Professor Sells Lectures Online

KnightMB writes "Students at NCSU have the option of purchasing the lectures of a professor online. The Professor did this as a way to help those that missed class, didn't take good notes, or from another country and have trouble understanding an English speaking Professor. The reactions on campus were mixed among the students as some saw it as a great way to keep up with things should real life interfere and others see it as something to pay for on top of the tuition cost at the university. Each one cost $2.50 for the entire lecture. Some students feel it should be free or cost less. The professor brings up a point that doing this takes extra effort and it's only fair that they should have to pay for that extra time and effort needed to put the lectures online for sale such as editing, recording equipment, etc. No one is forced to purchase the lectures, they are only an additional option that students will have. Quote Dr. Schrag "Your tuition buys you access to the lectures in the classroom. If you want to hear one again, you can buy it. I guess you could see the service as a safety net designed to help the students get the content when life gets in the way of their getting to class."

Comments

Even Apple would have been better

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Schrag explained that $1.50 of the money goes directly to ind-music.com, the host of the Web site offering the service. One dollar then goes to Schrag to offset the cost of recording and editing the lengthy lectures.

If he's only getting that percentage anyway, he could have saved his students money by making it a podcast.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[HatchedEggs]

I think that $2.50 is a fair price for a lecture. Lets be realistic... most of the time that you miss class it is your own choice (or worse, your failure) to miss it. In that, the professor doesn't owe anybody his free time. Something like this does take time and effort beyond what is normally expected. Those times when I missed class in college I would have gladly paid $2.50 if it was something that I wanted to hear.

So... sure, make it a podcast. But keep the price at $2.50 and make all the profit himself. Students don't need any more excuse to be lazy, a good deal of them perfected the skill long ago.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[ben there...]

$1.50 for a 10 MB audio file is rather ridiculous. I could host the same thing for pennies, and I don't even have a huge university network (bigger tubes than the internet uses), just a cheapo hosting account.

Also, from ind-music.com:

Newsflash
If you have come to this site looking to purchase the audio lecture notes for Professor Robert Schrag, please take note that the files have been temporarily removed at the request of Dr. Schrag. In the meantime, check out some great indie bands in our Music Store.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

At a state university this means that he's essentially running a small side business which feeds off of his normal job at the expense of the public. While I understand that this is standard operating procedure for universities of all kinds, it still makes me slightly uneasy. I would much prefer that the university pay for recording all his lectures (if they aren't already) and then podcast them.... Seems that somewhere along the line, "For the good of the whole" exited the philosophy of public university in the US.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[Maxo-Texas]

Since he is using university property.. and has this opportunity because he is a professor at that university, I would think the university should get a cut. Not all- not even most-- but definately a cut.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[Bob 535604]

I go to NCSU and read this in the paper today. The article explains that $1.50 goes to ind-music.com, where it's hosted, and he only gets $1.00 per sale. Seems like not a bad price for covering his time/effort of recording each lecture and uploading them every class.
Of course, most professors put their lecture notes online for free, which isn't too far off from an mp3 file in terms of what you get out of it, so maybe it's not that great of a deal. Personally, I'd just go to class.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[HatchedEggs]

Before I went to town on this guy though for charging $2.50 a lecture to students that cannot manage to make it to class I would go after the professors that write their own texts (or for others) and charge a rediculous amount for it.

I've never heard students complain about a professor charging too much for a lecture. On the other hand, I have heard an expletive or two when a student saw their $400+ bill for their text books for a single semester.

I think that any professor that records his/her material should receive some sort of additional incentive for it. Why? Professors are not required to produce that material, and indeed doing so (even if he/she doesn't tape it themself) puts additional requirements on the lecture.

I didn't have that much money in college to throw around... but if I needed a lecture and failed to make it to class I wouldn't have minded paying a small fee for the professor helping me out beyond what is required.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[bitt3n]

this is actually a great opportunity for some student to undercut him using a cheaper service. If he's arguing that he's charging for the pain of making the recording (not of the lecture contents, which the school already compensates him to provide), then what's stopping an enterprising student from recording the lecture and selling it for $2? He won't be able to prohibit this without looking like a greedy profit monger.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[damiam]

He could probably sue them for copyright infrigement if he wanted to. Recordings of live performances (musical or non) are covered by copyright just like anything else.

Then again, actually suing the student would make him a douchebag, especially because the student's work would save him the trouble of doing the recording himself.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[e2d2]

What motivates the professor to make the price noticeably high? Getting students into the classroom I'd bet. If it hits your wallet just a bit to notice, and it seems a bit unfair, well that discourages it.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[Greventls]

You compare the books to the lectures. The University of Pittsburgh has three main types of courses. 3 day a week, 2 day a week, and 1 day a week. They are all for 15 weeks I believe. $37.50 for all the lectures for the one day class, which is cheaper than most textbooks. $75 is about on par for a normal textbook. $112 is a bit expensive. It compares to a textbook in price then. Though the professor has a much higher profit margin. All in all, I'd prefer the textbook. The other thing I could think of would be to have podcasts to listen to during commutes if you are a commuter student. That would be really handy.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[grim4593]

You could think of it another way...

What if the student that records the material is doing so at consent of another student in the class. The student that is asking for the recording paid for the class and the ability to see the lecture. If he can't make it to class for any reason, and he asked for another student to record it, the recorder should be able to charge a convience price.

As far as im concerned, at the rate my school charges, ~$667 a credit hour, I should be able to see my lecture AT LEAST once, regardless if I am there or not. Also, it is not as if it is harming the learning atmosphere.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[rblancarte]

So true. No one complains when people sell their lecture notes in book stores around campuses, why the problem with this?

RonB

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[EvanED]

I agree. This idea doesn't really sit well with me either, but I'd have to think long and hard about any further classification of it, like if I were an administrator and asked to pass a regulation against it or something.

But, I thought of this too; regardless of what that decision would be, having your own text as a required book for the course can easily be FAR worse than this. There are cases where it makes sense, like if there's a standard book on a topic and you're taking the class from the author. But if it's just something where the teacher decided to write another book in a field where there were five million books already (say calc), it starts to look more like they're just doing it for the money. I even heard one person say they had a class where the book (authored by the prof) was one of the ones where there were tear-out exercises that were turned in for credit, so you had to buy the book NEW. The last point IMO is criminal.*

So I think there are a lot bigger fish to fry in terms of suckyness for students than this.

* Not "criminal" in the technical sense of being against the law (though I think you could make a decent case that it should be), but in the sense of being morally vapid.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[buswolley]

They already payed for the lecture when they payed for their classes.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[Korin43]

My text books are definately all over $150.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[EvilSS]

Good idea. He can just tack that on to the costs and raise the price a bit more, still keeping his dollar.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[EvilSS]

Or you could look at it like this. Say you want to go to a movie but your leg is broken, you could have your buddy go with a video camera and buy two tickets. Seriously. He is doing this as a service to the students. Most professors wouldn't. It's $2.50 for crying out loud. That's what, 2.5 dew's from a vending machine for the convenience of being able to hear a lecture if you have/choose to miss one?

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[el americano]

What he needed was a payment system.

I agree they're charging too much, but with the university computers at his disposal, clearly the problem wasn't bandwidth.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[PacketScan]

INSANE!
I just dropped 20k a year for school and your going to charge me for a lecture?
FRAUD!

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[hackwrench]

And have you been to every campus? They didn't sell lecture notes at the college I went to for my Associates Degree. Aren't you in fact a train spotter?
http://www.ibras.dk/montypython/episode07.htm

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[grim4593]

It is a service, and it is not quite a service. Sure, the guy goes the extra mile to help students out and expects to make a little money out of it. However, from the students point of view, everything that the professor does is already paid for. Thats why tuition is so high. We PAY for this guy to do work. If he wants to try to make extra money by providing a convience, sure (Im not even going to get into the how the professor is charging the students for this class material, it should be covered under tuition as there are enough "extra" fees the colleges hit students with). If a student does the same thing for free, the professor is now trying to sell something for a price higher than its worth.

However, my point still stands. You gave me a fiesty analogy, but what it comes down to is that the lecture is bought and paid for, and are generally only useful for a semester (Whereas a movie in a theater has repeated entertainment value, lecture videos are useless once you know there material, which is the point of a class. The goal is to obtain knowledge, that is what you pay for, and once you hit that goal, the lecture are rather useless anyways). Unlike your movie example, lecture videos have very little value outside the classroom. Sure, if a student does a recording for someone that is absent, that student that does the recording COULD go out and host the files online and spread it throughout the web. However there is no loss to the professor. The professor has to give the lecture regardless, and is irrevalent if a student is recording it or not. And even IF the student posts the lecture online, it would be only a marginal benefit for similar classes outside the university, because even IF you know the material, you still have to pay for the class at a college somewhere. Remember, now days its not just the fact that you know something, its that you have the paperwork to prove it as well.

Now if for example, another college got some student to save all these lectures and then opening an online class featuring the unknowing professor, THAT would be a time for copyright infringement to step in. But if a student wants to help himself, a friend, and the class out and make easy access video lectures for free, let them. They paid for the class, they paid to learn the material: let them take the class material on their own terms if it does not cause extra work for the professor.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[ketamine-bp]

in case you don't know, many textbooks comes from lecture notes of professors. one notable is the 'lecture notes' series for medicine from blackwell science (if i remember correctly)

http://www.bmjbookshop.com/shop/collection_display .asp?CollectionId=@0000005554

or feynman's lectures, for those bathed in physics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feynman_Lectures_ on_Physics

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[GrumpySimon]

The other trick to watch out for are the ones who manage to write brand new editions of their texts each year. Last years one is *so* out of date, and somehow all the page numbers are different, so you can't use the (much) cheaper older edition.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[Yvanhoe]

Students have it easy in the academic world. Have you ever seen the price of a conference lecture ? I am sure he would have found clients even for $250 if he is any good. Making it so cheap shows that he isn't driven by profit

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[maxwell demon]

Well, there's a perfectly well payment system already in use: Dollar bills and coins.
After all, from what I understand, the lecture is meant for the students taking his course, who normally are on the campus anyway. So why not have them pay directly, and give them a burnt CD-R with the content (a CD-R is still cheaper than that service). Or alternatively have it on a server on the campus which is protected with some one-time token system, and those tokens can be bought by the students directly from the professor. As a bonus, the professor gets to see his students at least once (when buying the lecture recording).

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Germany it works like this: Each professor has some (1-n) assistants, who have an academic grade, and he also employs some students, to do the less qualified work, that does not fit into the employment scheme of a secretary (such as coding, sysadmin tasks etc.). The important part is that those assistants and student are not payed by the prof, but either by the state or the university. So, if a prof offers some additional written notes, or some taped lecture, who does the work? It's the studends working at the respective chair, being paid by the university. So the work _is_ already funded by an organization that gets its money from the state, as well as the students. There is no extra work and no extra costs for the prof. If he would sell those additional notes or taped lectures, he would be paid twice.
BTW: $2.50 for each lecture is seriously making profit, $10 for all the lectures is offering an extra service.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[zoney_ie]

At my Uni we get the year's notes for anything between 4 and 10. Some lecturers choose not to go this route, and for others, the content is pretty incomprehensible without being at the lectures where it's explained.

But I've always thought those at other Unis that have to take down mountains of notes *in addition* to paying attention to the lecturer are losing out.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[zoney_ie]

That should be €4 - €10 per subject. Argh - why can't slashdot comment box handle euro symbols entered into it!

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[call -151]

having your own text as a required book for the course can easily be FAR worse than this.

Absolutely! At reasonable institutions, the convention is that when a faculty member has as a required text his or her own book, the part of the proceeds from those sales go to a departmental account for cookies for grad students, or something comparable and neutral. I have been at many institutions, some have reasonable conventions like that, and at others, the faculty member just takes the money, which I think is unethical.

In the one case when I required one of my own books as a text, I was at a less than reasonable (OK, terrible) institution where the convention was to just take the money, and when I decided to give the money to the departmental student travel fund, I was attacked by other faculty members for making them look bad. That is, making it clearer that they were the slimy weasels they are. Am I glad that I got a professorship at a much better institution!

Ancedote from that terrible institution: for more than one of the faculty authors there, the only place in the world where that text is used is there, so almost all of the faculty members' book revenue (it's not much, BTW, just because the book costs $100+ doesn't mean the faculty member gets much at all) came from being required in that institutions' courses (and these were terrible books.) And there was pressure, of course, for other instructors to require those same terrible texts, ugh!

BTW, for all those people who think that textbook publishing is the ticket to riches and fame- good luck! What it takes some time to realize (and many people never realize) is that writing explanations that students can understand and get much from is quite difficult, and most people are not good at it. Just because you can give great lectures (a much more interactive setting, even if there are no questions from the students) doesn't mean that you can write a decent text. There are some people who simply are much better at writing useful texts than the rest of us. Those people should write textbooks, and the rest of us should stop.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[Chabil Ha']

Students don't need any more excuse to be lazy, a good deal of them perfected the skill long ago.

Ya know, that reminds of a T-shirt that I saw last night at the mall. It read:

I'm not suffering from laziness, I'm enjoying every minute of it.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[level_headed_midwest]

I would say that the average price of my textbooks would be roughly $110-160 for a new book and $65-110 for a used book. Some of these books are paperback books, like the $105 econ book I bought freshman year or the $250 set of physics books (series of 5) I had to get sophomore year. The thing is that a lot of universities will also "brand" their books so that they are unsalable on the open market to other schools. My differential equations book was like that, and it was also a cut-down version of another text. Result? We could not sell them back, but in their defense it was a $45 book instead of $130.

One thing that my university is moving towards is making plastic-spiral-bound course texts that they print themselves. I have had classes that have used them and while they are unresellable, they are $25-35 and have as much information as a full textbook. The unresellable part comes from the fact that some pages are to be used for assignments and turned in and that the professor's name and the semester are on the cover. It's still kind of a racket but it's a much less expensive one and a step in the right direction.

The professor in question is likely within his legal right to do what he is doing provided that the university does not claim ownership or partial ownership on information developed by the staff and as such wants a cut of the sales. Some universities also will not let the professor directly sell things to students, citing conflict of interest (mine is that way.) The professor is being a little shady by selling the lectures as there is that conflict of interest with selling things to your students, but the students also are not forced to buy the recording and that does not go against the spirit of the no-selling rule if it does the letter. That rule was designed to prohibit professors from making students buy their textbook and pay whatever they wanted to charge or basically fail the class. However, we shall see if he allows students to come in and videotape the lectures and give them away. If his intentions are really in the right place and that fee is truly for equipment and a little bit of time for editing, then he would. If he does not, then he is trying to make a buck off it and I think that would be a conflict of interest as the student gets no compensation for recording and distributing the lectures. And they did pay for the lecture and nowhere does it say that you cannot record them- otherwise notebooks would be illegal.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[Maxo-Texas]

Yup.

And I imagine he's already built in the government's share of income taxes.

We have too much inflation-- back when a penny would buy a candybar, a lot of things worth less than a penny were free.

Now that you need a dollar, they measure and charge for miniscule things.

And I imagine, he can put DRM on the recordings and then charge per play. Royalties on You Tube.

He's really missing a lot of opportunities here.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[Marxist Hacker 42]

My point is that he'd get 75 cents from Apple, but his students could buy the lecture for only $.99.

And exactly how hard is it to use a modern MP3 recorder anyway? Hit record at start of lecture, stop at end, upload file. Yes it takes time, yes he should be paid for his time, but how much time does it realistically take per lecture? 3 human minutes + 5 machine minutes?

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I wouldn't pass a regulation against it- I'd just remove it from the professor's duties by hiring some underclassman at $5/hr on a work study program to wire a time-based recorder into the sound system of the lecture hall itself. The whole mess could be easily automated- it's not like the lectures happen at random times or anything. Heck, hack MythTV and send the MP4 files to a public file server on the university's network indexed by class ID.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[Marxist Hacker 42]

How much of a cut? His profits are only 40% to begin with- I suppose we could give him 30$ and the University 10%, if they're willing to pay for the equipment....

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[Manitcor]

You want to hear the lecture for free? Try going to class. Recording equipment, setup, recording, organizing and uploading all take time and money. Since the prof is only making about $1.00 per sale it likely barely covers his extra time and expense.

Its not uncommon to have schools charge extra for online versions of thier courses, how is this any different?

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[Marxist Hacker 42]

My undergraduate school had several professors who just made their lecture notes directly public sharable, read/only- they'd pass out the URI at the begining of class and anybody who wanted to could see the notes.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[Maxo-Texas]

Interesting.

The net profits in most real world businesses is 3% to 7%.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Sorry, that's his gross profits. Time to develop the lecture, cost of equipment/media for the recording, and time for conversion to MP3/Upload would all come out of that 40%. I'm saying if the university wants a cut, they need to provide some of the services of that 40%.

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[petard]

Ouch. I didn't think I'd been out of school for that long 'till I read your comment. 7 years ago, my most expensive textbook was about $90 new. And we felt like we were being gouged :-(

Re:Even Apple would have been better

[Zagra]

So, students can get a second chance if 'life gets in the way'. Hmmm! If they are really serious students then 'life' must surely be subservient to studying. 'Life' can then be arranged to be enjoyed after the studying tasks have been completed. If they are not serious students, then that begs the question.

Old News

[gbulmash]

Years ago, when I was in school, there were services that did this at my university. They ran with the U's blessing and had to get Prof permission. They didn't sell lectures, just lecture notes. But if the midterm was approaching and you slept through a morning class, $1.50 for the notes on the lecture you missed was well worth it.

- Greg

Re:Old News

[EmperorKagato]

Selling lectures online. Brilliant!

Re:Old News

[dan828]

My school did this as well-- and of course the week before finals the line to buy notes usually took an hour or more to get through. It would have been nice just to be able to be able to get on-line and d/l the lectures.

I can see it now...."Mom, had to use the emergency credit card to download an entire semester's worth of lectures for three classes because....I....um.....lost my notes...."

Re:Old News

[hotdiggitydawg]

Every class I've studied (or taught) has had online lecture notes available for free, usually of quality decent enough for readers to get a passing grade in the class. On top of that, half of the CS lectures I attended as a student (and a couple I taught as a lecturer) were taped outright by students - often using digital recorders, occasionally without the lecturer's consent. And I have no doubt that those recordings were passed on to other students, free of charge.

How is this Prof going to stop something like that? Strip-searching? Metal detectors? Call in the RIAA?

Seriously, he's kidding if he thinks the already-exorbitant fees for education shouldn't cover the availability of notes. The real tangible benefit to him of putting them online, is that it means those who can't be bothered to come to class don't come. Believe me, teaching 50 people who are interested in what you have to say and want to get more than a passing grade is a lot more enjoyable than teaching 200 that couldn't care less.

Re:Old News

[lukas.mach]

Just two links:

http://ocw.mit.edu/
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/

Consider this: video recording of Introduction to algorithms class, notes, exams, assignments, ... http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-a nd-Computer-Science/6-046JFall-2005/LectureNotes/i ndex.htm

Free and apparentely available to everybody. Does somebody know other links to a projects that would be as good as this?

Re:Old News

[Dan Farina]

A (as far as I know) complete set of notes (sometimes going back many years in the archives) exists at http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/

Web casts are made available based on what room the course is scheduled in. As you may expect, the general trend is that larger rooms (which are given to larger classes) have web casting equipment.

But I have found lecture notes in general to be very detailed anyway and in some ways advantageous to audio in the ability to skip back and forth.

Hm

[Umbral Blot]

If it isn't DRMed to hell this could be great, for example one could make techno-remixes of professors, ect.

Re:Hm

[rdwald]

Already been done at Caltech...Nate Lewis Rap Remix.

Re:Hm

[Mr. Underbridge]

Was that Ch1a? What year?

Re:Hm

[rdwald]

Yep, Ch 1a. This was made last year (i.e., in the fall of 2004) by some friends of mine; I can't claim actual credit. The one guy who did the most work on it has a rather low opinion of Slashdot (he believes himself to have "grown out of it" during high school), so I won't post his name.

Re:Hm

[ne0n]

The synth, oh my. Is it a TV show theme?

