Re: faculty coursework online

On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Art MacCord <amaccord[_at_]rcblaw.com> wrote:
>
> However in the coming days, the very best professor/lecturer of any
> given subject, such as 18th Century European History (let's call him
> the superstar), can be made available to 100,000 students via distance
> learning instead of the mere 500 or so students who fit into the
> amphitheaters that pass as college classrooms.

Before getting too excited about this brave new world, note that the emerging consensus seems to be that web mediated distance ed works best in courses where there's interaction with the instructor, and the instructor:student ratio is perhaps 1:20 to 1:30. Those interested in DE rather than law might want to subscribe to the aahesgit listserv.

There will surely be a few examples of some successful distance ed materials that are used by 100,000 students during the next few years, but how are they different from the previously mentioned Samuelson textbook or the equally successful Zimbardo Psychology text and Nova series? Apart from the fact that more university resources probably go into producing it, why don't the same IP rules apply in determining ownership of the canned lecture as are used in determining ownership of a faculty-authored text?

Granted, technology does change things. Witness:

   Lectures were once useful; but now, when all can read,    and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary. If your    attention fails, and you miss a part of a lecture, it is lost;    you cannot go back as you do upon a book... People have nowadays    got a strange opinion that everything should be taught by    lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do as much good as    reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know    nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where    experiments are to be shown. You may teach chymistry by lectures.    You might teach making shoes by lectures!

   Samuel Johnson, quoted in Boswell's Life of Johnson (1791).

JQ Johnson                      Office: 115F Knight Library
Academic Education Coordinator  mailto:jqj[_at_]darkwing.uoregon.edu
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