student to do some higher level tasks.
— Chuck May 20, 01:32 PM #
Couldn’t this instructor change the ways of measuring performance in this class? This seems like a no-brainer to me. This situation could easily be stopped if the instructor would stop using the same notes, same formats, same test banks, etc. for this class.
— Really Concerned May 20, 05:02 PM #
The key to evaluating the course and the value of the instruction is if students can apply the knowledge effectively, which means that Professor Moulton should consider modifying exams to focus on how students can use knowledge, not merely respond to study questions.
— James L. Morrison May 20, 06:23 PM #
Teachers should design tests that evaluate higher-order skills, sure. But how many students are taking this test? It was a lot easier for me to give exams with essay responses when I taught 50 students per semester, rather than the 130 I’m saddled with now. Maybe Moulton is in a similar spot?
— JP Craig May 21, 08:11 AM #
He’s not copyrighting his notes per se, he’s registering the copyright- and that’s all about filing suit and getting damages. His notes are already protected by copyright when they’re created. Assuming that his notes are fact based, there really isn’t much of a copyright issue in a company using the same facts, only using the same expression. Lawsuits probably aren’t the appropriate solution to this particular problem.
— CJ May 21, 10:32 AM #
So the professor is upset that his students are studying? Doesn’t make much sense. This complaint would make sense if the students were memorizing the correct answers (in correct order) but here they have to learn the information, so where is the problem. Other than of course ego because the students grades have gone up the professor loses face, how ridiculous.
— Scott May 21, 11:35 AM #
Professor Moulton’s decision to copyright his notes is evidence of many professors being stuck in the 20th century.
Info is info. Copyrighting basic information—which sounds like what the course is teaching—is stupid. Credible information is already widely available in just about every topic thanks to Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s references tend to be accurate articles that are freely disseminated, not pieces of information locked away as a professor’s investment.
What’s happening to the collaborative academic atmosphere?
It looks like this associate professor just can’t pay his bills or is looking for 15 minutes of fame.
— Kelly Sutton May 21, 06:53 PM #
I agree completely with the professor. I had the pleasure of taking his class as an undergrad a few years back.
When I was there, yes, Einstein notes could give me all the answers, but I have never purchased them in my life. The fact of the matter is (no offense professor Moulton), the class was an easy A from the get go. Literally, if you showed up and were awake, there was nothing to it. I never even opened the book, but I never had to buy notes either. And, yeah, I thought it was pretty rude for people to never show up to class. Maybe the stuff being taught wasn’t rocket science, but it matters. And, the passion with which someone teaches a subject that is near and dear to their hearts is what learning is all about. It’s not about memorizing preprinted answers. How would you feel if everything you were was summed up in 20 bright green pages and just handed off to people? You think they are getting the real you? These kids today (I say that like I’m ancient at the tender age of 25) need to stop taking the path of least resistance. With ideals like that, is it any wonder we can miss entire planets with satellites because someone forgot to convert to the metric system? … maybe Einstein’s forgot to mention that.
— Kathleen Torrence May 21, 09:59 PM #
How wonderful that your students are mastering the content of your course and meeting the course objectives so that now you can provide even more challenge. This thing called technology is truly enabling us to provide students with the opportunity to master more intricate levels of content that we never thought possible!
— Amy May 24, 01:05 PM #