Teaching Materials by Dan Ryan are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Faculty rights generally. “Faculty,” all members of the tenured and tenure track faculty and all employees who have a term contract for teaching at the college and all members of the library staff.* Faculty retain ownership of copyright in all their scholarly and pedagogical works, with the following limitations:
- Faculty rights in work created with significant College equipment or staff. If faculty create the work using College cameras, film editing software or hardware, audio editing software or hardware, focus group rooms, specialized staff assistance, multimedia development staff assistance, equipment in computer production labs and suites, television studios, or theaters and sound stages, then the faculty member owns the copyright in the work, but College retains a non-exclusive royalty-free license to use the work for the College’s educational, promotional, and public relations purposes.
- The use of standard issue office computer and software or routine support by IT does not constitute “significant College equipment or staff.”
- This limitation does not apply to materials developed and used for classroom or other course work; that is, the College does not claim a non-exclusive royalty-free license to use faculty created syllabi, lecture notes, lesson plans, handouts, PowerPoint presentations and other digital materials, and the like created in fulfillment of one’s teaching responsibilities.
- This limitation does not automatically apply to all audio or video recordings of one’s class presentations and lectures; that is, even if some college resources are used to produce a recording of lectures for the purposes of “flipped” classes, student review, etc. no license is granted to the college for the use of these materials outside courses taught by the faculty member.
- Faculty rights in work created with significant College financial support. In general, if faculty create the work as part of an explicit assigned task, such as the development of a new course, and receive specialized financial support, such as a special assignment contract, then the faculty member owns the copyright in the work, and College retains a non-exclusive royalty-free license to use the work for the College’s educational, promotional, and public-relations purposes.
- The receipt of course-development support does not in and of itself constitute “significant College financial support.”
- The College may on occasion provide faculty significant financial support on the condition that the College own the copyright in the work. The College must assert, in writing at the time the funds are first released, its ownership of the copyright in the work, and the College must grant the faculty member a non-exclusive royalty-free license to use the work for educational purposes.
* The rationale for this definition is to include all those persons who the college wants to be creating things related to education and instruction. In other words, the purpose of this policy is to encourage creativity.
See Also
- AAUP. 2013. “INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY—draft report for comment” (AAUP summary, IHE Article)
- Butrymowicz, Sarah. 2014. “As online courses expand, so do questions about ownership.” The Hechinger Report (3 March)
- Cate, et al. 2007. Creating Intellectual Property Policies and Current Issues in Administering Online Courses
- Nelson, Cary. 2012. Whose Intellectual Property? Inside Higher Ed June 21, 2012
- Stanford Policy
- Yale University. “Yale Online Faculty Policies“