Bear:

How does this square with the recent tendency for universities to claim
that what faculty produce for courses belongs to that university because
they are paying for the time and effort? This is similar to what happens
in industry. We have recently had discussions in the school and
university where I work regarding ownership of course materials and it has
been made abundantly clear that when we leave, we leave all the materials
that we used for a course - that we created - for the next person because
the university owns this material. In addition, our University has
created policies around this that institutionalize this perspective.
Having said this, please understand, that I am in total support of more
open ways of sharing information - I understand that Mother Jones has an
article out about ownership and ownership society in USA - they make the
claim that taxpayers pay university professors to produce materials that
universities then sell to industries/corporations - they argue that this
material really belongs to the taxpayer (interesting dialogue about this I
heard on radio but have not seen the article).

At any rate, I just wanted to bring this to the conversation because for
me I would feel totally uncomfortable with sharing any of my course
materials from where I work but I would hope that people would not view it
as not wanting to share but the limitations of the restrictions we have
within our institution.

Thanks - Richard

"In reclaiming the mystical, we take back our whole selves." Marianne
Williamson

W. Richard Cowling, III, RN, PhD
Associate Professor
Virginia Commonwealth University
School of Nursing
1220 East Broad Street
Richmond, VA 23298-0567

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