Re:Hm

[B2382F29]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_F

Re:Hm

[Mr. Underbridge]

Disturbing. Not as disturbing as the hamster thing the previous class did, but still.

Litigation guaranteed!

[gettingbraver]

Seriously, he might as well have added "Sue me!" to the site.

Why is this news?

[lambadomy]

This sounds like the school equivalent of all those patents that take something common and add "on a computer". I was able to buy lecture notes for most of my classes in 1996. Admittedly, those notes were taken by someone paid to take the notes, and sold by the school not the professor, but still this doesn't seem particularly exciting or novel, just a natural progression. I do remember back then they printed the notes on this annoying red paper to make it more difficult to photocopy the notes, something tells me any measures on the web to prevent copying and sharing of these notes will be even less effective.

Lazy...Pure and Simple

[PreacherTom]

What a wonderful way to reward laziness. And hey, while you're at it, pad your pockets through your podcast? Ridiculous.

Re:Lazy...Pure and Simple

[Y-Crate]

What a wonderful way to reward laziness. And hey, while you're at it, pad your pockets through your podcast? Ridiculous.

I tend to agree, but there are some classes where missing a day or two because of illness or some other, non-voluntary situation can absolutely destroy your progress in the course.

Re:Lazy...Pure and Simple

[generic-man]

Then why not ask to borrow a classmate's notes? Not all my professors made notes available at all on the web, so that's what I did when I missed a lecture.

Hmm... perhaps students could undercut the professor by selling their own notes. I have to tell my friend Cliff about this!

Re:Lazy...Pure and Simple

[badasscat]

What a wonderful way to reward laziness. And hey, while you're at it, pad your pockets through your podcast? Ridiculous.

I see someone's apparently never been to college.

What happens when a family member takes ill or dies? What happens if you get sick? Or break your leg? Or (as I did a couple months ago) suffer a spontaneous lung collapse?

If you're working, you call in sick, go on leave if necessary, go back to work when you can and no harm done.

In college, you miss a class and in some cases, you fail the course. It doesn't matter why you missed it; if you don't know the material, you have no hope of passing. You have now wasted potentially thousands of dollars, several months worth of your time and have a permanent black mark on your record, which will affect your later job prospects. All because you might have been walking down the street one day and slipped on the sidewalk.

I went to college; obviously, I know there are days when kids just don't feel like going to class. But you know what? There are days when 40-year-olds don't feel like going to work either. The difference is, most white-collar workers can call in sick, take a personal day or vacation day. (In fact, personal days and vacation days are *intended* to reward "laziness" as you put it - people need downtime.) College students officially get no unscheduled days off, for any reason. (Some professors are more relaxed than others, but my university had no such thing as "sick days". And anyway, if you miss important material, there's no hope of passing final exams.)

And just in case you're still sitting in judgment of college students' "laziness", consider the fact that many college students have classes six days a week, year round, from 8AM to 10PM, and on the off day they're doing homework. This was the way my student life was at NYU. My last 2 years, I got about 3 hours of sleep every single night, and some nights I got none. You're going to judge somebody even if they do just feel like taking a day off now and then?

These kids are ungrateful jerks for complaining over $2.50, though. I would have given my left nut for the chance to pay $2.50 for a missed lecture when I was in college. No such technology even existed back then to do so (unless the prof. wanted to spend all his off hours making analog cassette copies for his students).

Re:Lazy...Pure and Simple

[tzanger]

If you're working, you call in sick, go on leave if necessary, go back to work when you can and no harm done.

If I call in sick, I am either docked pay (if you're hourly), and have to catch up on my own time. If I have clients coming in, I need to have their appointments rescheduled if possible. How is this any different for college? You grab a friend's notes or talk to the prof or TA.

College students officially get no unscheduled days off, for any reason.

Uh, yeah. Stop going to the pub every night, get up for class, and DO YOUR FUCKING JOB. Honestly, you whine like you are ENTITLED to graduate. Do your job; if you have an illness/death you deal with it. There are procedures in place for this, and if you'd actually HAD one of these legitimate happenings you'd have known about them because you'd have gone to the administration office and enquired.

You pay your tuition, you are entitled to go to the classes and do your best to learn the course material, and you're entitled to write the exams and get a degree if you show that you've assimilated the information correctly. This professor is going above and beyond to produce a value-added service that is NOT in his job description to provide, and people like you piss and moan that it's not free. Unbelievable.

Re:Lazy...Pure and Simple

[ElleyKitten]

Then why not ask to borrow a classmate's notes? Not all my professors made notes available at all on the web, so that's what I did when I missed a lecture.

But if there is a recording, why not take advantage of it?

Re:Lazy...Pure and Simple

[gEvil (beta)]

...but there are some classes where missing a day or two because of illness or some other, non-voluntary situation can absolutely destroy your progress in the course.

The courses that tend to be like this are usually the smaller ones (not the 200 people in an auditorium ones). Way back when I was in school you could actually, y'know, talk to the prof if you missed a lecture or two due to illness. And they usually knew whether you were an attentive student or one who just showed up twice a week. And guess what else--if you were one of the attentive students, the prof was typically more than ready to help you get caught up on the material you missed. But then again, from reading most of these comments here, a lot of /.ers seem to be offended that the prof doesn't just hand them everything they ask for on a silver platter, so maybe things have changed in the past 15 years...

Re:Lazy...Pure and Simple

[juushin]

You know, I think you are wrong. It isn't laziness, it is greed. I found this story disturbing because apparently this guy has forgotten that his JOB is to educate students (especially in an area such as English, where, let's be honest, your research is going to have very little impact on society). I am going to email this guy now. let's flood his inbox

Re:Lazy...Pure and Simple

[Gregory Cox]

Rewarding laziness? An excellent idea. If laziness is a virtue in programming, why not here too?

If skipping lectures and watching the video version saves you time and effort, you ought to skip lectures. That means you're making the most efficient use of your time - which you can then use to study more.

My lectures at university mainly consisted of the lecturer writing stuff up on the board, and everyone writing it down. Sometimes the notes would be on a projector, and the lecturer would hide the part we hadn't come to yet with a piece of paper, so that we couldn't copy it down too fast. I spent all of those lectures trying to get all the notes down in time, and very little actually sunk into my head. I had to read over my hastily scribbled notes afterwards to actually digest any of the information. I count myself a prize fool for not realising during my years there how much of a waste of time it all was.

Of course, this kind of lecture is a true lecture in the traditional sense, since "lecture" originally meant "reading" - a textbook would be read out, so that students could copy it down to read for themselves. In other words, in this age of podcasts, we are still using a data distribution method which predates the printing press. Does no one think that strange?

Reading these comments, it seems like a lot of people have bought into the idea that getting up, turning up at lectures and writing down notes are signs of diligence and goodness, worth doing for their own sake. But surely they are only worth doing if they are the best way, the only way to learn? If not, they are a waste of time. Or would you prefer that students go to lectures in the morning with weights chained to their feet, to make it that little bit harder and squeeze out a little bit more virtuous hard work?

There is a way to make lectures worth attending - by eliminating note-taking, and having questions, or discussions, or some way to make students use their brains and participate. If a lecture doesn't have any of that, hand me the notes, or the podcast, whichever makes for more efficient learning.

Re:Lazy...Pure and Simple

[Tickenest]

Are you suggesting that you had 84 hours of class per week? Like, seriously? Cuz that's a little hard to believe, unless you had to take a ridiculous amount of credits because you slept through so many classes as an underclassman....

Re:Lazy...Pure and Simple

[EvilSS]

Line his pockets?! On 1 dollar per sale?! Even if every student in every one of his classes bought every lecture it would add up to only a few thousand a year, and after taxes much less. I really doubt the massive $1 profits are a motivator here.

Re:Lazy...Pure and Simple

[Bender0x7D1]

And just in case you're still sitting in judgment of college students' "laziness", consider the fact that many college students have classes six days a week, year round, from 8AM to 10PM, and on the off day they're doing homework. This was the way my student life was at NYU. My last 2 years, I got about 3 hours of sleep every single night, and some nights I got none. You're going to judge somebody even if they do just feel like taking a day off now and then?

So, I wonder about a few things...

First, how many credits are you assuming? If you take a normal class, it meets about 3 hours a week. Most colleges consider 4 classes "full-time" with 5 or 6 being the normal load, (maybe 7 for engineers). Assuming engineers, this is 21 hours of class a week. Maybe there are lab periods for some of them, so we can bump it up to 30 hours a week. So, this would be from 8AM - 2PM Monday through Friday. Then, a student could spend from 2PM - 6PM doing homework, leaving the evenings free for meetings/clubs/social life. Then the weekends can be used to do any studying or other projects that need to be done.

Now, I know the schedules never work out properly and that you might have an hour between classes and you lose time that way. However, just because it's only an hour, doesn't mean you can't get stuff accomplished. Maybe you re-read your notes. Maybe you work on a homework problem. Maybe you take care of other responsibilities. It doesn't matter. USE the time wisely. Don't blow it sending emails deciding the best bar to go to, or talking to your friends and talking about how horrible some of your profs are. Get something done - it makes all the other time go much easier.

Also, don't join 16 different clubs or organizations. Pick a few and spend more time on them if you have extra time. Also, don't blow time in group meetings talking about your weekend or discussing the best color of PowerPoint slides to use. Make a quick decision or defer it. I can't count how many times I've been in a long meeting and had nothing decided or done by the end of it. Both in industry and in school. Proper time management is a key skill - learn it and practice it and you will be much better off.

Re:Lazy...Pure and Simple

[GrumpySimon]

> What happens when a family member takes ill or dies? What happens if you get sick?
> Or break your leg? Or (as I did a couple months ago) suffer a spontaneous lung collapse?

It looks more like you've never been to college...

If you had, then you'd go talk to the course co-ordinator or the prof. and get something sorted out. I'd be shocked if your place of higher learning did not have a system in place to deal with this sort of thing.

Speaking as someone who has spent the last 8 years at university (nearly finished the Ph.D), and 4 of those as a TA, I'd say that around 5-10% of students manage to get themselves extensions or compassionate consideration on course work, even if it's only for a few days.

If you've got the track record (i.e. you turn up to class, you hand in the work and do it decently), then we realise and accept that things like this happen. If you don't, then well, I'm sorry that your pet cat died, but you've shown no evidence that you would have passed the course anyway. Sorry.

Re:Lazy...Pure and Simple

[drsquare]

What happens when a family member takes ill or dies? What happens if you get sick? Or break your leg? Or (as I did a couple months ago) suffer a spontaneous lung collapse?

Then you pay $2.50 for the recording. Your tuition fee gets you access to the lecture, that's the university's only obligation to you. If you can't get there for whatever reason, that's your own problem.

My theory is that too many students are immature and expect to be coddled by the university like they have been their whole lives.

And just in case you're still sitting in judgment of college students' "laziness", consider the fact that many college students have classes six days a week, year round, from 8AM to 10PM, and on the off day they're doing homework.

There are people in the world working 6am till 12pm seven days a week in sweatshops and on third world farms, not sitting in a lecture hall playing Counterstrike, but back-breaking labour to feed their families. And they don't have a cushy, high-paying office job at the end of it, they're doing it for the rest of their lives.

Students should be grateful for the opportunities they have.

Re:Lazy...Pure and Simple

[PreacherTom]

Actually, I have two Masters degrees, thank you.

Re:Lazy...Pure and Simple

[MoneyT]

it's been a while since college for you hasn't it? These days a lot of professors expect and indeed assign work enough to fill the 3:1 outside hours you're supposed to work for every hour in class. The average recomended course load at NCSU to graduate in 4 years is about 18 hours a week. X4 (3 hours for every one you spend in class) and that's 72 hours a week. 8 hours a night for sleeping is another 56 hours a week. Leaving 40 hours left for anything else. Assume about 2 hours combined for meals now we're down to 26 waking hours a week that's not supposed to be spent studying or sleeping. Personaly, I worked an additional 8 hours a week just to have some money to spend (like on food) so now we're down to 18 hours a week.

Now I know that not all or even most college students spend all that much time studying, but that doesn't neccsarily make things any better because not all professors seem to realize you might have other work to do. I knew professors who assigned lab assignments once a week and told the students if they were spending less than 6 hours on the lab report alone then they weren't spending enough time. Any student at NCSU can tell you about the horrors of the "webassign" system in which a 3 times a week 20 question homework assignment can turn into a 3 hour ordeal 3 times a week because you spend 1.5 hours doing the work and the next 1.5 playing "guess the answer the computer really wants" as according to webassign 0.213 and .213 are two different answers and depending on the day and professor and how the assignment was set up either could be the right answer but the other is wrong.

These days I work 40 hours a week, attend school 6 hours a week as well as do my own cooking and home maitenence (no more dinning halls for me) and actualy spend about 12 hours a day at work and yet I still have more free time availible to me than I ever did as a full time student. Unfortunately it has been my experience that too many college professors these days are substituting education with homework. Homework is great for reenforcement but if it was never taught in the first place, then it can't be reenforced. Worse are the professors who don't teach anyting but seem to expect you to learn it all from reading the text book. If I wanted to learn from a text book, I would have bought the book and saved myself the thousands in tuition and saved myself the trouble of wasting time in class.

In the end, yes time management is a great skill, but no one is superman and no one should be expected to not need or even want to take some real down time.

Re:Lazy...Pure and Simple

[Kjella]

I tend to agree, but there are some classes where missing a day or two because of illness or some other, non-voluntary situation can absolutely destroy your progress in the course.

Which in my experience has a 100% corrolation with classes where the prof refuses to give a proper curriculum to force students to be there, and thus would never provide the lectures online.

License to print money

[Anonymous Coward]

1/ Speak really fast / erratically so the students have difficulty paying attention / making good notes

2/ Sell copies of notes to students to replace what they were unable to make themselves

3/ Profit!

Everyone seems to be missing a vital point.

[The MAZZTer]

To whomever thinks the pricing is outrageous... it should dawn on you that the alternative is NO SERVICE for NOTHING. Those are the two alternatives and the only two. Now which would you prefer: The option of purchasing non-required lecture notes or no option at all. That's what I thought.

Re:Everyone seems to be missing a vital point.

[cubicledrone]

This is an extra way for this professor to pad his pocket. It's pathetic to me that this kind of stuff is being charged for.

Oh noes! $20 a week! Oh noes! Oh noes!

and most are overpaid with cushioned jobs and tenure

And here we see the reason for the bitching. "We can't fire them so we gripe and bitch because they made $20 selling lectures." It is amazing how important it is to the suburban white ass that everyone be vulnerable to the loss of their job, income, career and home.

Give it a rest.

Re:Everyone seems to be missing a vital point.

[Prof.Phreak]

NO SERVICE for NOTHING

Not only that, but folks tend to miss that it's not prof's ``job'' to make these things available online---profs don't get -paid- to do that. It's also not something he creates during class time (I can't imagine him creating digital class notes -during- the class).

Charging for such things doens't sound right though... I wouldn't do it.

Re:Everyone seems to be missing a vital point.

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen to that.

I would also dare to say that anyone who complains that tenured professors have ``cushioned jobs'' has not been through the tenure process him(or her)-self. What other job do you need 8 to 12 years of college education as a minimum hiring criteria? What other job would have you bust your ass for another 5 or 6 years with the possibility that you may be fired at the end of this ``probationary time'' for not exceeding vague standards? Sure, tenure is nice once you've earned it, but it's a long, difficult road to get there.

Re:Everyone seems to be missing a vital point.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

To whomever thinks the pricing is outrageous... it should dawn on you that the alternative is NO SERVICE for NOTHING. Those are the two alternatives and the only two.

You think so? I don't.

The performance of the lecture is paid for by the students who pay tuition. The only extra costs here are the ones associated with recording, editing and distribution, and they are not substantial - especially when student labor can be enlisted.

Just as many students record the audio of the lectures they attend for future review, so could they record the video themselves too. Any student could bring in a mini-dv camera, set it on his desk and record the entire lecture himself, and then transfer it to his PC and put it up on the local network for anyone to access. I'm sure that more than enough students would be willing to do such a thing for most classes for the paltry sum of all the mp3's they want and a few illegal beers, and the occasional home-made "drunken college girls gone wild" video.

Before anyone brings up the quality of video under such conditions - no one needs a theatrical experience, just good enough audio to be intelligible and the occasional blackboard in sharp focus.

Re:Everyone seems to be missing a vital point.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

What other job would have you bust your ass for another 5 or 6 years with the possibility that you may be fired at the end of this ``probationary time'' for not exceeding vague standards?

This definition fits just about any job at all in corporate america.

Re:Everyone seems to be missing a vital point.

[drsquare]

What other job would have you bust your ass for another 5 or 6 years with the possibility that you may be fired at the end of this ``probationary time'' for not exceeding vague standards?

In the real world, you bust your ass for 5 or 6 years, with the possibility that you may be fired at the end of it. Except there is no tenure whatsoever, and you can be fired any time in your career.

Re:Everyone seems to be missing a vital point.

[joe 155]

you have a point, but maybe the shock here is because in the UK universities we have a different culture... Most of the lecture notes (or at least the overheads) are online for free, I had a lecturer last year who made audio recordings of all of his lectures and they were available for free in the department undergraduate office - I guess I would just expect this now.

Re:Everyone seems to be missing a vital point.

[CodeGorilla]

There's always office hours! Of course this drives home the point that these students have a work-ethic deficiency that probably precludes their success in the real world anyway....

Option 1: go to class during the proscribed dates and times
Option 2: go to the instructor or teaching assistant during proscribed office hours
Option 3: get session notes from a classmate
Option 4: hire a tutor
Option 5: pay a paltry $2.50 for the recording of the lecture(s) you missed and get on with life

Apparently some lazy and self-important idiots think they are entitled to having their butts wiped for them for free nonetheless.

Re:Everyone seems to be missing a vital point.

[cubicledrone]

Except there is no tenure whatsoever, and you can be fired any time in your career.

Tenure wins. Flawless victory.

And the problem is?

[yeoua]

Seems like a good deal. If you don't want to pay extra, just go take the notes yourself... you paid for it already anyway. If you want the stuff for free, just get someone else to record it for you.

But yes, if he is offering very clear, and clean mp3 versions of his lecture, this could be a non trivial task to make sure the audio is audible, which is what your money would be paying for. This is on top of the lecture. He is isn't required to do this.

Most other professors have written notes instead... which probably would be more useful than this.

Re:And the problem is?

[geekoid]

IF bhis lecture is clean enough to record, then how are the student in class expected to understand the class?

what next, charging me for the ink he used to print out his lecture?

Re:And the problem is?

[strider44]

The problem is that they're already paying the lecturer to teach them. In my opinion the lecturer should try to do as much as he can to teach his/her students not take the opportunity to charge even more money.

Yeah, until...

[DoofusOfDeath]

He starts racing through lectures and writes equations on the board faster than students can copy them, because "if they keep catch up, that can always buy the video."

Re:Yeah, until...

[DoofusOfDeath]

Holy crap, I just watched the Borat trailer http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/borat/ and I'm already talking like him!

I meant to say, "if they can't keep up, they can always watch the video."

Re:Yeah, until...

[Propaganda13]

I remember just having to buy a "book" for a class. This book was just the professor's notes and slides bound together. I never took a note in that class, and skipped several because I knew what I was going to miss.

A coworker is currently taking a math class. Anything drawn on the board is sent in an email to them immediately after class for no fee. He doesn't take notes either.

While this trend frees you from fantically scribbling, making mistakes, etc., it has its negatives too. Actually writing notes has been proven to help remember information better than just reading the same information. Personally, my attention drifted away from the course material more when I did not have to take notes.

Re:Yeah, until...

[sunwolf]

I know they say security through obscurity doesn't work, but...

...shhhh!

Re:Yeah, until...

[StikyPad]

Actually writing notes has been proven to help remember information better than just reading the same information.

Not for everyone. I'm a horrible note-taker, and usually retained more information by simply paying attention. When I took notes, I'd frequently miss something that was said while I was writing. A small tape recorder (or whatever solid-state device is on the market nowadays) is usually sufficient so that an auditory learner has something to review. Overall though, when I'm shifting my attention from what the instructor is saying to what I'm writing/have written, I seem to miss a lot more, although I also have problems with attention in general.

