RE: Distance Learning and Copyright

You might wish to see a recent survey about copyright issues in distance education. Not all universities require assignment of copyright in DL courseware. I get regular royalty checks when adjunct professors use courseware I developed.

See this link: http://www.umuc.edu/distance/odell/cip/survey_news.html

Carol Simpson, Ed.D.
Asst. Professor - School of Library & Information Sciences University of North Texas
PO Box 311068
205 Chestnut, ISB #205
Denton, TX 76203
940-565-3776 (voice)
940-565-3101 (fax)
csimpson[_at_]lis.admin.unt.edu

>>> lmacken[_at_]ms.umanitoba.ca 01/02/03 10:31AM >>>
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But this is not the forum to discuss the pros and cons of distance education. As for the copyright issue...

Our division requests that "content specialists" (usually academics) sign a
contract assigning copyright in the material to the university. This is done for purely practical reasons; developing a course so that it can be effectively delivered in a distance education format is very expensive and
time consuming. Content specialists and instructors vary from year to year
and if a course had to be developed from scratch with each new academic the
program would simply not be viable.

The agreement stipulates that professors are more than welcome to use the
material they develop in their on campus course and if they choose to incorporate the material into a textbook we assign the copyright back to them and adopt the textbook for the distance education offering.

Lillian Received on Fri Jan 03 2003 - 16:04:54 GMT