Report: Distance education and intellectual property

Academe, May/Jun 1999 by Wagner, Donald R, Martin, Allen, Schuster, Jack H, Conklin, Cheryll L, Et al

The report which follows was approved for publication in March 1999 by the Association's Special Committee on Distance Education and Intellectual Property Issues. Comments are welcome and should be addressed to the Association's Washington office.

The world of higher learning is in the midst of accelerating and sometimes turbulent change. Much of that change is driven by technologies that only a few years ago would have seemed fantastic, yet we can expect ever-newer technologies to permeate and reconfigure higher education in the coming years. These modes of communication are profoundly affecting the work of faculty members; they are reshaping the processes of teaching and learning, redefining the roles and authority of faculty members in organizing and overseeing the curriculum, and altering the bases for evaluating student-and faculty-performance. The implications of these developments extend far beyond teaching and learning, for the new technologies are penetrating many, if not all, major facets of higher education, deeply influencing its organization, governance, and finances. Still further, the emergence of new developers and "brokers" of educational content by providers outside the academy, coupled with arguably looser standards for regional and specialized accreditation, adds considerable complexity to the challenges with which "traditional" higher education must grapple.

Within this context, the roles of faculty members-their authority and responsibilities-are in flux. The situation calls for a close reexamination of the respective rights of faculty members, of the institutions of higher education for which they work, and of third parties who may engage faculty members for specific purposes in this volatile, sometimes highly entrepreneurial environment.

This vital intersection of emergent technologies and the traditional interests of faculty members in their own intellectual products requires scrutiny and the formulation of policies that address the former while preserving the latter. Toward this end, the Council of the American Association of University Professors established in June 1998 a Special Committee on Distance Education and Intellectual Property Issues. Its mandate is to report back to the Council with proposed policy statements in these areas.

The committee has prepared two policy statements, the first on distance education and the second on copyright. The statements appear below. Throughout them, the committee refers to "teacher," "faculty," and "faculty member." The terms refer to members of a college or university faculty in either a teaching or a research role.

I. Statement on Distance Education

Preamble

In distance education (or distance learning) the teacher and the student are separated geographically so that face-to-face communication is absent; communication is accomplished instead by one or more technological media, most often electronic (interactive television, satellite television, computers, and the like). (See the report titled "Distance Learning" in the May-June 1998 issue of Academe for a more comprehensive definition and explanation.) The geographic separation between teacher and student may be considerable (for example, in a course offered over the World Wide Web), or the distance may be slight (for example, from the teacher's computer to the student's in a nearby campus building). Hence distance education may apply to both on- and off-campus courses and programs. For the most part, this statement's focus is on programs and courses offered for credit. It does not, however, exclude noncredit courses, programs of general cultural enrichment, or other programs which support the educational objectives of the institution.

Distance education in its contemporary forms invariably presents administrative, technical, and legal problems usually not encountered in traditional classroom settings. For example, questions arise regarding copyright for materials adapted from traditional classroom settings or created expressly for distance education. In addition, systems of interactive television, satellite television, or computer-based courses and programs are technically more complex and expensive than traditional classroom instruction, and require a greater investment of institutional resources and more elaborate organizational patterns. These issues not only make more difficult the question of who is entitled to claim ownership of materials designed for distance education; they also raise questions about the appropriate distribution of authority and responsibility between the general administration of the college or university, on the one hand, and the separate academic departments or units within a given institution, on the other. The technical and administrative support units responsible for maintaining and operating the means of delivering distance-education courses and programs are usually separate from particular academic departments or units which offer those courses and programs.

More important, the development of distance-education technologies has created conditions seldom, if ever, seen in academic life-conditions which raise basic questions about standards for teaching and scholarship. For example, in distance education the teacher does not have the usual face-to-face contact with the student that exists in traditional classroom settings. Thus, special means must be devised for assigning, guiding, and evaluating the student's work. In order to communicate with the student, the teacher frequently utilizes sophisticated and expensive technological devices which are not under the teacher's exclusive control and which often require special technical knowledge that the teacher may not fully possess. The teacher's syllabus, lectures, examinations, and other course materials may be copied or recorded and reused without the teacher's presence. The teacher's academic and legal rights may not be fully or accurately understood or may be in dispute in this new environment. Also in potential dispute are issues regarding the faculty's overall authority in determining appropriate policies and procedures for the use of these new technologies. Finally, the nature of teacher-student interaction and the preparation and teaching of distance-education classes often require significantly more time than that needed for courses offered in traditional classroom settings; consequently, the teacher should receive commensurate compensation.