I guess it comes down to what you feel the school's job is. I tend to side with the folks who believe that X thousand dollars per anum entitles one to expect that the institution do everything reasonably possible to accomodate a student's learning. I don't think it's unreasonable nowadays that a camera be present to record the lectures in digital format to download later. I understand there's an argument to be made that students need to "learn how to learn," because employers may not be very accomodating (although in my experience, most are, as long as the employee is an effective worker), but the school's responsibility to accurately and adequately communicate the cirriculae trumps that in most instances.

When a professor is charging for copies of a lecture, I don't blame the professor for innovating -- he's well within his rights -- but rather the institution for integrating his ideas as standard procedure. It's fairly trivial to digitize a recording, or just record in a digital format -- editing is optional/unnecessary in most cases -- and the potential gain for the students would be significant. If the professors really felt it was an excessive burden, the school could easily hire a couple of goons to do it, or a student aid.

Getting a diploma is just the beginning anyway; most learning takes place after that. People who have a skillset which enables them to learn more effectively, or effectively cope with their lesser ability through social or technical means, will usually succeed, while people who lack the skills will not. That's life though, and life's a competition, no matter what your parents told you.

Re:Yeah, until...

[Saxophonist]

What about the quality of the video recording? Who exactly is running the camera? (I didn't see it in the article.)

I sat through a taped lecture this morning due to the professor's planned absence. (The students were invited to attend the taping if possible, but it wasn't at a time I could attend -- no big deal.) We had one Monday as well. On Monday, the sound cut out half the time, making the lecture hard to follow. Today, the sound was fine, but if the professor wrote something on the whiteboard and I hadn't had the chance to copy it down entirely (formulae and the like), if the professor moved on to a different part of the board, the camera followed and sometimes never returned to the other part of the board. That made the tape much more useless than intended.

The twist here is that, thanks to a distance education program, all lectures are recorded and are available to us at no charge online after a ten day delay. The problem with that is that ten days can quite often be after relevant homework or exams happen. So, in ten days, I could go online to get the formulae that I did not quite capture. (Or, I could ask the professor or TA, I'm sure.) The quality of the taping matters, though. Does the professor in the article have a money-back guarantee on the service?

Re:Yeah, until...

[Kjella]

While this trend frees you from fantically scribbling, making mistakes, etc., it has its negatives too. Actually writing notes has been proven to help remember information better than just reading the same information. Personally, my attention drifted away from the course material more when I did not have to take notes.

I'm the opposite, I get too worked up in writing it down in detail rather than to comprehend the subject matter. Since I'm far too lazy to spend 2x the time, once to write it all down and once to play it back again, I rather just listen, maybe note a few pointers. It helps that even when I get distracted I pick up what's said - when I get bored it seems like my mind becomes a human sponge - sucking up everything to see if there's anything of interest anywhere in there.

Re:Yeah, until...

[CCFreak2K]

Actually writing notes has been proven to help remember information better than just reading the same information.

I can attest to this. For example, my friend's truck recently had a new faceplate put on for his in-dash CD player. His father got rid of the sticker on it that had directions for turning demo mode off. I finally got around to attempting to find documentation to turn it off (it was pissing me off, since I was relegated to staring at it during the commute to/from school). I had to get the model number, which I couldn't remember myself. I wrote it down on the peice of paper. When I got back to my laptop to look it up, I didn't even have to look at the paper to remember what model it was, because merely the act of writing it down ingrained it in my head.

So how long before they show up for free?

[JudgeFurious]

I can see students getting together to buy them all for study purposes and then bundling them all together to either sell to people taking the class next semester or more than likely just sharing them all. Before long the professor is easily found on file sharing networks.

  Information does want to be free after all.

Re:So how long before they show up for free?

[SEAL]

Information does want to be free after all.

Or $2.50, max.

Too bad this hasn't permeated the Stats Dept

[oldosadmin]

I missed my Stats class at NCSU last night :( I'd gladly pay $1.50 to get that lecture.

Re:Too bad this hasn't permeated the Stats Dept

[geekoid]

I would argue that all lectures should be posted online as a matter of course.

Re:Too bad this hasn't permeated the Stats Dept

[krotkruton]

would you gladly pay $1.50 if you missed class and wanted to get the homework assignment but your prof charged yor for it?

Do your profs have course web pages, and if so, would you be willing to pay for access to the course web page? Just some thoughts.

lame

[voot]

meh, i would be pissed if one of my teachers wanted to do that. but i guess its alright as long as he is not using any university equipment to produce the recordings. i guess it is still kind of a racket

Re:lame

[pjdepasq]

Oh but he is using their resources... He's using their facilities to record the lecture, their power to drive the camcorder, possibly their network to upload the lecture, etc... and that's assuming he's using his own equipment (possibly a big assumption here). Technically, it might be argued that he's a resource that the state pays for as well... then again, that arguement breaks down when we talk about him going out and receiving an honorarium to give invited talks and such.

Let's see how the state legislature reacts to one of the their profs (it's a state school, right? He's a state employee, reselling his services that they already pay for...) doing this. I'll bet a buck they shut him down under the guise of mis-use of state resources to make a buck on the side.

Re:lame

[cubicledrone]

I'll bet a buck they shut him down under the guise of mis-use of state resources to make a buck on the side.

Under a bill titled "The Irony in Education Act" no doubt.

great idea, no really

[tehwebguy]

i think this is a really good idea..

1. it will probably keep some kids who don't feel like being in class out -- this will help those who do want to participate
2. it is good for studying for finals, or finding some obscure point you missed in class
3. it is good for when you just can't make it to class for whatever reason -- WAY better than copying notes off some other person in class, who probably has even worse handwriting than you do
4. ???
5. Profit!

We've been doing that here for years...

[RootWind]

For the general Biology class, the professor sells the notes and slides to support the Biology club. $7 or so, gets you the packet of the slides shown in class. (Exactly the same as if you would have just written it down yourself)

The Old Tape Recorder

[The Ape With No Name]

Is banned in my classroom as is all other electronic devices except for ADA needs. I don't post the notes and I don't post the powerpoints. Why? Well, there is a direct correlation between bad grades and lack of attendance of lectures even if the notes and powerpoints are posted. I also found out that a teacher at another university was using my powerpoints with out attribution as his own work. AND what I say in class is my intellectual property. AND I don't want the David Hershowitz brown shirts holding the odd joke about US foreign policy during the Eisenhower era against me (actually happened).

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[Mikey-San]

AND what I say in class is my intellectual property.

You'd better stop your students from, uh, using your "intellectual property" in real life, then. That's valuable money you're losing by teaching students your knowledge.

Are your students not allowed to talk to people about what you say, as well?

You should make them license this special "intellectual property" when they go to work and use what you've taught them. I mean, it's not like there are other people teaching the same things out of the same reference material or anything.

For fuck's sake, are teachers really starting to call their lessons "intellectual property"?

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[The Ape With No Name]

"You'd better stop your students from, uh, using your "intellectual property" in real life, then. That's valuable money you're losing by teaching students your knowledge.

Are your students not allowed to talk to people about what you say, as well?

You should make them license this special "intellectual property" when they go to work and use what you've taught them. I mean, it's not like there are other people teaching the same things out of the same reference material or anything.

For fuck's sake, are teachers really starting to call their lessons "intellectual property"?"

As long as kids try to patent and profit from ideas they hear in class as well as use ideas transmitted from the professor to them to wreck the professor's career (see my reference to the Eisenhower remark), you are fucking 'A' right.

As for licensing, let me introduce you to a little thing called the BSD license....

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[The Ape With No Name]

If you are capable of learning on your own, then why attend college in the first place?

And if you are attending a university where classes can be passed without attending lectures, then you are wasting your money, your parent's money, or some sort of scholarship money.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[The Ape With No Name]

I don't think there is enough data, but it would be interesting to see. There is a system here at my university where students bring their little clicker and click in for attendance and the only way they can get to some podcasted lectures is if they attended the lecture in the first place. Podcasting still suffers from the 'use it against them' angle.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[Achromatic1978]

For fuck's sake, are teachers really starting to call their lessons "intellectual property"?

Only those who live in their ivory tower / have delusions of grandeur, like the GP seems to have.

Somewhere along the lines, he seems to have forgot that his salary is his compensation for dispensing his knowledge.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[RealGrouchy]

Why? Well, there is a direct correlation between bad grades and lack of attendance of lectures even if the notes and powerpoints are posted.

"Direct correlation" means that those with lower attendance *tend to* have lower grades. There are a lot of variables here, including teacher's ability, course content, and student's learning abilities. I've noticed that in my classes there is a direct correlation between whether or not you are caucasian and whether you make it to university, but you don't see us banning non-whites.

Aside from statistical variability, your job is to teach. It is theirs to learn. This involves learning how to learn: if they must discover through failing courses (or perhaps simply getting "bad grades", which I, for one, am comfortable with) that certain learning tactics don't work well, they'd might as learn it, instead of simply being told that they have no alternative to your preferred learning tactic.

- RG>

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[gEvil (beta)]

You clearly have never taught anything. Even if it's something you know inside and out, preparing lectures and course materials takes a fair amount of time and effort.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[Z0mb1eman]

If you are capable of learning on your own, then why attend college in the first place?

And if you are attending a university where classes can be passed without attending lectures, then you are wasting your money, your parent's money, or some sort of scholarship money.

A comment like that makes me doubt that you've ever been AT a university, let alone teach at one.

Newsflash: some professors are bad. Frighteningly bad. I won't argue that they're not extremely intelligent, or good at their research, or downright decent human beings, but they ARE incredibly bad at teaching. I have had courses where I was better off for not attending any of the lectures (and still loved the course and got an A).

For any intelligent and decently competent person who is NOT interested in academia, the two most important things in an university education are the contacts they will make, and that little piece of paper that companies seem to value. I don't want to downplay the learning experience, but more often than not, all except a small subset will be forgotten within a couple of years.

If you're truly not aware of that, I would suggest stepping out of your ivory tower and thinking about what exactly it is you're trying to provide to your students.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[bonius_rex]

If you are capable of learning on your own, then why attend college in the first place?

Because HR departments don't care about learning, they care about degrees. Colleges are where you go to get degrees.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[AhtirTano]

You'd better stop your students from, uh, using your "intellectual property" in real life, then. That's valuable money you're losing by teaching students your knowledge.

The professor's lectures, slides, etc. are just like a textbook. The knowledge taught by them is free to anyone to disseminate. The presentation of the material is copyright of the professor and cannot be used without at least acknowledgment of the source, preferably with permission. (Fair use meets basic politeness.)

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[kfg]

You clearly have never taught anything.

I have taught.

. . .preparing lectures and course materials takes a fair amount of time and effort.

However, I always had the impression that that's what I got paid for. My students are clients.

KFG

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[rm999]

"Well, there is a direct correlation between bad grades and lack of attendance of lectures even if the notes and powerpoints are posted."

I have found a direct correlation between teachers who don't do everything they can to help their students learn information and bad teachers. The old excuse that they should be in class and paying attention doesn't apply to everyone for various reasons. Your job is to teach, not to hold your students' hands or teach them some sort of life lesson in paying attention to you.

I happen to learn from a textbook much better than lecture. I don't have time to both read chapters and attend lecture. I would likely not learn much your class (nothing personal, I think I have ADD). As a teacher this should bother you. I think I know your type - it probably doesn't.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[mrchaotica]

AND what I say in class is my intellectual property.

What a shitty attitude for someone who claims to be a teacher to have! I'm sure as Hell glad I don't have dumbasses like you teaching me!

So, what do you teach, anyway? How to be good little digital serfs, I bet! Asshole. It's people like you that cause so many of the problems we have today...

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[mrchaotica]

If you are capable of learning on your own, then why attend college in the first place?

Because some people might find the direction provided by having a fixed curriculum to be motivating. Because in the "real world" H.R. departments don't know how capable you are, and rely on seeing a degree listed on your resumé instead. Because you're better at some things than at others, and my need the lectures in one class but not another (and unfortunately, you can't only take the classes you "need" if you're seeking a degree).

Those reasons are no-brainers, really; if you couldn't figure that out yourself you have no business teaching!

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[LordLucless]

If you are capable of learning on your own, then why attend college in the first place?

Because knowledge at a college/university is often more accessible (knowledgable professors, extensive libraries, etc) and because you want to get your knowledge certified (the degree).

I spent 5 years at university doing two degrees. For the most part, the computer subjects were useful getting over the initial "hump" when learning about a subject. I actually learnt more from tinkering on my own, but the formal learning at university helped me get the basics down pat quicker. As I neared the end of the course, there were a number of lectures that I just didn't attend; the hour-long lecture that would have taken 3 hours in travel to get to and from, for example, or the one done by an asian lady with a sound grasp of her topic, but not of English. In those cases I bought the textbook, read the notes, tinkered on my machine at home, and passed the course.

After my first three years, I could probably have learnt a lot of the remainder of the course from home. It would have been slower, and required more willpower on my part, but I probably could have. But if I'd rocked up to a prospective employer and said "I don't actually have a degree, but I know all the same stuff", my chances of employment compared to graduate would be nil. Teaching is only a part of a university's role and, sadly, in many cases it seems the least important. Most people I know went to university to improve their job prospects through a degree, rather than because they were interested in learning about a given subject. The goal was the degree, the education was just a side-effect.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[blueskies]

Yeah, but the OP said "AND what I say in class is my intellectual property. "

I hope he doesn't teach property law, because he doesn't have a clue to what he is saying.

I actually think he is a very well done troll, because i can't see any professor being that draconian, mean-spirited, or ignorant.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[Petrushka]

I understand what you're saying -- I'm a university lecturer too -- but it is a two-edged axe. On the one hand, I agree that it feels awful when someone pinches your work and doesn't even attribute it to you. On the other hand, when I write an article, I want people to read it. I don't want it to be reserved for just a privileged few who have the good fortune to be at rich universities with well-endowed libraries. I don't see a lecture as something qualitatively different.

If you'd care to try it, I find that slapping a CC licence on my lecture notes does wonders for my peace of mind. The same things go on, but suddenly it's no longer "theft": suddenly it's ethical and above board. ... and down goes the blood pressure.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[Petrushka]

are teachers really starting to call their lessons "intellectual property"?

Not "starting"; it's been going on since the advent of the WWW, maybe even since the advent of Xerox. Lots of universities have very strict policies about not letting lecture notes be published online, unless they're password-access-only. In the UK, a department being reviewed can (sometimes) be heavily penalised for making lecture notes open-access. Most of the policies tend to come from top-down, though. Having said that, there's also a certain amount of this kind of thing coming from bottom-up in the department where I am now: not much interest around here in things like open-access archives or freedom of information.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[PrinceOfStorms]

Except that they don't learn. They mostly just scrape through the course because we can only fail those who are really clear cut fails, and then they head off to the follow on course without an adequate understanding. In any case, life is too short to learn entirely from your own experiences.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[EvanED]

Well, there is a direct correlation between bad grades and lack of attendance of lectures even if the notes and powerpoints are posted.

I bet there's also a corrolation between the understanding your better students will get and if they are given the slides in advance too, and that corrolation comes out in favor of giving out the slides.

At least that's my experience.* If it can be generalized, you have to decide whether you want to make it harder on your better students in order to encourage the lazy ones to show up, or help understanding of the better students at the risk of having the lazy ones not show up. It depends on your course, the dynamics of your classroom, and your philosophy which is the better option.

One compromise that was used in one of my classes a little (though you could adapt it to be a lot more prevalent) was to occasionally leave information off of the slides that you distribute.

* I say that it's my experience because I found that being able to take notes right on the slides allowed me to cut down on the amount I was trying to scribble stuff from the board or lecturer's mouth and devote more time to actually listening to the professor and thinking about what he or she was saying. Because if you put up a finite state machine on the projector screen, I'm gonna be spending the next 30 seconds or a minute depending on how complicated it is copying it down (something like that I like to go over after I copy it too to make sure I get all the transitions right), and so anything you say during that time is going to only get half of my attention. Now, your example tells me you're probably not teaching a class where you're putting automata on the screen, but there's probably some similar stuff.

One compromise between the two things that was used a little in one of my classes is to provide slides in advance, but leave occasional critical pieces of information or examples out. Keep them in the "production" slides you use during lecture. That way you still make sure that people are either coming or comparing physical notes with friends to get the pieces that are left out, but you still provide a base to use so you're not frantically scribbling.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[math major]

In my experience, the clickers give an unfair advantage to people with more friends in the class. Since professors usually use it to mandate attendance (making it worth some portion of the grade), a group of friends who take turns bringing each other's clickers to class (it happens all the time) can get all the attendance points without going to class as often. And they're slow to register with everyone trying to click at once, so in a class of 100, it takes more than 5 minutes for everyone to be able to answer one question with them. And the devices are expensive, and some of the companies also charge you for each semester that you use them.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[jkmiecik]

YOU are what is wrong with academia.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[laughingcoyote]

AND...I'm sure glad I never had you, remind me never to attend school where you teach!

I have a lot of respect for MOST professors, and in my experience, most of them are happy to share their knowledge and experience with anyone who wants to learn it. You are the exception to that, and your power trip gives the good ones a bad name.

As to your "intellectual property"...really, get over yourself.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[ceoyoyo]

Not the good ones....

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[linefeed0]

>If you are capable of learning on your own, then why attend college in the first place?

Where the hell else would I get my source of pot? I need my weed, man.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[honkycat]

No, it really is is IP. His specific wording certainly is his IP, and his examples may be as well. It is a performance. If you simply take his lecture and paraphrase it, you are probably producing a derivative work of his performance. This is not allowed. You are, however, free to take the facts you learned and put together your own lecture from scratch, and I don't think he was trying to claim otherwise.

I'd be pretty upset if someone was taking my work, even work I've been paid for, and presenting it as his own. The GP mentioned his course notes/outline being used by another lecturer without permission and without attribution. That's a BIG no-no. It's not mean-spirited to demand credit or compensation for your work (and no, being paid to give the original lecture is not compensation for someone who turns around and gives a verbatim or paraphrased copy of the lectures later).

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[zippthorne]

It's easy to learn the lessons on your own, in fact, that's pretty much expected. The question remains: Which lessons?

Very good students are able to figure this out as well. We call them, "Doctors." They do research and/or teach at universities.

The rest of us pay good money to benefit from their valuable insight.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[melchoir55]

You are a perfect example of one of the worst forms of professors. I absolutely require a laptop in my class's. Taking notes on a laptop is so unbelievably potent. The notes can be searched instanly for keywords while studying, a student can type way faster than they can handwrite (thus, their notes are more detailed), a laptop allows for easy and effective organization of notes, laptops save paper, I could go on.

You deny students these benefits... why? Because maybe some students won't attend class for some reason? I attend all my class's because I wouldn't learn enough without doing it, but what if I didn't attend those class's? Well, I would either fail the exam or I would pass it. If I pass it, I have a level of knowledge you deem acceptable. If I fail, I do not. Why would actually being there make any difference in the least if I learn/already know the material sufficiently to ace your test?

Treat your students like kids and they will act that way. Treat them like adults and some will still act like kids, but they'll fail your class. Them failing your class is NOT your problem.

So what I'm really saying is you should treat your students with respect and try to create a positive **learning** enviroment instead of trying to be professor gestapo.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[smoker2]

Please god, don't say you teach English !

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[cfulmer]

You're getting mixed up between the copyright on the expression and the underlying information. There is an old case involving a book describing double-entry accounting, where the author wanted to prevent people from using his system. In the end, the court found that the author could keep people from copying his book, but could not prevent them from using his system described in the book.

It's the same thing here -- the professor can keep people from copying their expression (ie the lectures and handout material), but not the underlying ideas. The expression is copyrightable, but the ideas are not.

There is one way in which the professor could be wrong, though. Copyright "subsists ... in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression." The key word here is "fixed" -- if the professor comes in and just taught off-the-cuff without prepared lecture notes, then there is no copyright in his lecture. The lecture notes provide the necessary fixation.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[blueskies]

His words are only his IP if he affixes them to media. Performance alone is not enough for a copyright except in some rare cases involving dance steps, yoga, etc.

