Anna Peak, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Instruction, Intellectual Heritage Program
A student at Concordia University recently googled his professor, only to discover that his professor was dead. The University, enterprisingly, had simply saved all the lectures and other online course materials and hired a TA to do the grading.
Nor is this the only time.
Online courses — and all courses are online to some extent these days — raise serious concerns about who gets hired, who deserves to get paid, and who is qualified to do the intellectual labor of course design. All this goes double for standardized courses developed by or in consultation with committees, and for asynchronous classes.
Synchronous classes, too, that must be recorded raise their own intellectual property and privacy issues that have yet to be fully addressed.
Many, perhaps most, professors are unaware of the ins and outs of copyright law as it pertains to their own work. In some places, for example, the same lecture can be either the professor’s property or the University’s, depending on whether it was recorded using third-party software and then uploaded to an LMS, or recorded directly with an LMS.
Other universities, such as Purdue, have simply introduced clauses into their contracts to the effect that they own all online course materials.
Online teaching is necessary for health and safety. But it lacks the transference and counter-transference, and thus learning, possibilities of the 3D classroom. We must recognize that to recognize professors as living experts.