online course copyright question

Hello.

The small private university where I work includes a clause in the faculty handbook (which is part of our employment contract) which gives copyright ownership to the Univ, not to the faculty.

We are now looking at putting entire courses online. My question is this:

If a faculty member puts the entire fulltext of, for instance, her Biology 101 course online, which may include lengthy presentations which are her standard script for lectures she has been giving for this course for years standing in a classroom, am I right in thinking she loses the right to transfer that content to another university, should she accept a job teaching Biology 101 elsewhere that also offered the technology for online courses?

Would she also lose a "performance right" to even use that same content in a regular classroom? Would she be able to use some of them word-for word? For instance, if a typical course is 20 weeks x 3 classes per week x 50 minute lectures each, could she use at least some of those 50-minute lectures in their entirety at the other university?

If the answer to both these questions is that the faculty has lost *all* control over the specific expression of ideas which are her standard "spiel" for teaching this topic, is there anything she could do ahead of creating the online course to prevent this from occuring, e.g. typing in the content on her home pc and somehow registering her content prior to giving it to the first univ. for online use?

Thanks!

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Melissa Belvadi
Systems and Services Librarian, 
Maryville University Library, St. Louis, MO 63141
silvest[_at_]maryville.edu    (314) 529-9531   fax (314) 529-9941