A videotape of him is copyrightable and so is a recording. But him speaking live is not covered under copyright.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[Spleen]

> For fuck's sake, are teachers really starting to call their lessons "intellectual property"?

Yes they are. The scary thing was, most of the time the lecture was directly from the content of the textbook. If I read the chapter(s) the previous night, I probably could have given the same lectures. This wasn't true for some of the better courses I took. My professors never allowed a tape recorder in class.

At the college I work at now, we have trouble just trying to get some professors to put a syllabus online. The excuse? Intellectural Property. It's an outline and a schedule! (if you are lucky, most I received were useless). If another professor used that, it may have the same structure, but you'd still have to fill in the lecture content. The kicker to this whole thing... I work at a small state college, not a research university. Professors doing research might actually have I.P.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[blueskies]

Podcasting still suffers from the 'use it against them' angle.

What are you talking about? Are you saying you don't want to be held accountable for what you say? You do know that you are accountable even if no one has you down on tape, right?

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[HFh]

most of the time the lecture was directly from the content of the textbook. If I read the chapter(s) the previous night, I probably could have given the same lectures.

Do you really think this? And answered questions, and all that? Either you're very good or they're very bad. :)

Peace.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[MoneyT]

I don't know about the GP but I knew a few professors who very much gave lectures that were verbatim from the book. In fact, one class I took (the professors was soon after "dismissed" because 100% of his students complained) made all his slides and notes from photocopies of the text book, and for his lecture, read the slides back to us. When I took into programming (yay for basic courses) the professor was clearly capable of programming but could not for the life of her teach her way out of a paper bag. So her lectures were again almost verbatim of the text book and she could not answer the questions asked. This is actualy a more common occurance in college than you would think.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[Oligonicella]

You are wrong on a number of counts.

First, I pay your salary and you have a legally binding contract with me. As I am an adult and have paid for your lecture, you cannot prevent me from taking notes in whatever form I desire, depending on the state. Upheld in court in several states, son. You'd better check if yours is one that supports you, it may not. Besides, I'll just say I have ADA.

Second, I am an adult and you are not my parent or guardian. You have no business and, indeed, no ethical right to enforce your learning methods on me. If I like notes, electronic or otherwise, tuff to you. If I cannot "learn" using them, tuff to me.

Third, your problem with someone else ripping off your copyrighted materials is between you and him. You have no ethical or legal ground to prevent me from using what I've paid for because someone else breaks the law. Beware that fair use doctrine you instructors bend so liberally in constructing said slides.

Fourth, speech is not IP. Get over yourself.

Fifth, if you are wary of what you say being held against you, don't say it. You can just as easily be taken into court on someone's eye-witness account, you know. I assume nothing happened because of your right to freedom of speech.

Acedemic pomposity.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[KingOfSnake]

Well, there is a direct correlation between bad grades and lack of attendance of lectures even if the notes and powerpoints are posted.

I would generally consider this to be the responsibility of the students. I'm sure that there is a correlation between classroom attendance and grades, but that's also going to weigh heavily on whether or not students have the focus to actually learn the material from the powerpoint. I do find it hard to believe that I get any benefit from sitting in a class when I can learn just as much going over the notes for 20min at home. You're still teaching, and the fact that I'm not physically present only means that a greater portion of the learning must be self-directed.

also found out that a teacher at another university was using my powerpoints with out attribution as his own work.

Unless you're referring to some kind of profound research you've been doing, I don't think this is necessarily a good reason to deprive your students of another learning resource.

AND what I say in class is my intellectual property.

Yes, I realize that this is true. It's also an extremely pompous view.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[honkycat]

Ok, you're right about the lecture not being copyrightable (here's a link that confirms), thanks. With all the noise coming out of the various __AA organizations, it's sometimes hard to remember that the natural legal state of information is actually free.

Still, even if not legally protected, there is a big ethical problem if someone else is using your lecture, verbatim, without attribution. Academically, that is about as wrong as it gets. So the GP (and I) may be confused about IP law, but I don't think there's any question that a professor should reasonably expect that no one will give his lecture without at LEAST crediting him. Preferably he'd be asked and his permission (or lack thereof) be respected.

With regard to handouts or transcripts, there is no question. If those are being duplicated, it's still copyright violation.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[Java Ape]

Petrushka:

Excellent comment. I occasionally teach college-level courses, and in addition to the usual materials I often put considerable effort into a handful of very detailed drawings/diagrams that I feel clarify some difficult concepts.

I have, unfortunately, seen my work appear in published papers and even books without attribution. While I haven't pursued legal options, it irks me to have my work stolen blatently. If they'd ask permission, I'd grant it without hesitation or thoughts of renumeration, but it irks me to see others charging for my work. From now on I'll attach a creative commons license to it, and sleep better! Thank you for a truly excellent suggestion!

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[blueskies]

Absolutely, there is an ethical problem. I just find the OP really arrogant and ignorant concerning the needs of his students.

His copyright being infringed is a different problem. But he is pretending that he has to be a jerk to his student because otherwise he will be infringed. I guess the "king in my little kingdom" attitude really really irritates me.

Btw, how is jesse doing?

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[GigsVT]

there is a direct correlation between bad grades and lack of attendance of lectures

There's a direct correlation between boring professors with inflated egos and lack of attendance.

Also, if this correlation is so strong, why did many of my professors choose to arbitraily punish people who didn't attend lectures by making attendance count for 10-20% of the grade?

You do realize that lecture is one of the least effective forms of learning, right?

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[Spleen]

I absolutely believe this. I've known more then enough Grad Assistants teaching courses who do exactly this. My experience with Grad Assistants as instructors vs professors who don't bring anything additional into the course was pretty much the same. The only difference was I don't expect as much from the Grad Assistant, but those professors disappoint me.

Re:The Old Tape Recorder

[Petrushka]

You're welcome! Personally I find it helps, but of course there are no easy and simple solutions. Best wishes and good luck to you.

Something like that.

[dayid]

The professors at every University I've worked for have done something similar. They take a collection of all the notes for the entire semester and sell them in bundles at the book store. We simply called them textbooks. You didn't have to buy them if you went to class, but if you wanted to be able to avoid class you could buy it and read it. Imagine that. That said, I know at least 4 Florida Universities have professors who will put their notes out in PDF format for sale/download, and every state university I've ever been to has at least one professor who does something similar with powerpoint.

What really stinks.

[chasisaac]

I am one of those people that like listening to class lectures for fun. I know, I know get a life, blah, blah, blah.
However, I have listened to people from berkley, Stanford and more. I like to improve on what I already know and driving around listening to music i have already 1000 times before . . . I am not buying anything that is DRMmed or from a RIAA label. So I stay with what I have and know.

FSU Economics Professor

[GeneralAntilles]

My Macroeconomics professor at Florida State records all of his lectures along with a screencast that shows the PowerPoint presentation, movies, websites, etc. he show during the class synced with the audio. Does it for every lecture (all sections), and for every class that he teaches. All for free, and up on the web (FSU uses Blackboard) around 9:00PM on the day of the lecture.

Re:FSU Economics Professor

[MooUK]

Available to all, or only that class's students?

Re:FSU Economics Professor

[GeneralAntilles]

It's available to any FSU student, whether they're in the class or not.

Re:FSU Economics Professor

[MooUK]

And what about the Great Unwashed?

(Not that I do economics at present; did an introductory unit in my first year and dropped it in favour of an introductory marketing course as a minor part of my second and third years.)

Re:FSU Economics Professor

[GeneralAntilles]

Not as far as I can tell, they're hosted on FSU servers and seem to require login information.

Re:FSU Economics Professor

[MooUK]

Pity.

Teaching for profit

[obious]

The professor should be shot for being a profiteering asshole.

Just take a look at MIT's approach: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html

Re:Teaching for profit

[acvh]

"The professor should be shot for being a profiteering asshole. "

yeah, 2.50 is going to fund his retirement.

it seems like he is acknowledging the infrequent need for a recording, while also acknowledging that such recording is not a fundamental right. i'll go along with that.

my guess is that every recording will end up being shared, free, by his students on whatever the hip p2p network of the week is.

Re:Teaching for profit

[obious]

"2.50 is going to fund his retirement."

Yeah, sure he will only make a couple of bucks. And the argument can be made that this will offset the cost of producing the videos - but he's still an asshole. I don't feel the need to support my argument because if you consider the fundamental role of academia and follow the logic of his actions all the way through, I think you will come to the same conclusion.

Re:Teaching for profit

[mrchaotica]

while also acknowledging that such recording is not a fundamental right.

What do you mean, "acknowledging?" He's asserting that it's not a right, even for students who paid for the class, and I, for one, most emphatically do not agree with his assertion!

Teaching is not a commercial enterprise; it is a public service. If something that furthers that cause is difficult or expensive to do, then fine -- it's reasonable to charge for it to cover the cost. But with current technology, that is not the case here. Universities ought to be automatically supplying this kind of thing for all their lectures at no extra cost; to do otherwise is nothing more than petty greed!

Re:Teaching for profit

[EvanED]

I'm not entirely convinced he's doing it AT ALL for the money, despite him saying that the price is to offset the production cost. It might just be the case where he wants to do something for the people who miss lecture, but at the same time wants to discourage people from taking advantage of it.

If I was in a class like that and missed one because I was sick or had an interview or something, it's no big deal; $2.50 is cheap. But at the same time it starts to add up if you habitually miss class.

Re:Teaching for profit

[nonlnear]

With current technology, it still costs something to produce recordings. Given that he's not selling any volume, the equipment costs alone (for just a decent voice recorder with remote mic, and a couple gigs for archiving) could justify a lot more than $2.50 per lecture. If he were selling a couple hundred a semester those costs would get diluted quickly, but you can count on the frat house archives to keep the prices high forever.

.

If you actually read the policies of any (well most) universities, you'd know that what you just said is total crap. The right to record is usually only granted unilaterally to students with disability related needs. For "normal" students, the lecturer has total control over the copyright of the lecture audio.

Teaching is a public service, true. His contract requires him to provide lectures, office hours, etc. Recordings have typically always been the property of the instructor (as I said above). What he does with them is his own business. Hell, by your reasoning no professor would be entitled to sell any products that might be derived from their research, as that would be violating their sacred "public service" duties. I call bullshit. Their duties are outlined in their contract. Anything more that they provide is a bonus, nothing more. To pretend that your opinion is motivated by some "ideal" or altruism is a dreadful hypocrisy.

Re:Teaching for profit

[mrchaotica]

Given that he's not selling any volume, the equipment costs alone...

...are zero because he can use university-owned equipment.

If you actually read the policies of any (well most) universities, you'd know that what you just said is total crap.

On the contrary, the policy is total crap! My argument is not.

Recordings have typically always been the property of the instructor (as I said above).

Before 1860, black people in the South were "typically" the property of plantation owners. But that doesn't make it right! And, hyperbole aside, neither is this.

Re:Teaching for profit

[nonlnear]

..are zero because he can use university-owned equipment.

In this case (the comm department), you're probably right. It's likely that the room has facilities, but many departments aren't magical fairy tale lands of free flowing technology. Not all universities have equipment coming out the wazoo. And just because the university might be able to procure equipment doesn't mean it's free. University departments have budgets. I'm guessing you either have never worked at a university, or are one of the lucky ones at a school that's swimming in new equipment.

As for the rest of your post, well that's a nice bubble you live in. I hope it doesn't pop. Let me guess, you think that musicians shouldn't own the copyright to their concerts because the fans paid for their tickets to the live show, right? It's the same argument.

I commend you for pointing out that the slavery reference was hyperbole. Good form.

... We get ours for free + audio recordings

[invisage01]

At my university in Australia we get all our lecture slides for free - sometimes they are incomplete which encourages students to go to the lecture. If the lecturer feels like he can also record the lecture using the recording software in every lecture theatre. These are then uploaded to the CMS for each subject. If a lecturer doesn't publish the lectures online... there is outrage. it's something that i have been accostomed too.. and it means i can be highly flexible with my part-time studies/full time job.

Re:... We get ours for free + audio recordings

[Protein Geek]

yep, same at my one, and in my university in NZ they had the option in some lecture theatres... they could also upload notes to the intranet for students to download handouts. The system wasn't as used as it is here at the Australian National University, but it got some use. And it was/is all free. Good work to this guy for taking the initiative and charging people for what is usually (but not always) laziness!

Re:... We get ours for free + audio recordings

[lachlan76]

Which university, just out of curiosity? Are any of these available to the public?

Re:... We get ours for free + audio recordings

[Protein Geek]

For me the universities are University of Canterbury, Christchurch, NZ The Australian National University, Canberra, AU I think most of the australian uni's do it though... but the ones from my uni's are not available online for all; you need a uni ID and password

This is outrages

[geekoid]

Another attempt to leech money from students.

When I went to school, I could get a copy of any lectures notes just by asking the professor.

It also presents a conflict of interest. It is not in their interest to present the lecture in a clear manner.

Trouble understanding English speaking professor

[Grishnakh]

The Professor did this as a way to help those that missed class, didn't take good notes, or from another country and have trouble understanding an English speaking Professor.

Great idea! A better idea would be if the non-English-speaking professors would do the same thing, so that English-speaking students have a way of understanding their lectures.

Seriously: I had to drop a class once because I couldn't understand a word the Vietnamese professor spoke.

charging... hmmm

[krotkruton]

Most of my computer science professors at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) post all of their lecture notes on the internet. In their cases, since they use the lecture notes in class to guide their discussions, it isn't any more work for them to just put them up on the internet. The majority of these lectures are available to anyone, whether they are university students or not.

One of my profs, who teaches a course that is also open to students in other countries who are paying to take an online course, has a TA video record the whole lecture, which is then posted on the internet for all students paying for the class (university and distance education, or online, students). He has the recordings password protected because the university has some rules about it and won't let him essentially give the course for free to anyone who wants it (at least I think that was the explanation he gave but I'm not completely sure).

Personally, I think either of these two scenarios are the proper way to do things. If a prof is charging to give out copies of his lectures notes on the internet, then should he be charging if students come to his office during his office hours and ask about what they missed in classed? Isn't that one of the things a prof's office hours are for? And further more, even though it is using the slippery slope fallacy, if profs start charging for lecture notes and people think it is acceptable, then why don't they charge for the booklets used to write tests on or extra materials handed out in class? The simple answer to that question is because the institutions they work for are providing them with copy machines and such. Along that logic, I would say that time spent creating lecture notes is time spent preparing for class. It's true that they don't have to do it, but I don't think that is a good enough reason to charge for it.

Re:charging... hmmm

[Secrity]

If a student has a valid reason for missing a lecture (as determined by the instructor/professor or by school policy), the student should still have the ability to discuss the absence with the instructor/professor and make up the classwork as had been usual prior to the availability of the lecture recordings. It would be a nice gesture if the instructor/professor would make the recording available without charge to a student who had a valid reason (as determined by the instructor/professor) to miss the lecture.

I have been to classes where the "extra materials" (including Xerox's of magazine articles) used in class had to be purchased as a package at the bookstore. The prices were far more than the cost of Xerox'ing. There is a difference between audio copies of lectures and test booklets; having audio recordings of lectures is not a requirement to pass the course (although some students may feel that they need them, especially if they didn't attend a lecture), whereas completing test(s) may be a requirement to pass the course.

Different schools and professors have wildly different policies regarding if and how they make lecture notes and Power Point decks available to students and to the public.

Re:Bull

[ampathee]

Well, that's not what he's claiming.

He's not selling lecture notes, he's selling audio recordings of his lectures.

Does the professor own his lectures?

[johndierks]

At many schools materials produced for classes like handouts, tests, etc are property of the department, not the professor. Perhaps the professor doesn't have the right to sell his lectures.

My friend tried to start a business reproducing old tests for study guides. He had the ok from the professors who wrote the tests, but the school demanded such a large cut of the revenue that it wasn't worth his time.

Basically it's like a musician selling his songs on the side and not through his record label.

I'd buy it

[foleym]

At the University of Florida, it's not atypical to have classes of over 200 students, especially the business area. To accomodate this, videos of course, are recorded and posted online. You can always watch the professor live, but most students opt to watch the lectures 2 days before the exam. From an engineering side, many students do distance learning. The notes and lectures are recorded, and put online. There is an extra fee to do distance learning, and it's to pay for the equipment and staff to do the recording. Luckily, if you are a student that attends the class, and it is part of distance learning, you get access to all the material. Many times I would watch parts of a clip over and over because my handwriting sucked, teacher went too fast, I was asleep, or whatever. If a professor is willing to take his/her time to do this, and they are not compensated by the school, I'd pay a minimal fee for them. Hell, get 10 of your buddies, buy 1 copy and copy it. Stick it to em!

1992 just called. They want their story back.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this news? Just a heads-up, The Teaching Company has been around for years selling lectures by top rated professors from America's best universities. They sell Audio-only or DVD video. The lectures are professional quality shot in a studio.

Their website:

http://www.teach12.com/

Most seem to be missing the point

[Friar_MJK]

As a current college student, I think this idea is great. Definately a next generation step (yes, I read some of you were buying them in '96 - but admittedly not from the professor himself). For myself, I find it very difficult to take notes without over or under indulging anything that was said/written by the professor - as in not taking enough notes and capturing too little, or overdoing it, and not filtering the relevant information from the garbage, which is a difficult task if you have no background on the subject at hand. This is even more difficult when going to a smaller school [Purdue University North-Central /shamelessplug] where classes can range from 10-40 students and often times the lecture can turn into informer conversational banter leaving some with their heads spinning wondering if what was said is important enough to take down on paper. To sum all that up, I like being able to have in front of me polished notes that I know the tests will pretty much be taken straight out of (with a few exceptions).
As for the professor selling them? Yes, I whole-heartedly agree that s/he should be able to charge a reasonable fee. The lectures are the property of the professor, and they take extra time to prepare to be able to distribute. Don't like paying for them? Too bad! Next time consider coming to class because isn't that what you really paid for in the first place? An education from a brick-and-mortar school? Otherwise, take courses with an online university. Besides, shit (re:life) happens and in case you do have to miss class for a legitimate reason who knows what kind of notes a classmate would take if you were to borrow from them. Don't trust your grade to the numb nuts sitting next to you.

P.S. Wish I could use my mod points to skew this discussion...

Re:Most seem to be missing the point

[wwahammy]

How does it take more time? All they have to do is wear a microphone with a digital recorder. When I went to UW-Madison a few years back, professors in almost all classes used a wireless microphone that gets fed into a sound system. There's no reason why that audio can't be digitized as the lecture is going on and posted at the end of the lecture.

Free at MIT

[ichthyos]

The lectures that are recorded at MIT are all provided free of charge.

Re:Free at MIT

[Doctor Memory]

Yes, but do the professors record them themselves, then edit them for level and time before making them available? I think that recording lectures and making them available to students taking the course is something that every school should do, but it should be done by the school, and shouldn't take up any of the professor's time. Wire the lecture halls, get some a/v monkey to set the recording levels and set up the whiteboards, then record it and put it up on the student portal. But personally, I don't have a problem with the professor charging chump change (less than a pitcher of beer!) for his lectures if he has to make the extra effort to make them available.

MIT's OpenCourseWare

[Pasquina]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned MIT's Open Courseware program (ocw.mit.edu). The goal is to have every class available online, and many have taped lectures for free, for anyone to see, not just students. I had a horrible differential equations professor, so I watched the OCW lectures from the previous term. It sure beat walking to class in the cold.

That is a bargain

[Anonymous Coward]

Well let us do some math here. At $1 per lecture in his pocket, and let us say 25 people grab a copy of the lecture, that is $25 for what probably takes 2-3 hours to prepare. This assuming he doesn't have to cover some equipment costs, in which case he might even be losing money. Personally I think $2.50 for a lecture is cheap, and I paid for my own schooling. Why should his time be free? If you don't like having to pay $2.5 for the audio lecture, then bloody well show up for class or develop a network to cover for you when you can't.

Re:That is a bargain

[nacturation]

Well let us do some math here. At $1 per lecture in his pocket, and let us say 25 people grab a copy of the lecture, that is $25 for what probably takes 2-3 hours to prepare. This assuming he doesn't have to cover some equipment costs, in which case he might even be losing money. Personally I think $2.50 for a lecture is cheap, and I paid for my own schooling. Why should his time be free?

Great idea. Next time my boss asks me for a report, I'm going to charge him $2.50 for it. Why should my time be free?

Re:That is a bargain

[demondawn]

If you're not getting paid for your time, there's something inherently wrong with your working situation.

Re:That is a bargain

[nacturation]

If you're not getting paid for your time, there's something inherently wrong with your working situation.

Exactly. Now apply this to the (paid) professor.

BitTorrent link for the five downloaded lectures

[sidney]

Just kidding...

From TFA:

Since the site was created, five students have purchased lectures.

If you are in his class I'm sure you already have put in your share of the $12.50 that was used to get one master copy of each of the first five lectures.

Re:^ Mod parent up

[cyberon22]

Hear hear hear....

Students paying tuition are paying for fair access to course materials. Providing these materials selectively and at extra cost to privileged students is unfair and exploitative. It skews the bell curve towards wealthier students and thus obviates the level playing ground provided by a lecture-centric educational system.

If this good professor wishes to charge for his knowledge, he should abandon tenure and leave the university. Once the university is no longer pushing students into his course he can charge what he will for his pontifications. Any bets on whether that will reach $2.50 per download?

Well depends on what he's selling

[Sycraft-fu]

Notes are easy. Unless a professor is a crappy lecturer, they presumably have lecture notes/slides. So just digitise that (or create it digital in the first place) and you are good to go. However an actual video copy of the lecture is more work. I've done videos for professors and it does take a non-trivial amount of time to get all the video equipment up and running, and then afterwards to transfer it to computer, edit it, and convert it. I'm not saying it's a ton of work, but it is a non-trivial amount and the professor is doing it of their own volition.

If the university itself was going to install the facilities and hire the people as a part of the course then ok, but if a professor is providing the equipment and doing all the work himself, then I think he's got a right to charge. I mean he could, if he wanted, just not do it at all.

It's not fair to say "You have to spend your own time and money to make things easier for me for no compensation." That's not how it works. His job is to provide a lecture to teach you the materials and to test you on those. They are not required to bend over backwards for you.

Re:Well depends on what he's selling

[akratic]

Unless a professor is a crappy lecturer, they presumably have lecture notes/slides.

Some lecturers are talented at extemporaneous speaking and can give good lectures without notes. Many lecturers have notes that are only intelligible to them. Producing a set of notes that others can understand is a lot more work than producing notes you can understand.

Re:Well depends on what he's selling

[SEAL]

I've found that more often than not, professors lecture almost verbatim from either a set of detailed, easily readable notes, or from a book - often one that they wrote or collaborated on.

The worst professors I had were the few who DID produce lectures without notes as a fixed reference point. Why? Because the material on their tests generally came from a book and had little relevance to the lectures.

Re:Well depends on what he's selling

[akratic]

I've found that more often than not, professors lecture almost verbatim from either a set of detailed, easily readable notes, or from a book - often one that they wrote or collaborated on.

What field(s) were you studying? Were your classes all in math, CS, and hard science? Things are different in the humanities. I'd want a math professor to be reading proofs verbatim from notes. I wouldn't necessarily want a philosophy professor, say, to be reading verbatim from notes. Some do, of course, and some of them give very good lectures this way. But it's also possible for a good extemporaneous speaker to give a good humanities lecture from an outline.

The worst professors I had were the few who DID produce lectures without notes as a fixed reference point. Why? Because the material on their tests generally came from a book and had little relevance to the lectures.

I hope you don't believe that the only purpose of college lectures is to prepare students to take exams.

Re:Well depends on what he's selling

[SEAL]

I hope you don't believe that the only purpose of college lectures is to prepare students to take exams.

I don't, but the fact is that success on those exams allows you to continue in your field. If you perform poorly, then many doors are closed to you later on.

nothing new

[okra_student]

So the teacher is selling notes, big deal. The little college I go to has been doing that for a while they even sell the power point presentation used during the lecture to the student for all history classes. Some of the info comes from retired teachers where as the rest comes from teachers still on campus. I personally think it is a good idea, I never did like having to bum note off classmates to fill in gaps from missing class or just missing some key point.

Re:Bull

[akratic]

The professor isn't providing lecture notes for a fee. He's providing recordings of the lectures.

The U.K. educational system is apparently quite different from the system in the U.S. At the two universities I've studied at, only a few professors provide lecture outlines, and none that I know of provide full lecture notes. If you miss a lecture, it's your responsibility to get notes from another student. In the U.S., providing lecture notes is not part of a professor's job description.

Taking notes is an important skill. If you try to write down everything, you're going to get lost. You need to learn how to figure out what's important to write down and what's not.

Taxpayer funded profiteering

[dircha]

Kudos to the professor for innovating!

The taxpayers of North Carolina aren't sending their hard earned money to the public university system in order to provide new markets for this professor to profit from. They are sending their money there to educate their children and their fellow citizens' children because they value the benefits of an educated citizenry.

If as the professor says, providing lecture recordings online can make a critical difference in the performance of students who may have missed class, who had a difficult time with the language, or who just need more time to let it sink in, then the university should, in the interests of fulfilling its taxpayer funded mandate, offer this program through the university at cost as an additional fee or as part of tuition.

Cut out the 3rd party hosting service middle man, and cut out the professor's profiteering.

He should be rewarded through the merit based university compensation program (wait, you mean they don't have one! *gasp*)

A taxpayer funded employee has found a more effective way to do what it is we are paying him to do. I don't bill my company an extra hour when I find a new method to increase the quality of my code, I'm expected to just do it. It's part of my job. The taxpayers of North Carolina should expect no less.

Re:Taxpayer funded profiteering

[cubicledrone]

Kudos to the professor for innovating!

Now let's dump shit all over the idea.

because they value the benefits of an educated citizenry.

Despite the fact that nobody else does.

the professor's profiteering.

Grocery store club cards are profiteering. $2.50 is not profiteering.

Re:Bull

[Burning Plastic]

Some of the best lecturers that I had when I was an undergrad didn't provide any lecture notes at all.

This was only a few years ago and noone took it for granted that they were going to get given a set of notes after any particular lecture. One part of this was that everyone learnt how to take notes in a form that worked for them rather than relying on having some printed out powerpoint slides.

Notes were a nice addition to a lecture series and were useful for revision and adding to taken notes but they were just that - something extra that was not needed or expected, but did make life a little easier.

(I did my undergrad degree in the UK as well)...

This lecturer is not just putting some powerpoint slides up on the web - he seems to be recording, cleaning up and then providing the lectures in audio form which would require some addition time. Since this is not part of the standard job description then I have nothing against some money being made off of this... (Although in my experience one or two people would buy it and then copies would be made for everyone else).

Re:Trouble understanding English speaking professo

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it a Vietnamese class?

Time to start handing out Pink Slips

[KB3JUV]

I realized in my first week of college that approx. 60 percent of professors could be fired tomorrow without any effect on students. They aren't teachers, they are professors. They aren't required to teach anything, just to lecture about the subject. Some professors go beyond the call of duty and tell real life stories, and have real life experience in their subject. Those are the ones that you learn from. The ones that read out of the book? They would be better off in retirement. I pay 120 bucks for a book, I don't need you to read it to me. I can read it myself. I have no idea if this professor has lectures worth the $2.50. If he does, go for it. If not, read the book yourself folks.

Re:Time to start handing out Pink Slips

[cubicledrone]

I realized in my first week of college that approx. 60 percent of professors could be fired tomorrow without any effect on students.

Sure! Fire all the professors. Nobody values education any more anyways. Just shut it all down. I mean, we only spent what, five thousand years teaching everyone to read? Let's just cram it all into the toilet. Sounds great. What's on Oprah?

Re:Time to start handing out Pink Slips

[Petrushka]

It might be worth realising that teaching is only about 33% of what professors get paid for. The rest, in an ideal situation, is research. In the real world, it's a three-way split between teaching, research, and bureaucracy, though you can guess which of those three ends up becoming the dominant term.

And, I hasten to add, what this professor is doing certainly belongs in the "bureaucracy" category rather than the "teaching" category. (I recall fondly how much more time I had for both teaching and research before the days of Blackboard/WebCT.) Those people in this discussion who are insisting that this should become standard practice for all professors are basically trying to add more to the administrative load without any compensation elsewhere.

Re:Time to start handing out Pink Slips

[KB3JUV]

I hate to agree to your cynical post but yes, fire them. Send them off. If everybody on this thread is true about material belonging to "the department" and not to the professor, it would be simple. The department gives a schedule of tests. You do the homework listed in "their" syllabus at your own risk, and study on your own. Buy the book and read it at the pace they say in the syllabus. Show up for the exams and you are done. I guess you are the reading aloud type? If they would like to pay me an arm and a leg to read out of a book to students, I should start working for my doctorate because I want to be a professor too! Professors aren't paid to answer questions, go out of their way to help anyone, or to really do anything except "deliver" the material whatever way they feel appropriate to students.

Re:Time to start handing out Pink Slips

[HFh]

It might be 33% of the time, but it's probably valued far far far far far far far far less than that on average.

Peace.

Re:Time to start handing out Pink Slips

[cubicledrone]

If they would like to pay me an arm and a leg to read out of a book to students

I have never ever EVER seen a university professor stand and read from a book for an entire lecture. Not once. Anyone who puts 12 years into getting a PhD and earning the title of "Professor" has earned their paycheck just as much as any medical doctor. They have reached the zenith of their field. What do you want? Free enchiladas?

Professors aren't paid to answer questions, go out of their way to help anyone, or to really do anything except "deliver" the material whatever way they feel appropriate to students.

That is correct, and their Doctorate of Philosophy degree coupled with the title of "Professor" qualifies them on its face to make that decision. End of story.

Re:Mod parent and grandparent down

[overacid]

You're missing the point. It doesn't matter which medium the lecturer is providing this post-lecture information. The point is, he's selling it.

CHEAPER!!

[abscissa]

Why has nobody pointed out that the $2.50 is FAR FAR CHEAPER than the tuition money the students are paying for the original lecture in the first place??

Re:CHEAPER!!

[mrchaotica]

Because it's irrelevant, since tuition also buys you the chance of earning a degree.

Re:CHEAPER!!

[sco08y]

Why has nobody pointed out that the $2.50 is FAR FAR CHEAPER than the tuition money the students are paying for the original lecture in the first place??

Or that after you've paid thousands of dollars for books and tens of thousands of dollars for the tuition, how is it you aren't entitled to recordings of lectures?

Re:CHEAPER!!

[myyrk]

You are entitled if you go to the lecture and record it yourself.

Jumps in logic?

[singularity]

I read a lot of replies saying "Professors give out lecture notes, so they should give the recordings away for free, as well."

Maybe things have changed since I was in college ten years ago, but it used to be that *some* of my professors gave away lecture notes, or put them online, and some did not. Some only put up problem set solutions, and some had every paper given in class away online. Some refused to put anything online, except the syllabus. /. readers seem to be saying that lecture notes are a right they are due as a student. It seems to me that they are making a jump, from some professors being nice and doing this, to being ENTITLED to this.

They then make the jump that if they are ENTITLED to lecture notes, they are ENTITLED to free recordings of the lectures.

You completely lose me on either one of those jumps.

I do not look at the $2.50 as a racket to make money, but rather an incentive to make sure that students continue to come to class, and not just skip "since the lecture and lecture notes are available online."

Sure, he could try giving away a free download to every student who showed up, but are you going to say that no student will give his/her free pass to his roommate who slept through the class?

Re:Jumps in logic?

[SEAL]

They then make the jump that if they are ENTITLED to lecture notes, they are ENTITLED to free recordings of the lectures.

You completely lose me on either one of those jumps.

Have you looked at the cost of tuition at most four-year universities in the U.S., lately? A professor is a paid employee of those universities. He shouldn't be creating a little side business while he's doing his job.

From the article blurb: Quote Dr. Schrag "Your tuition buys you access to the lectures in the classroom. If you want to hear one again, you can buy it.

In my experience, that's mostly lectures by TAs because the professor is too wrapped up in his research to do menial tasks like, oh, ACTUALLY TEACH UNDERGRADS. Are those the lectures being sold?

I do not look at the $2.50 as a racket to make money, but rather an incentive to make sure that students continue to come to class, and not just skip "since the lecture and lecture notes are available online."

It's not the professor's responsibility to make sure students attend his class. That's high school mentality. If I'm paying for college courses, then the manner in which I learn the material, and the frequency with which I attend class should be my business.

I'm not saying the professor must provide free video lectures to the class. However, if he's going to charge for them, and then prohibit students from making their own recordings of his lectures, I think that's going too far.

Re:Jumps in logic?

[MooUK]

There's nothing stopping the students paying once and sharing it, either. Both charging and giving out passwords to those who attended will be equally ineffective at ensuring attendance.

should improve lecture quality.

[erichschubert]

He will sell less if people don't like his lecture in the first place. They might even use the lecture notes of a different professor.
And the recordings etc. of his lecture will probably not be much better than the lecture either.

It is in the best interest of the professor to make a good lecture and sell the lecture notes for a low price. Then many people will come to the lectures, and many people will buy the notes.

I myself have used the lecture notes of a different professor a couple of times because I liked them better. Quite often professors refer to the lecture notes of others because they're done well. So he might even be able to sell some to the students of other classes or universities, if it's worth the money.

Oh, and some professors turn their lecture notes into books and sell them... the professors here that do this often hand out the drafts in their lectures and get feedback and corrections from the students. Maybe they should pay the students for proofreading his book? What bullshit is this fighting for $2.50 for a lecture? Thats a single slice of pizza. If it's not worth the money, don't but the recordings.

Economic inequality

[akratic]

This system sounds at least a little bit unfair to those students who are in tight financial circumstances. If recorded lectures are available for a fee (even a nominal fee), then students with money to burn have an advantage over students who have to pinch pennies.

O/B Spicoli

[Sqwubbsy]

"I've been thinking about this Mister Hand. If you're here and I'm here, doesn't that technically make it our time?"

Re:volunteer

[cubicledrone]

I suppose this means that, if students volunteered to record and edit the lecture and distribute it for free, the professor would have no objection?

Yes because the highest calling of the techno-cyber-people is to invest time and effort to deprive someone of their $2.50

Good idea, if it was FREE

[Monkeyboy4]

P.S. Wish I could use my mod points to skew this discussion..

I would too, but I want to join in.

I am a student at NC State, working on a doctorate in Adult Learning. I don't kow this guy, but what he is doing is crap. 'extra time to prepare?' 'my intellectual property?' 'why free music download a myth and a lie?' (all quotes from TFA) This guy comes across as selfish and an agenda pusher.
The time is only extra if he sees his job as talking in front of a room, rather than helping students learn.
His slides are his IP, sure, but the ideas he present sin class - a sophomore level Communications class - are a bunch of other people's thoeries. What if they charged him for the right to teach the stuff? From TFA, he feels burned by people using his materials to teach elsewher. If a powerpoint presentation took him that much intellectual energy and time, he may want to reconsider being an academic.
Nice push of FUD, coming from a professor no less, about the cost of digital products.

This guy has a skewed version of what education is. He is a great example of the 'little empereor' syndrome where faculty think they rule the world because they can make 18-24 year olds jump throgh hoops in order to get a degree.

Think bigger, professors!

[Heddahenrik]

It really desturbs me that people still keep thinking small. There is an Internet out there and it's BIG. Even if you are having lectures in a very narrow field, there are plenty of people that are interested in it.

So why not put some effort in putting the material on the web and then get money from ads? It works just fine for TV, but Internet is much cheaper and better to use.

Sweet deal

[greg1104]

That's a pretty good bargain; $2.50 is less than the going rate I used to pay to have people attend boring classes for me and take notes. I think two slices and a soda was my average trade. As this was tech school, in many cases the instructors lack of ability to explain the material (these men were paid to get research grants, not explain things to students) meant that actually attending the lectures would leave one more confused than had you missed it and just read the book instead. Still needed somebody to go in order to figure out which sections would be tested.

Even for people who actually do show up for class, having a version of the lecture you can rewind and mull over at your leisure has a significant value. This is especially true for slower students, like the communications majors this guy is selling to.

Re:Bull

[Metasquares]

If there is not enough time to simultaneously take notes and understand the course, the professor is going too fast. This is how you get classes (especially on the graduate level) where a bunch of intelligent students spend so much time furiously scribbling that when the professor finally decides to stop and ask a question, half of the class is too preoccupied with catching up in their note-taking to answer and the other half has no clue what's going on because they haven't actually analyzed a word they've just written down yet. I know. I just came from one of those classes.

By the time students do get around to analyzing their own notes, the class is over and the opportunity to ask the professor questions in a class setting is lost.

This is when PowerPoint slides might actually come in handy. Many professors misuse them, but correctly used, they are a powerful tool for presenting large amounts of information in a small amount of time. This method lets students outline the lecture (the lecture itself may be more like an outline as a result of the slide format as well), filling the specifics either from research, the textbook, or an online copy of the slides. If you miss all of the information on a slide, you can go back to the course page (or directly to the professor, if the slides aren't posted anywhere) after class and find it in its entirety, with no time pressure to copy the information down.

If I tried to outline the notes I just took at the class I came from, I would probably miss some information I need to do the homework. Since the notes are gone as soon as the professor erases them from the whiteboard, this leaves me with no way of getting the information if I miss it in class. Since my professor has an attitude, I can't count on him to tell me what those notes were if I miss them, either - he'd probably quip about how I should have been paying more attention in class.

Monash University

[Domza]

I''m finishing my Law Degree at the moment at Monash Law School, in Melbourne, Australia. Since i started my degree 95% of my lectures have been available in taped format RealMedia format for streaming - although it was never recommended that students skip class, recording never had that impact, and in my opinion increased the numbers attending class because they can easily relisten to portions in which they fell asleep or missed out on because the lecturer was moving too fast.

Just this semester we have about 70% of our lectures podcasted, so that we can listen to them any time we want - which is very handy considering most studnets work, and often forget what lectures they last listened to. It also allows students to listen to other lectures in other streams for the same subject, who may provide better explanations on certain issues.

charging money was never a part of our scheme, and i dont see why it should be. All the infrastructure was in place in our university though, and it was up to the individual lecturer to record, or not to record.

Re:Monash University

[fj3k]

I think this is true of most Australian universities. Maybe that's what's causing all this trouble with the rising cost of tertiary education here. One of my lecturers went to the US last year and was surprised to see people taking notes and asking questions in a lecture. He came back with crazy ideas of NOT recording lectures. We quickly convinced him that students taking their own notes was only likely to increase the failure rate because we're computer scientists and have limited abilities with pens and paper. His advice (as always) was that we should buy a mac, but withdrew his threat to stop recording lectures.

it should be free to students

[ic4x0r]

having videos of the lectures are a great idea, but I think he should try to get the university to pay for it instead of the students. non-native english speakers or students who get sick and can't attend lecture shouldn't be penalized. you only need to pay for the video equipment once, and in terms of the extra time it takes to make the videos, having the videos online will probably save him the time of answering many questions that students have later that could be answered by simply re-watching the lectures.

Re:it should be free to students

[ic4x0r]

I don't know, it just seems like charging for the lecture videos would be equivalent to charging for extra help sessions or something. it should be covered by the tuition.

Re:Hm--Even Older News

[McMoose]

Didn't Thomas Dolby already do that?

SCIENCE!!!

Not everyone sees it that way...

[Pollux]

From the article...

Quote Dr. Schrag "Your tuition buys you access to the lectures in the classroom. If you want to hear one again, you can buy it."

From the parent post...

So, if this lecturer is claiming it is extra effort to produce lecture notes, then he is not doing his job, frankly.

One of my disappointments in college was to find that every professor has their own theory of what they are "obligated" to offer as professor at a university. Some professors see classes as an obligatory tax paid in return for support from the university; they see themselves first and foremost as scholars in pursuit of knowledge and understanding, and classes are a burden yet a formality of the lifestyle which they choose. These professors walk into a lecture, often times purposefully parading their vast genius before their students to deter the weak-minded, confuse the passive learner, and leave the few that actually possess a parallel academic mastery in that field busy with such a plethora of challenging thought and theory that the majority of students are left in shock, unable to question one who has made them feel inferior. These professors are not interested in helping students; they are only interested in helping themselves. And they see the only people that they need to impress are the deans, the boards, and their colleages. One of my old college profs told me about a math professor he had at Vanderbilt who taught his lectures in a rectangular hall; two of the four walls were lined with chalkboards, with the second chalkboard ending right at the door to the hall. The professor would come in, set his briefcase right by the door, walk to the opposite end of the hall, grab his chalk, being lecturing and writing on the chalkboard, continuing to walk, chalk, and talk his way across one blackboard, across the second blackboard, finishing at the end of the blackboard, putting down the chalk, grabbing his briefcase, and exiting the room, signaling the end of the lecture.

On the other hand, I encountered many professors who would go above and beyond their "contractual obligations," providing lecture notes, plenty of office time, and especially individual instruction for anyone who did not understand the lecture the first time around. What was really neat was that the foreign professors (many of which were IMPOSSIBLE to understand the first time around) were especially willing to try their best to help students out of the classroom. I guess they themselves especially understood what opportunity really means.

I personally wish that universities would do a better job at defining obligations of professors, for both the students' benefit and the universities'. I think students who can expect professors to offer additional help and encouragement, rather than (through verbal or nonverbal communication) be made to feel incompetent and stupid, will feel a lot more comfortable about their own knowledge and seek that which they don't understand. As the old Unix fortune goes, "Those who don't know, and know that they don't know, they are ignorant. Teach them."

Oh, and one final bit of advice for students: go to class. You're paying for it. Don't miss class and then expect the professor to bend over backwards for you. Don't demand another opportunity when you pass up the one provided for you.

Re:Not everyone sees it that way...

[MattHaffner]

One of my disappointments in college was to find that every professor has their own theory of what they are "obligated" to offer as professor at a university. Some professors see classes as an obligatory tax paid in return for support from the university; they see themselves first and foremost as scholars in pursuit of knowledge and understanding, and classes are a burden yet a formality of the lifestyle which they choose.

We as a society (in the US, at least) have chosen not to reward good teaching as we do nearly every other skill that can be used in a business environment. I'm being overly general here, but from K-12, especially in the public sector, we have a system set up to reward years of service with little incentive to improve one's ability to teach. Dedication to one's field should only be one part of the compensation equation. About all an excellent, beginning teacher can look forward to is maybe choosing which school they want to teach at (which is maybe not the school that really needs a great teacher) or looking to the private sector where there is more flexibility for personal reward.

At the college and university level, jobs that are teaching-only get paid 2-3 times less than those that involve research and/or administration. Even at this level, there is little incentive to be a great teacher at most (not all) institutions aside from the ego of good reviews, full enrollments, and the occasional pat on the head for an award you can stick on your wall. There are glimmers of change here and there, which is encouraging, but it's more grassroots from the inside among faculty and lecturers who are appalled at the state of teaching than it is from the top down, where positions, salaries, and job security are determined.

I taught my first full course last semester. The amount I got paid for the actual teaching was below the poverty level for my family of four--thankfully I have research I'm involved in too, which covered the gap. I loved doing it, and based on what I heard from students and reviews, I think I did a pretty good job. I was putting in 50-70 hours a week on teaching alone doing all these extras that enhance class thesedays. Of course I'm a techie, so I enjoyed doing some of those extras for the most part too. But don't expect everyone to be doing it (or able to do it) out of the goodness of their hearts.

Although I agree with you in theory on what obligations should be, we need to change a lot more than just a set of policies to get better teaching into our classrooms. We need to inspire people into the profession who are willing to challenge themselves and their students, and we need to figure out how to keep them there. We need to inspire institutions from K up to college to seriously reward good teaching from year 1 to retirement. Whether that involves more resources or a reallocation of resources is the hard debate, but the system is pretty broken right now for anything but a baseline of education that seriously favors those with internal motivation and/or money.

Re:^ Mod parent up

[Maxo-Texas]

And we probably shouldn't allow tutors or all those help guides that cost $30 apiece either. Because equality is the golden rule.

Thank god didn't apply to me-- I bought my way thorugh college while working 55 hours a week. The lucky poor guys on grants had 55 hours a week to study that I didn't.

Re:Bull

[krayzkrok]

Ironic that students would complain about this, and then blow $10 to $20 a night on beer!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Free at MIT--and Harvard too

[juushin]

And Harvard too

Pay for it?

[Apotekaren]

For example, my professor records his lectures in Organization and Management digitally. Half the
course runs online, and half is lectures. So he offers his lectures online through the same service
that we get the online tasks through. For free. I'd never pay for something I had paid for before,
or something the government paid for me(this applies in my case). Putting it online is not a hassle
worth $1 per download. Our University allows him to do it on his personal(but university) webspace,
with unlimited upload.

They already charge for homework...

[oldosadmin]

Have you never had to cough up the $10/class to the webassign people?

Re:They already charge for homework...

[krotkruton]

No. That honestly surprises me as I have attended a Pomona College, a private college in California; Joliet Junior College, a community college; and the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. None of which haveever had any sort of fee to get to web pages. This is really the first I've ever heard of it.

Bullshit

[Mr. Freeman]

If he wanted to "help those that missed class, didn't take good notes, or from another country and have trouble understanding an English speaking Professor" he'd make them free. (This is assuming that everyone he's selling these lectures to is a student at the college he works at. I could easily see him selling the lectures to people not enrolled at the college)

I'm surprised he's actually allowed to do this with lectures he gives at the college. Sure, he gives the lecture, but who pays for the lecture hall, the seats, and his payroll? One could make the valid argument that he's being paid to give these lectures and no one is forcing him to record them (so it wouldn't cost him anything if he wasn't allowed to sell the tapes), so they must be free.

There are a lot of professors that record their lectures and make them freely available to help their students, this guy just seems to be trying to make a quick buck.

Re:Bullshit

[nonsequitor]

Not true. If he made it freely available online, they probably wouldn't read it. By forcing them to spend their money on it, they now have a vested interest in listening to it at least once so as to not waste even more money. By missing a lecture you're blowing something around $5 - $50 bucks depending on what school you go to. Most kids don't realize how much money they waste by skipping class. At least this way he's increasing their chances of actually reviewing the material and doing well in his course.

Lets say he sells 50 lectures on a good week, thats only an extra $125, he's not charging an impoverishing amount, just enough to make them appreciate what they're getting. Its by no means extortion, he's not really making a profit, and odds are the students will get more out of it. Its a Win, Win. Whats the point of paying for it and not listening to it, I had tons of professors make all sorts of stuff available online I never touched, but they never charged me to download it either. I think its a good lesson for the kids which will help them realize the value of their education.

Re:Bullshit

[Lanoitarus]

I tend to agree... unless this money was going to some cause besides the professor himself, this would last about as long at my school as it took the administration to catch wind of it. On the other hand, if he was donating 100% of the money to pretty much anything, it would probably be let slide.

Re:Bullshit

[HappyEngineer]

There are a lot of professors that record their lectures and make them freely available to help their students, this guy just seems to be trying to make a quick buck.

The beautiful thing about capitalism is that one person can benefit from the self interested greed of another. That's why it works so well.

If he is only interested in making a quick buck then preventing him from charging will just mean that he won't do it at all.

The only reasonable alternative is to have the university pay him the $2.50 per lecture. The only downside there is price control. He'd only have one buyer (the university) so it'd be difficult to adjust the price to find out how much the lectures are really worth to students.

Re:Bullshit

[PrinceOfStorms]

Most universities seem to allow the use of their facilities for "consulting" work by staff up to a certain value. Given that no one in their right mind would choose academia for the money, this is in my opinion a sensible way of closing the gap between the salaries offered by universities and businesses. I'm sure if he started to earn more than his salary this way, something would kick in, but if we're talking about small amounts of money, what's the problem? If he offered additional tutorials in the weekends for students who were struggling, would you expect him to do that for free as well? If he wrote a textbook covering the material he teaches, should he not receive any money for that either? The students have paid for a set of services and resources and have every right to access those; this is something extra and he's charging for it. Seems fair enough to me.

Classes don't belong to professors

[Profmeister 3000]

Classroom experiences are (should be?) interactive now, not just one-way broadcasts. Our class meetings belong to myself AND my student colleagues.

If it's a 'lecture'--a straight information download--it should be offered for free. Or, even better, insert a DVD and press 'play'.

Copyright is Not an Absolute Right

[Landaras]

Initial Disclaimer: IANAL but I am a law student who will practice copyright / technology law

With all due respect, I disagree strongly with your comment.

You said...

and what I say in class is my intellectual property

Repeat after me: copyright is not an absolute right.

Go ahead, repeat it: copyright is not an absolute right.

There is something called Fair Use. I should know, as I rely upon it when creating my podcast, [shameless plug] Life of a Law Student. In LoaLS I build upon my notes from the lectures I took part in at law school to create audio episodes explaining the cases and the law. I then make these episodes available, for free, to anyone who wants to listen and/or download. They are licensed as CC-Attribution and GNU FDL to enable others to build upon them freely.

Out of respect, I informed my profs and the administration what I was planning on doing before I started. Most thought it was a great idea or at least would not stand in my way. Unfortunately, I had one of my professors tell me that he only gave permission for his students to take notes for their own personal use, and so he wouldn't allow me to do LoaLS off of his class. I politely told him I wasn't seeking his permission because my Use was a Fair one and thanked him for his time.

Fair Use has four articulated prongs (although there are potentially more factors to balance).

1. First, what is the nature of the new work? Is it transformative or merely derivative; is it educational and noncommercial or commercial?
2. Second, what is the amount of the old work re-used?
3. Third, is the old work largely creative or largely fact-based?
4. Fourth, what is the impact by the new work on the market for the old work? The first and fourth prongs are given considerably more weight than the second and third prongs.

Let's consider a student setting up a tape recorder and simply recording your lectures. (We'll set aside any Honor Code violations that explicitly give you the right to ban taping; we'll only deal with your "intellectual property" right.)

1. First, if the students aren't selling the recordings and using the recordings to help themselves and others learn, prong one cuts in their favor. Also, they're transforming your ephemeral audio into more durable format, so prong one further cuts in their favor under the transformative question.
2. Secondly, although they may be taping the whole old work and prong two cuts against a finding of Fair Use, this is only one prong and a less important one at that.
3. Third, your lecture is likely primarily fact-driven, so the third prong cuts in favor of finding Fair Use.
4. Finally, you're most likely not selling your existing lectures in a recorded format. You may be selling your lectures via tuition at the University, but so long as these tapes are not serving as a substitute for the University experience and/or degree, you're not being harmed. (On the contrary, I've had many people tell me they decided to go to law school because of LoaLS, because it de-mystified what law school was. In this way I'm helping the market for my law school professors, and so your hypothetical recording students could be helping the market for your copyrighted works.)

In summary, a student would likely have a legal right to record your lectures under Fair Use because three of the four prongs (and both of the important ones) would cut in their favor. If you would like make your lectures available for sale or distribution that might change the analysis. But the key thing is to disabuse yourself of this notion that your "intellectual property" is an absolute. Fair Use is explicitly codified in the Copyright Act because it is recognized that oftentimes the incu

Re:Copyright is Not an Absolute Right

[EvanED]

I don't necessarily think that the poster is entirely concerned about the IP rights per se. There does seem to be some of that, but my reading is that the concern is separate:

1. He doesn't want tape recorders in class and doesn't give out notes because of concerns about attendence, and
2. In the case of the other prof using his notes, my reading is that the concern is on the "without attribution" part. I suspect that if the other professor had asked to use the notes, your parent would have gladly agreed; it's the fact that the other person was (implicitly by not citing them) claiming the slides as his own work. (The latter I might consider grounds for tenure revoking if I was in change of a university BTW, considering that's what they do to students (rightly) if they don't cite sources...)

Not really.

[mrchaotica]

Here's the "vital point" you seem to be missing: lots of other profs give away lecture notes etc. for free. Sure, in most cases it isn't an audio recording, but depending on how visually-oriented the material is, powerpoint or whatever is probably better anyway. And sometimes, if you get lucky, the professor posts nearly verbatim transcripts of all his lectures!

Buying media

[Talennor]

for a college class? Nonsense! And these BOOKS I have to buy should be free too!

Not only is this cheaper than the book for the class, but it's not required. And probably has more useful information.

In data structures we used the department head's book. And *gasp* people make money on books! And the way I understand it, it's not that shady since they've been trying to get more of the department to Java and it's one of the few good data structures with Java examples books.

I've spent money on far worse. Accounts on systems that grade your homework and we only used it twice. Physics departments seem to love those IR remotes that allow for live graded quiz questions, and I've seen "upgrades" that make the old ones not work so that they sell new ones instead of allowing students to buy/sell used. Really, it's funny that someone that seems to be trying to do something good is getting picked on here, when far crazier things are going on.

Educational tapestry

[sonamchauhan]

Ha! You can make podcasts of different professors teaching the same topic in their own way.

it's definitely cheaper

[chocolatetrumpet]

Students probably pay upwards of $100/hour of classroom instruction. $2.50 is the biggest bargain on campus!

Re:it's definitely cheaper

[ceoyoyo]

Only if you can buy the lecture and get a refund on your tuition if you skip the lecture.

I think $100/hr might be a bit much. My courses were three hours a week of lecture, for about sixteen weeks. Five classes a semester. At $100/hr that would put your tuition at $24,000 a semester. Well, maybe in the US. My tuition was more like $1500 / semester.

Sucks to be there

[svunt]

Wow, on top of the astonishing tuition fees poor USians already pay? I have audio & transcripts available online for every subject I take at university, which is great, as I can actually listen to the lectures instead of madly scribbling down what I can. Teachers who use PowerPoint for their lectures generally make the ppt files available to students by request, if they missed a lecture and wanted to listen to the lecture, while watching the presentation.

$2.50 is $2.50 too much, and as for the poor, put-upon professor, dude, you're already getting paid to do whatever you can for your students' educations. My partner, who teaches at university, burns CDs for her students, hires dvds for them to watch, edits together practice tapes and cds (she's a language teacher) and all for $50k a year.

Boo-fucking-hoo, professor. Step up and help your students out, and kiss the dollar goodbye if you're any kind of teacher.

Re:Trouble understanding English speaking professo

[Grishnakh]

Ha ha, no. It was an electrical engineering class, and worse, it was one of the required ones. I took it the next semester with a better prof.

Who gets the fee?

[Dcnjoe60]

Excuse, me, but who gets the fee for the lecture, the professor or the university? The students are paying tuition to be provided an education that fufills the requirements of course xyz (his argument that the student's tuition gets them the lecture in the classroom is bogus -- tuition is more than just his classroom time - otherwise, shouldn't distance classes and classes taught by a TA be less than those taught by a professor?).

Therefore, the lecture is already being provided to the students as part of the contract for taking and paying for the course. The ability to download said lecture is the same content, just in a different format.

I am assuming that it is the professor who is collecting the fee, but then that raises the question of whether he is producing said downloadable lecture using university equipment (recorder, internet, web server, etc.) and on university time or not. If he is deriving income from the download, then wouldn't that be using university resources for personal use?

Also, the question of $2.50 a lecture seems steep. Maybe not for one, but a 13 week class at 3 classes a week comes out to be 39 lectures or $97.50. It doesn't take too many students before the professor makes a nice little income on the side. If the professor teaches three classes with three sections each, well, that's a nice supplement to his income each semester.

Maybe not only the university should look into the use of school property for personal gain, but maybe the IRS should look into reportable income.

Re:Who gets the fee?

[Gavin86]

What kind of cock-head moron pays all that tuition for college only to miss every single class?? You know what someone like that deserves? Nothing. Let's get real here folks, who could possibly cry about $2.50 for the most valuable thing one human being can ever give another: knowledge. You could simply not buy 1 gram of weed and have ample money to skip your classes and still get the information from your lectures.

Re:Who gets the fee?

[davids-world.com]

There's nothing wrong with "making a nice little incoming on the side", is there?

It's a contractual matter, and as such it'll probably depend on the particular copyright arrangements in place. They will likely differ for affiliate professors (who are academic freelancers and just contracted for particular classes) and tenured ones, who are basically full-time & permanent staff.

Re:Who gets the fee?

[Dcnjoe60]

There's nothing wrong with "making a nice little incoming on the side", is there?

It's a contractual matter, and as such it'll probably depend on the particular copyright arrangements in place. They will likely differ for affiliate professors (who are academic freelancers and just contracted for particular classes) and tenured ones, who are basically full-time & permanent staff.

There's nothing wrong with it unless you are already being paid to provide service. If the professor were charging to students $2.50 to come see him during office hours to clarify things he said in class, would that be different? If so, then how is letting students re-hear the lecture they just sat through, so they can get clarification (not all students cut class) not the same?

It's not a copyright issue, because students are allowed to record lectures for their own use. Yes, the content might be copyrighted, but the student, by being registered in the class, is still entitled to hear the lecture not just sit in a seat and hear it on the day presented as the professor contends. The professor would be right, if the official copy weren't available, but once it is available, students, by paying their tuition and fees are entitled to all course materials. That would seem to imply physical and electronic.

Re:Who gets the fee?

[Dcnjoe60]

Who assumes they are missing those classes. Maybe, they want/need those lectures to help study with? Maybe the tests are based off of lectures and they aren't very good note takers (since they tend not to teach that in schools very much anymore). Maybe the professor is hard to hear, who knows the reason why. However, I know a lot of people when I was in school who recorded lectures on their own (obviously not cutting class or they wouldn't be there to record it), myself included.

Let me ask you this, if said professor were charging students $2.50 an office visit to obtain clarification to something he said in his lecture in class, would that be alright? If not, then why is it alright to charge them $2.50 to re-hear it again? Besides, doesn't their tution and fees entitle them to ALL course materials? Obviously, when the lecture was just given, that was that, but now that the professor has made it available, it would seem to be part of the course materials.

Re:Who gets the fee?

[HFh]

Well.

If a student thinks s/he can come to my office hours and ask me to redo an entire lecture, then s/he is wrong.

In fact, the student couldn't pay me to do it. $250 wouldn't be enough to do it, much less $2.50.

Peace.

Re:Who gets the fee?

[Dcnjoe60]

So it's not the fact that someone is charging that makes it wrong but the amount they are charging? I bet most students don't come to your office to ask to have an entire lecture repeated, but I assume they do come to have questions answered. What's to stop the next professor from posting FAQs for a fee or even study guides? Last time I checked the university model was about imparting of knowledge. More and more, however, I see professors "selling" their services.

This selling of services is a natural progression of the Univerity's publish or perish mentality. The only difference is that in the individual selling of services, the professor is the direct beneficiary, not the university. All of that is fine, it's a free world, however, as long as they do so on their time and not the University, their employer's time (or taxpayer if a public institution). Even worse, though is when they are selling those services to the very students they are supposed to be teaching. At that point, it seems like an ethics issue has arisen.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned. I still hold to the notion that professor, is at the university to teach first.

Re:Who gets the fee?

[HFh]

More and more, however, I see professors "selling" their services.

Do you? Do you have any examples of this?

Maybe I'm just old fashioned. I still hold to the notion that professor, is at the university to teach first.

I don't see why this is old-fashioned. It might turn out to be incorrect, but I don't see it as old-fashioned.

BTW, even if we grant the premise that the purpose is to teach first, it doesn't follow from there that the professor must do things like make lectures available.

Peace.

Lectures are VERY time consuming to create

[dr_ml]

I provide a flash video/powerpoint based version of all of my lectures for my corporate finance courses for free. I considered charging for the materials but the amount that I would receive (a few hundred $ per year) is such a small amount that it wasn't worth justifying the price to the students (to me). I purchased the software (Articulate = $800), host the files, and spend the 4 hours each necessary to record the lessons on top of the time necessary to create the powerpoint lessons.

I am very surprised, but many of the students report that they review the lessons several times. Personally, I can't imagine that they have that much time, but that is what they say. I think that any professor that truly cares about the student's learning would do the same thing. I see very little value in having a video of the lesson, but the flash/powerpoint/audio version seems to be useful especially since it has searching and FF/RW built in.

My view is that if the students find it useful, it was worth my time.

other teachers do this for free

[s4m]

As a student at NCSU..all my teachers already make lecture notes available online, for free. I don't see why this guy wants to charge for them....but i don't see a problem with it at all.

Bastard

[DoorFrame]

What, is he going to start charging for showing up at office hours too? He's a jackass. You shouldn't be charging for class materials when that money's just going into his own pocket. If the school were charging it would still be annoying, but not awful. THIS, however, is awful.

This sucks...

[OldChemist]

Having taught at what passes for very good undergraduate liberal arts colleges and a major research university, all I can say is the above. You can get a lot of course material on the MIT web site for free. The same for many, many, other colleges and universities. If this turkey really needs $2.50 for his efforts, maybe he should start working for one of the "commercial" universities...

Re:Sudent Market - Tape class and sell it for $1

[hengist]

Undercut your own professors by taping and selling their class presentations.

That would be a violation of the lecturer's copyright.

I did this on my campus

[Paco103]

. . . only mine were free and publicly available for the entire semester and any class I'd ever taken. It was primarily Computer Science, but I had a few other classes on there, like the generic classes everyone had to take and a few of my electives. I had faculty and staff blessing, but the faculty never provided their own notes. I had FTP upload for anyone that wanted to provide notes from their classes, just e-mail me and I'd give them an account. Honestly, a lot of the students that used my site told me I should charge and make a few extra bucks off of it, that they'd gladly pay. Of course, most of them were suggesting like $5/semester or something like that. I just ran it off the PC in my dorm after getting so many e-mails asking for notes since I always typed them on my laptop in class. Faculty even referred to my site when students asked about a class they missed. One student said he didn't know where my site was, and the professor actually said in disbelief, "Everyone knows his site". When I interviewed for a job in Computer Services they asked if I had a resume, and when I said it was on my site (It was an unplanned on-the-spot interview) preparing to give them the URL, they just typed it in and asked where to go from there.

I even provided extra content, like funny quotes from professors (of which the most famous one always gave me a hard time, but just in fun).

If any faculty or staff member had ever asked me to remove their content, I would have without question (I even had that notice published at the bottom of every page).

Summary: It's a great service, and students will pay if they need it. But why on EARTH is the professor paying so much for web hosting?

Re:^ Mod parent up

[cyberon22]

If the market supports a note-taking service that is wonderful. But neither the professor nor his teaching assistants should profit from providing supplementary educational materials to courses they are grading. There is a genuine conflict of interest.

Students are right to expect fair access. If this professor wishes to treat recordings of his lectures as essential course materials he should put them on the required reading/listening list. This is the normal way of structuring courses. As soon as materials are on the syllabus professors typically work with various libraries on campus to arrange lending access. I have never taken a university course where the necessary materials were not available free of charge to those willing to visit the library.

My issue is with someone putting themselves in a position to profit from turning their classroom into a two-tier system. This is a clear conflict of interest, and the fact that there isn't a lot of money at stake makes this issue even more absurd. This guy could easily find a student willing to record his lectures and put them online.

It's The University's Fault

[logicnazi]

I can't fault the professor for charging for his genuine time and expense needed to put these lectures online. However, I can and do fault the university for not providing the video equitment and hosting to make this process painless and requiring professors to put their lectures up in this fashion.

Many students learn in different ways. Some students, such as myself, are almost incapable of learning from sitting in class and taking notes. At the moment students like myself are totally screwed over in classes that don't offer a book or other written material to learn from. While I would prefer written matieral when this doesn't exist (and often the prof couldn't create it in a reasonable time) a video that one can watch at home and skip around to the parts you need to hear would at least give me some reasonable way to learn.

A university would never allow a professor to screw over the students who learn best from lecture by only providing written (or even video) material and only holding office hours or question sections. Fair treatment demands that the professor not screw over students who don't learn from lecture by not providing any at home learning method.

Unfortunatly there is a nasty prejudice that many people have that if you don't learn well from lecture your just lazy. It's not true but even if it was it wouldn't matter. Making sure that people don't 'get away' with learning on their own is no justification to deny saving time and effort by providing take home materials. The current practice of everyone going into lecture and blindly copying down what the professor says is just stupid.

I guess I am a lucky one

[Jackyshadow]

In my collage all the lecture notes are available through class forums for free in pdf format. And only geeks would actually pay for lecture notes.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[icepick72]

The students have already paid tuition to hear the content of the lecture, why should they pay again.

Maybe as incentive not to miss class.

If i was at that UNI

[kbox]

Id knuckle down, listen closely and take proper notes... that would show him!

He's probably already bought that boat on the back of his genious business idea of selling recordings of something the students have already paid for.

Conflict of interest

[Animats]

Well, first of all, this is a state school, and the professor is a Government employee. So state conflict of interest laws apply.

First, North Carolina State University permits faculty to own copyright in instructional materials: "NC State does not, however, claim ownership of faculty-created instructional materials or courseware merely because it requires faculty members to teach courses as part of their regular responsibilities."

However, the department has the option of taking title to such "Directed Works": "Directed works also include works created by faculty or staff in an institute, center, department, or other unit that, with approval of the Provost, has adopted rules providing that copyright in materials prepared by such faculty or staff in the course of their work with that unit vests in NC State and not in its creator. NC State holds copyright to Directed Works."

However, see Conflicts of Interest and Committment Affecting Faculty and Non-Faculty EPA Employees. "Activities requiring disclosure for administrative review ... An EPA employee requiring students to purchase the textbook or related instructional materials of the employee or members of his or her immediate family, which produces compensation for the employee or family member."

Provided that the professor made the proper disclosures and those disclosures are in his personnel file, he's probably OK. The university has the option of taking over this business from the individual faculty.

Policies vary with the school. The University of Michigan permits commercial note-taking services but prohibits faculty from selling notes. (This resulted in a note-taking startup, Versity.com, which was acquired by CollegeClub.com, which dumped the note-taking business to focus on entertainment content.) Yale is at the other extreme; they let faculty control their content. That's what you'd expect; state schools have to be much more careful about conflict of interest issues.

Only one professor!

[AlinuxNCSU]

I think one thing that seems to be ignored is that this is only one professor's decision. His decision in no way relates to what the rest of the university is doing.

Many professors already have their lectures taped. Some of these are available online for free, some are only for students of the course, and some are spefically for distance ed. courses. There is also a growing number of professors who are offering podcasts of or related to their lectures. The university is working on a framework to allow those professors who aren't quite as tech savvy to put up podcasts in a central location.

Re:Bull

[EvanED]

At the two universities I've studied at, only a few professors provide lecture outlines, and none that I know of provide full lecture notes

Really? I find this surprising. Though what major were you? I found that makes a big difference.

I did a survey of my undergrad transcript, making notes of which classes I took offered notes and which didn't. I didn't count classes where there wasn't really note taking (e.g. fencing or piano) and one class I couldn't remember if we got notes or not. All classes here are standard 3 credits. The results are:

Outside of computer science:
22 classes did NOT provide notes
3 classes did (a physics class, a psych class, and a poli sci class; in particular, there were no such math classes except one cross listed with CS (which is counted in the computer science section))

Within computer science:
5 classes did NOT provide notes
12 classes provided notes

Of the CS classes that provided notes, almost all were powerpoint slides used during lecture. There were:
at least 5 classes that provided notes/slides before the lecture in which they were used
at least 2 classes that provided the slides after the lecture in which they were used
4 classes that I don't remember wheter we had access before or after

Furthermore, I am currently in two grad classes at a different institution. Both classes provide slides; one class makes them available before and one after the corresponding lecture.

So I don't think it's necessarily a US/UK split; it's either a major split or just where you happen to go.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[Petrushka]

The students have already paid tuition to hear the content of the lecture, why should they pay again.

Because they got what they paid for already.

Plus, he's recording all of this and hosting all of this with university equipment.

RTFA. It's not hosted on university servers; and how do you know he's recording it with university equipment? In any case lots of universities have the policy that academics retain IP rights on their work; others don't. I guess NCSU does.

What entitles him to any profit at all.

What, you think he should be compelled to do give his work away for free? Even if he should be (which would be monstrous), it's a purely nominal profit anyway -- to cover the effort and materials, as TFA says.

RTFA before letting a knee-jerk reaction effect a regime change on your brain.

FWIW I think it's ethically a grey area when academics choose to withhold their work by not putting it in an open-access archive, or by publishing only in for-profit journals -- just as much as most people around here have mixed feelings (at best) about proprietary computer code. But this isn't the same ballpark: the grey area is still miles away. And legally there's certainly no question of there being anything fishy here, unless the university has completely corrupt policies.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[RM6f9]

Troll-feeding time!

          They pay for the *availability* of the lecture during the class time scheduled, for which they still need to contribute their presence to complete the transaction/receive what they've paid for. Nobody's forcing anybody to pay again for the content: Consider rather that they're offered an additional convenience. As the professor is doing these on his time (above and beyond scheduled class work hours), he should be allowed to charge for them, and personally, I'm surprised more profs don't do this and that he lets the students get away so cheaply.

Re:Bull

[EvanED]

This is when PowerPoint slides might actually come in handy. Many professors misuse them, but correctly used, they are a powerful tool for presenting large amounts of information in a small amount of time.

I found the same thing to be true, but I'll add something else: I find them to be FAR less useful if they are not provided until after the lecture that they are used in. In fact, I think the difference in utility between "professor does not provide slides" to "professor provides slide after class" is less than the difference between the latter and "professor provides slides before class." In the latter case, you can print the slides out and bring them to class and take notes directly on the slides. It's rare (at least in my experience) that you are in a class where you both need to learn the material and don't need to take notes (even if provided slides), so the difference is whether you write stuff down on the slides or not. It's my habit that if I can't use the slides themselves, I tend to duplicate most of the information on the slides in my notes anyway, because then when I'm going back through there's actually context to the added information. Thus we're back to the scribbling thing.

(Note that a REALLY good student might take just the added notes on paper then go over the slides and add these notes to the slides after the fact, but I'm not that dedicated.)

The benefit of getting them pre-class is even more enhanced if the class involves picures or diagrams in the slides, because they take a long time to copy down and you usually can't abbreviate them. (Like if there's a finite automaton you can't be like "oh, I'll just leave off this state here, and this other transition there".)

Finally, I had one class where in order to stimulate discussion during class the prof had us look over the notes before class we were going to go over that day, and gave us a daily quiz on the material from those notes. (It was basic stuff; even if you didn't understand everything as long as you looked at the slides reasonably carefully you almost always did fine on the quizzes.) It sounds horrible, but somehow it managed to still be one of the better classes of my undergrad.

MIT Professors have been doing this for a while

[swanton]

But the MIT lecture videos are free.

Newtonian Physics: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-01Physics-IFal l1999/VideoLectures/index.htm
Electricity and Magnetism: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-02Electricity- and-MagnetismSpring2002/VideoLectures/index.htm
Vibrations and Waves: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-03Fall-2004/Vi deoLectures/index.htm

You can almost certainly find more by poking around the MIT OpenCourseWare website. The lectures linked above by Prof. Lewin, however, are particularly good!

Dunno about your school

[mdarksbane]

But 99% of my professors just posted their powerpoint slides on the web for you to download.

It was as nice as getting full complete notes for the lecture, but they were good enough most of the time and the professor had already made them, so it's no real extra work.

Don't see what the big deal is unless the professor just delivers everything off the cuff with no notes whatsoever. even if it's a scrap of paper five minutes with a scanner could makes things easier for the students in a "no assurances" sort of way.

I dunno, taping and selling the whole thing seems kind of lame.

I've Done the Opposite

[McLuhanesque]

In the course that I teach, and have taught, I make my lecture notes and powerpoints available for downloading by all my students. I tell them that I don't want them to necessarily be taking copious notes, but rather to be experiencing the learning that is embodied by the in-class experience. Later, they can download the notes and reflect on the combination of the text and the experience.

I have had one or two students in the past that, despite my warnings in the very first class, chose to avoid the seminars and just download the notes. Invariably, they fail the course miserably, since they literally miss half the material - the experiential half - despite the fact that the text that is performed is the text that is downloaded.

A good prof will create a sufficiently engaging and useful experience in the classroom so that the students will do whatever they can to not miss the class.

(As an aside, relative to the "it's my intellectual property" thread, I make all of my materials on applied media theory freely available on request to any professor anywhere in the world who wants to use them under an appropriate CC license. Yes, it's material that I have evolved and developed over years. Yes, it represents a considerable amount of work and scholarship. And yes, it enables me to influence and touch so many more students than I could ever hope to reach directly. In return, I achieve recognition and reputation that are among the important currencies of the academy. Doing so also results in invitations for paying gigs in various cool places around the world.)

Re:You're kidding, right?

[Bender0x7D1]

The students have already paid tuition to hear the content of the lecture, why should they pay again.

So, as an analogy, if you pay to see a play, you should get to see it as many times as you want since you have already paid your admission? Or maybe you think you should be provided with a recording of the performance as well?

The interpretation here is that paying tuition gives you the right to attend the lecture. Not the right to view it however you want - but to attend it at a specific time and a certain location - just like a ticket to a 7:15 movie - you don't get to use it to go to the 7:30 movie in another theatre.

Plus, he's recording all of this and hosting all of this with university equipment.

No, he isn't. He's hosting it on an indie music site. Also, even if it is university equipment he may have to pay for use, or he may have purchased his own equipment. He mentions a cost for the equipment, but not how that cost is incurred.

As for taking time and effort, I'm pretty sure a microphone and tape recorder is all it takes to record a lecture (that's how I did it in school in the "old" days). Then you plug the headphone jack into the line-in and record it to an mp3 or whatever format you want and you're done. Not much more work than ripping a CD.

If you read the article, and I can tell you didn't, you would also have found out that he does perform editing of the lecture. The extent of the editing is unknown. It could be as simple as taking out any extended pauses or it could include re-recording audio that isn't clear, or taking out ambient noise. Without purchasing one, (and attending the actual lecture), it isnt possible to know what editing is done.

I don't think he is doing anything wrong with this. Sure, he could do this out of the goodness of his own heart, but there would be students who would then blow off the lecture since they could listen to it later. Statistically, this will result in a lower grade for them, so an educator should try to minimize the number of students who skip class. A small fee seems to provide a good balance between convenience and assisting the students.

Re:Bull

[akratic]

Interesting point. It hadn't occurred to me that there might be a big difference between CS and other disciplines.

I never had any CS courses in college. I had courses in math, physics, philosophy, religion, psychology, economics, history, music, and literature. None of the professors gave out lecture notes. (There was one graduate student who gave out lecture notes for the cryptography course he taught.) But CS, I suppose, is a different world.

Re:Trouble understanding English speaking professo

[lababidi]

This sounds like Dr. Ngo from University of Florida. I hear he's a big No No!

A fair price

[hackwrench]

$2.50 is a fair price if you didn't pay for taking the class. Sure it takes more effort, but then working takes more effort than being unemployed. If I could have gotten tapes of lectures, I would both get the tapes and go to class. Isn't it about time we expected more from our professors? Would he complain if a student wanted to record his lecture while the student was there?

Berkeley gives lecture webcasts away for free

[__aadkms7016]

Current semester is here, I believe if you go looking around on that site you can see archives of past semesters too. The classes are a mix of a few high-enrollment courses which tend to get taped every semester, and courses that are taped once every few years to refresh the archive. You can see these on iTunes too, there may be a phobos URL somewhere on the website if you look.

Taking notes

[khchung]

I must be of those rare old school that still think that your notes should be a set of short personal reminders of what you have learned during the class, instead of just a blanket copy of everything written or said.

If you just want a blanket copy, why not take a camera and record the lecture yourself? If you notes contains everything, why not just bring a book and mark sections covered during the lecture instead?

Re:You're kidding, right?

[miskatonic alumnus]

The interpretation here is that paying tuition gives you the right to attend the lecture.

Although that may be the policy of some individual instructors, many will let a student "sit in" for free. Your tuition pays the instructor to evaluate your work.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[anagama]

A Digital Recorder makes it even easier. Saves to a CF card, just rename the file and upload it. Granted, it's a $500 device, but if time is all so valuable, it's a good solution.

And what does $2.50 say about the lectures?

[jmmorris]

I'm amused by the lownsess of the price which says: professors don't know how to price, their lecures aren't worth much, or maybe it says something else?

Getting what you paid for

[hackwrench]

Unfortunately, there isn't a document that spells out exactly what one is getting when one pays for classes.

What, you think he should be compelled to do give his work away for free?

No, he can always quit teaching at that college.

Re:Getting what you paid for

[Petrushka]

No, he can always quit teaching at that college.

... and then he'd really be working for literally nothing. Look, maybe on Planet Hackwrench paying tuition fees gives you ownership of every idea a professor ever has and every minute of his time, 24/7, but in real life, a professor's employment by a university has some differences from slave labour.

Re:Getting what you paid for

[Marxist Hacker 42]

and then he'd really be working for literally nothing. Look, maybe on Planet Hackwrench paying tuition fees gives you ownership of every idea a professor ever has and every minute of his time, 24/7, but in real life, a professor's employment by a university has some differences from slave labour.

Now that's interesting. Back when I was working Private Industry, every single job I had to sign a statement that specifically assigned the company copyright for any idea I had, because there was no way to prove that the idea didn't come on paid time. Why are professors different?

Re:Getting what you paid for

[hackwrench]

No. He wouldn't be working at all and would have to go out and find another job.

Re:Getting what you paid for

[BitchKapoor]

Now that's interesting. Back when I was working Private Industry, every single job I had to sign a statement that specifically assigned the company copyright for any idea I had, because there was no way to prove that the idea didn't come on paid time. Why are professors different?

Professors are different because they're the ones running the university system, so they get to make the rules more freely. Many universities still claim a percentage of income from marketable inventions, but that money goes back into research. Any dean, chancellor or university president (who are almost always former professors themselves) who tried to turn professors into slaves would immediately find themselves outsed by the faculty senate.

Re:Getting what you paid for

[Petrushka]

Also, some universities do keep the intellectual property rights to professors' research under some circumstances, though I think that tends to be enforced only if there's any chance that a product of research will be profitable. I'm not sure if this tends to happen in some parts of the world more than others. I believe Cambridge University does this, though I'm not sure.

Re:Getting what you paid for

[gurkha711]

Why are professors different?

Because they have a profession, not just a job. Part of the requirements for employment is that the come as an expert in their field. This is called a doctorate, which allows them to be called doctor.

As part of the contract that they have with their university, they are required to continue to produce materials that enhances their chosen field of study, and they are expected to publish these results in refereed journals, edited and criticized by their peers.

On top of this, they teach, sometimes many different classes ranging from introductory level courses to graduate seminars. Each has different requirements and different preparation.

Professors have paid dues in their professions, too. They have been winnowed out from all of the people with bachelor degrees who wanted to go to grad school; these people actually made it through an academically rigorous program, as well as dealing with some of the most cut-throat politics that you can imagine.

They are also different because they are the intellectual elite; you may not like it, but most professors really are smarter than you, and many of them are geniuses.

Often, professors make less money than they do in the private sector, particularly those in the technical fields. They can earn $50,000 less per year than those in industry, but choose to do so because they like what they do.

And finally, no one would begrudge this professor from writing a book based on his lectures and selling that book for a profit. What is so different about his edited lectures? I can tell you that editing a lecture to something that is clear and concise is an onerous and time-consuming task. Somewhere along the way this professor should be recompensed for his time and effort to do something that no one asked him to do.

We've been doing this for years...for free

[Foerstner]

The EE department of my university posted streaming video of certain classes. The audio was from the professor's lapel mike and the video switched between a scanconverter of the PowerPoint slides, and camera views of whatever he drew on the blackboards. The .ppt files, and sometimes class notes, could also be downloaded.

They were a great way to, say, study for a final by reviewing classes from the beginning of the year.

Public engineering university, btw. No DRM or authentication, either. If you find the right URL, you can watch the entire semester without even being enrolled. The downside was, only certain classes got this treatment, mainly due to a limited number of staff and camera-equipped rooms.

Re:We've been doing this for years...for free

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

And ofcourse you shouldn't give the URL to anybody right? Especialy not mail it to me right? ;-) ;-) ;-)

Play analogy

[hackwrench]

Except when you go to the play, there aren't any expectations to learn the play. How would it be if an actor told the play's production company that they only paid for the actor to show up and not learn the material?
The above is just as bad an analogy as your original one.

Re:Play analogy

[Lemmy Caution]

The analogy you make is actor=student.

The closer analogy is actor+screenwriter=professor.

The University isn't paying the student to learn the material. The student (and whoever is funding him or her) is paying the University for the opportunity to learn it, and the opportunity to demonstrate and document that learning later on, in the form of a transcript, which will be a significant determinant factor of his or her future career, income, and status.

Re:Play analogy

[hackwrench]

No, my analogy is not that clear cut. It was designed to have similar qualities as an analogy as the original one for purposes of comparison to illustrate the original's suitability to the task. It was a foil to get a response like yours so I could then proceed to better understand and then point out what was wrong with the original analogy. One could just as easily say by showing up, the actor has given the playgoer opportunity to see the play in the same way that the professor has. But the expectations of actors and professors is that they will put their best effort into it at the price stated. By selling his lectures online, the professor has demonstrated that he hasn't put his best effort into it at the price stated, just as the actor, by refusing to learn the material demonstrates tha he hasn't put his best effort into it.

Devil's advocate.

[MacDork]

I also found out that a teacher at another university was using my powerpoints with out attribution as his own work. AND what I say in class is my intellectual property.

Even though you yourself are just ripping off someone else's work by mostly just repeating what you yourself were taught? If you really are a professor, you're just a work for hire. It's not your intellectual property. It belongs to the university that pays your salary.

If it were me, I'd simply have asked the other professor to share any improvements he made to the powerpoints and encourage others to assist in the development of them as well. That way, you are left with a collaborative effort that transcends any singular person's diminutive knowledge of the subject.

:-)

Re:Devil's advocate.

[Baricom]

If you really are a professor, you're just a work for hire. It's not your intellectual property. It belongs to the university that pays your salary.

That's not always true. Many universities assign intellectual property rights to the professor under certain circumstances, and some explicitly exclude lecture materials from copyright claims by the university.

If it were me, I'd simply have asked the other professor to share any improvements he made to the powerpoints and encourage others to assist in the development of them as well. That way, you are left with a collaborative effort that transcends any singular person's diminutive knowledge of the subject.

If only the MAFIAA thought like that, the world would be a much better place. If only... ;)

Re:Bull

[EvanED]

I never had any CS courses in college.

I guess that's the difference then.

Truth be told, I was really surprised at the difference too. Like I was writing a reply to your post that was basically just a generalization of my experiences, saying that "oh, I've had plenty of profs who gave out lectures" and stuff. I had it pretty much done and was thinking about it more, and decided that I should go back and look at my transcript and get actual numbers. One of the points was that I had the notion that there seemed to be a difference between CS and not-CS (though again, I was very surprised by the magnitude of it), so I decided to tally the categories separately, and out came the difference. I decided that it was likely the reason for the difference and rewrote the post with that as the central point.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[Mateito]

The students have already paid tuition to hear the content of the lecture, why should they pay again.

Then they should get out of the bar, attend the lecture and take their own notes.

$2.50 is a more than reasonable price.

How about this

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a student recording the lecture and selling the result for $2.50 a pop? It takes no extra time or effort away from the professor and the student already paid for the content. Why not profit from their attendance by providing a service to those who cannot attend or chose not to?

I'd be willing to bet either the University or the Professor would try engaging copyright rules however. But then the students have paid for the content so they're not voiceless in the matter. What if the recording was sold to non-students or students of other universities? What is the copyright ramifications to the student, professor or university that accepts public funding?

Or in the case of the good professor who created extra income selling such material... Did he create it with university equipment? Did he use student labor in whole or in part? Were they paid/reimbursed? Did the professor state this extra income and meet the tax requirements? Was the professor authorized by the university to resell material he was already reimbursed for and does the professor hold reproduction rights over this material?

And so on and so forth ....

Re:How about this

[IAmTheDave]

I was just thinking this - imagine a nice profit share where a student records a lecture, deposits in a central repository, and anyone who buys pays the person kind enough to record the lecture (minus a small percentage to help pay for said central repository. I can only imagine the uproar. BTW - can I, an average citizen who did not pay for tuition, see the lectures for $2.50/piece?

That's right!

[FishWithAHammer]

Slaves have better benefits.

Govt Funded ? Intellectual Property ?

[copdk4]

In several schools professors fund themselves from the govt. grants (NIH etc.)
I m not sure if Joe Smith, law-abiding tax-payer, has to pay $2.50 to get access to the intellectual property in the lecture slides developed using the grant money.

Bring my own video camera?

[nukem996]

What if a student or a group of students decide that they do not want to pay for the video and just bring there own camera and tripod to record his class? Would he refuse to let them just so he can gain a profit? Ive heard many people bring tape recorders into class rooms to help them, is this disallowed? Personally I think it should be free, the process can be automated and college costs way to much already.

Value vs Cost

[Nicolay77]

The fact that some universities and/or teachers post their lectures notes without a perceived cost doesn't mean that they should be free.

In fact, those lectures (I mean the global set) are probably the most valuable thing our civilization has.

If some of their creators post them for free or at low cost it's just because they love to teach and they love what they teach. If they were there for the money they would be MBAs, not teachers.

So I don't really think the teacher sells them because he wants to profit, but because he knows that most people don't value what doesn't have any cost to them. And he wants students to value what he is trying to teach, either in the classroom or reading his lectures.

UC Davis does this too

[Ambidisastrous]

At UC Davis, the service is called Classical Notes. In this program, the professor does nothing at all, and may even be completely phobic of computers. Students apply for positions as note-takers, attend the lectures in question, and sell the transcribed notes for a reasonable price through Classical Notes, a division of the student government.

Given this background, and the fact that a $1 fee on the professor's part is by no means extortion, the article looks like a non-story to me. University professors have a lot of freedom in how they conduct their classes, and little services on the side like this are absolutely nothing to have a fit about.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[falsified]

Then they should go hear the content of the lecture. During the lecture. Because he's lecturing. Maybe my school is one of the few big-name schools that does this on a regular basis, but we take attendance in a lot of my classes. If you miss three classes, often you fail.

We had a similar system

[somegamer]

While in medical school, we had a "notetaking service" where students were paid to record and then transcribe notes of assigned lectures. This was funded by subscription fees paid for by students who wished to use the service and then receive the transcribed lectures.

Red Headed Professors

[funkybooty]

For the average student body it may be fair to charge, and $2.50 it a pretty reasonable fee in my opinion. However, there are circumstances where the lectures should be made accessible. For students with learning difficulties or hearing problems it's not fair to charge. Also, much depends on the quality of instruction. If the professor is an 80 year old Russian eccentric that's virtually impossible to understand, then free lecture downloads should be mandatory. A Japanese friend of mine studied at the University of Florida for a year. Her English began pretty shakily and she had difficulty with one of her classes. The professor was new, spoke too quickly and made roundabount, indirect points. He charged around $7.50 for one 24 hour access to the lecture, or $15 for unlimited access. Since this was a three day a week class, that would get prohibitively expensive. Ironically, he was a marketing instructor. I understand the desire of Professors to profit beyond their normal salary, but there is definitely a point beyond reason where its more akin to extortion. It's like a red-headed step child that charges you to get angry at him.

Because the $40 / hr you paid the first time...

[patio11]

... didn't come out of YOUR pocket. Seriously, I went to a school populated by far too many rich kids where the cost per year was about $40,000, many kids had a monthly wire from home for $1,000 for "walking around money", and one student got $9k of Neiman-Marcus furniture for an apartment she lived in for a whole year. And when a particular department charged $5/semester for copy fees for the daily worksheets there were howls of protest. That, after all, competes with beer money, in a way tuition charged to scholarships/trust fund/student loans do not.

Not even the GPL requires that

[Ambidisastrous]

A gentle reminder, not even the GPL requires the owner of a work to distribute it for free -- only for a reasonable cost to make up for the time and effort required. So, if the professor's lectures were somehow licensed under the GPL equivalent for an in-person performance, taking $1 profit for recording, editing and uploading the lectures to a host is still completely acceptable.

Taking it a bit further, let's calculate the value of the professor's time to provide this service -- my guess is, to break even, it's about 1-2 minutes * the number of students who pay for the download, probably a small number. For a 50 minute lecture, it takes 25-50 students paying for the download for the professor to break even, so I suspect this still falls easily within the bounds of a charitable act.

I've had a number of professors who simply refused outright to put any lecture notes online, among other dirty tricks, in order to screw anyone who skipped class without a very good reason. And they're allowed to, too. There is no reason to flip out over any of this.

Recorded Lectures

[morningBright]

I"m a student in australia and our university actually records all lectures and makes them available online for free to students. It's a good resource but if the university doesn't feel inclined to offer the service and the lecurter puts it together then i don't see anything wrong with selling it, it seems like a fair price.

bah

[rlbond86]

I'm gonna call BS on this guy. I get my lectures online for free at college.

Class Quotes still in buisiness at UCo?

[HycoWhit]

When I went to school in Boulder ther was a business set up which had students take notes from a class and then offer those notes for sale. The business was called "Class Quotes" circa 1980/81. If I remember correctly it was a subscription model. So the selling of lectures has definately been done before--just never heard of the professors offering the information.

I wish I'd had this option

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

I wish some of my professors would have done this. Sometimes it would be because I missed a class, but mostly it would be because I would have an easier time demanding that the professor's lectures be coherent. I took many courses where the lectures were incomprehensible, but most people still passed because the professor was too lazy to make unique exams, so people just memorized the exam questions from previous years. (And most seemed to be happy about that, and complained about the professors who actually taught useful information and expected their students to understand it. Fricking children.)

my uni does this for free ...

[ubrkl]

at QUT all the audio visual theaters used to give lectures have MP3 recording software built into the pc that controls the lights and mic, an always-on-top recording app, which is simply a subject code and a duration you want to record for - 1, 2 or 3 hours ... the process of then uploading the MP3 to the subjects website is also automatic. Not all lecturers use it, but it's there, and easy to use, if they want to. I think it's total crap that he's charging again for the recording.

MOD PARENT UP!

[lewp]

Informative. To the GP, at least.

Ever heard of AS Notes?

[Nicros]

When I was in college at UCSB they sold the notes for lectures. They being the associated student body. Students could sign up as note takers, and go to lectures and take notes, for which they were paid.

In fact, for one class, the professor was so friggin boring I decided to get the notes, only to discover that he was reading his lectures FROM the AS notes, which he had provided! Sweet! Never went to class again and got an A.

Did I learn the material? Apparently so. IMHO college is about the information you can gain, and less about the medium in which you receive it.

At least one does this for free

[Oddster]

A professor from my alma mater has been doing this for years - recording his lectures, then posting them to his website, on department servers. For free.

If you want a refresher course in Intro to CS, check this out. Disclaimer: I've never actually had this professor. . .

Even older news (about Rawls)

[akratic]

When John Rawls discovered that many of his students were trying to take down his lectures word for word, he started offering copies of his lecture notes for forty cents. This was in 1977. The 1991 edition of his lectures is now available as a book.

Re:Even older news (about Rawls)

[EVil Lawyer]

For anyone who's curious, as I was:

$0.40 in 1977 = $1.32 in 2006 (approximately).

Well then

[Sycraft-fu]

I'm afraid I have to call you an idiot. I'm not a professor, but I do work in academic support (computers in particular). Part of my job is dealing with supporting electronic educational needs, like posting notes online, recording and streaming classes, and so on. Also my degree happens to be in cognitive psychology, so I have a little bit of knowledge about how people actually learn.

This ivory tower attitude that your knowledge is somehow something special that you are supposed to keep locked away is simply contrary to your job. Your job is to teach what you know to students in the most efficient and complete manner possible. That's what you are being paid for when you teach a class. We do not ask someone to teach a FPGA course to try and keep it a mystery from students, revealing only the barest of facts. We ask them to do it so the students will learn all they can about how to design and program FPGA circuits.

Further, things like notes, audio recording, and so on are valuable learning tools. Not everyone learns the same way. There's a number of different theories on this, and a number of different domains in which it applies, however one of the most basic is simply how people absorb information. The three fundamental styles generally recognised are visual, auditory and kinesthetic. Visual learners learn by seeing, auditory by hearing (and sometimes by talking), kinesthetic by doing. So denying tape recorders to your auditory learners is a problem. Saying "take notes" is ignorant, that's not how they learn best. They learn best by hearing, so for them it is most valuable to record what you say and listen to it multiple times, and perhaps re-verbalise it. Likewise for your visual learners, taking notes is a waste of time, it's just them getting down the information to look at later. Better that they have the notes, so they can pay attention during class rather than scrambling to get things down.

So, really, YOU are the one who needs to learn: Specifically you need to learn about how people learn. You might want to start with Benjamin S. Bloom, Taxonomy of educational objectives and Howard Gardner, Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice. You also need to understand that the grades students get aren't representative of what they are learning, they are representative of how well they can take your tests. They only paint a good picture of what they are learning and retaining if you write good tests, and I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you probably don't write good ones. Bad tests are easy to write, good ones surprisingly tricky.

Finally, you've got to drop the "It's my intellectual property," attitude. No, it isn't. First off, since you are teaching a course for the university it belongs to THEM, not you. The knowledge in your head is yours, of course, the content of the course is not. It's a "work for hire" so to speak. Their dollar, their goods. Further if you work for a publicly funded institution, a large amount of what you do belongs to the public, since their tax payers funded it. Even if you don't the students have a claim to what's in your class. Their dollars paid for it, you can't claim exclusive rights to it.

For that matter why would you want to? Are the students supposed to remember what you taught just for long enough to pass the test and the purge it entirely from their memory? I would hope you'd decry that. Your goal should be for them to gain real knowledge they can use, skills not just abstract facts, that stays with them for a lifetime. You should hope that they will retain as much as possible from what you taught.

If your materials are being nicked by other teachers, well that's between you and them, or rather your university and them since the university owns it. However if you are worried about that (please note it may not be illegal) do something sensible like password protect your course site. Don't try and deny new and better tools to your students. You should be seeking at all times how to better optimise your students' learning.

been done before

[berberine]

This is just a twist on the old way of doing things. When I was at the University of Nebraska from 88-92 they had a thing called Jon's Notes. Jon was a guy who hired people to take notes in many classes and then sold you those notes for $25 per semester. He always got permission from the professor beforehand to do so though. He had a very suscessful business and it had already been running for several years when I first got to college. It was also popular from the lazy student who couldn't be bothererd going to class to the kid that just had to have everything possible to get that A. Jon died somewhere around 95 (iirc) and it was taken over and the name changed but, as far as 2000 I knew the program was still up and running. The only difference here is that this professor is keeping all the money for himself, making it available online and in other formats than the paper versions we had in college.

Re:^ Mod parent up

[john83]

The students have fair access. This is not suplimentary material, it is the material available if you bother going to class. When I was an undergrad, you could be failed for missing enough lectures. I have no problem with this at all.

I attend NCSU...

[Napoleon The Pig]

I have never heard of ANY professor selling notes. The closest thing was when one of the academic fraternities was selling old tests (with the professor's permission) as a fund raiser. Luckily I'm in the College of Engineering rather than Communication, but I know I can download full video of lectures in certain classes for free. I've downloaded semester's worth of video lectures for courses I haven't even taken yet (mostly graduate courses for subjects I'm interested in). This professor's just trying to make a quick buck off his students and they're stupid enough to buy into it.

Go to class, take notes, if you need to review further look over your notes after class and go to office hours. If you miss a class, get the notes from someone else in the class or study from the book on your own. It's not that hard, especially for a 200-level Communication course.

at the RWTH Aachen we have dozens for free

[AlgorithMan]

at the RWTH in Aachen, Germany we have dozens of (video)recorded lectures... students ask the professors if they may record the lecture, then THE STUDENTS record the lecture, edit the stuff and upload them to our student information site, where you can download them all for free...

Some universties do this for free

[iceco2]

and have been for many years,
I went to the Technion Israel institute of technology which for many years
now maintains a video library of lecture recordings, containg all popular
courses(mostly first&second year) and many advanced courses.
not every course is recorded every year, but the material in most lectures doesn't
change much(or at all) and watching a 3 years old tape is practicly as good as
sitting in the lecture.
With modern technology they digitized there collection and available over the intranet
from any campus computer.
They also set up video libraries where you can watch the recordings in comfort
or lend a copy to take home(just like lending books).

lecture slides are almost always published on the Net.
Lecture notes are compiled by the student association and sold for the cost of printing(with
an add on the front and back sheets to make some money for the student association)

The service is so good, many students skip the lectures all together.
I for one enjoyned being able to watch my physics lectures at double speed(much smaller
chance of falling asleep).

  Me.

It's the blackboard, or was....

[rpbird]

I always found the information put up on the blackboard (or the overhead projector, gads how I hate those things) to be of equal or greater value than the words coming out of the professor's mouth. Besides, about 30% of the time, the professor was either older or had such a thick accent that his speech was hard to follow.

Re:Bull

[HFh]

I have found that many of these sorts of complaints go away IF STUDENTS READ MATERIAL BEFORE CLASS.

But, of course, almost no one does.

The error I think many of the posters here are making is that they are treating students as if they are customers buying a product, and that professors are, say, cashiers who are paid to help them. That isn't really the right analogy, especially at large research universities.

Personally, I don't use slides when I lecture (to quote someone I know, "no one can learn any faster than I can write") so I don't make them available. If I were going to make audio recordings of myself available I don't think I would charge for them, but that's a huge if: I wouldn't go through the trouble this guy is going through in the first place. How does he even have the time? Even if every student in his class donated a dollar to him, it wouldn't be worth his time to do it. Profit surely isn't the motive.

Students should come to class. Students who don't come to class aren't holding up their end of the bargain, and they typically pay for it. Anything anyone does to help them out, in general, is providing gravy. I appreciate the effort to maintain balance between giving them gravy while not encouraging them to screw themselves over by having an excuse to not come to class.

Peace.

Online University

[duffer_01]

This is really interesting to me because for the longest time I have wondered why there are no (to my knowldege) accredited online universities. I mean there are 100's of online courses now, so to me the next logical step is to create a complete online university where you can actually get a real degree just by doing everything online. My thinking is that a university like this can heavily discount tuitions by paying professors a one time fee for creating the online course and then just pay undergraduates to mark and grade the tests.

[Off-topic]

[empaler]

Slaves have better benefits.

That is why Denmark was the first country in the world to abolish slavery.

Not smart

[Flyboy Connor]

While I think that the professor is not doing anything wrong by charging $2.50 for a taped lecture, it does not seem like a smart move to me to charge for it. It gives him more responsibility which is not adequately paid for, and does not provide him with arguing opportunities.

First, he charges for a lecture. Can a student complain about the product he bought if part of the tape is not understandable? If the professor starts to cough? If the professor misses a taping opportunity and one of his lectures is not for sale? There, all kinds of responsibilities which the professor gets $1 per file for. That's not a good deal for the guy.

Second, imagine this conversation:

"Professor, I failed my exam because I did not know about subject A."
"I covered that in my lecture dated xx/xx/xx."
"I know, but I missed that lecture, because I was ill."
"GOTCHA! That is no excuse, the lecture is available online!"
"Yeah, but it costs $2.50 and I cannot afford that."
"..."

(Granted, if I were the professor I would end this conversation with "You can afford beer, right?", but still, no arguing would be necessary if the lecture was there for the taking.)

Re:You're kidding, right?

[Dcnjoe60]

So, as an analogy, if you pay to see a play, you should get to see it as many times as you want since you have already paid your admission? Or maybe you think you should be provided with a recording of the performance as well?

Plays prohibit the recording of their content, by the audience, students are allowed to record lectures already, so I'm not sure this example actually applies.


The interpretation here is that paying tuition gives you the right to attend the lecture. Not the right to view it however you want - but to attend it at a specific time and a certain location - just like a ticket to a 7:15 movie - you don't get to use it to go to the 7:30 movie in another theatre.


That was the professor's assertion, however, I'm not sure that would be the University's assertion as it could produce other undesired consequences if all of a sudden tuition becomes a fee for specific services to be rendered (and if so, maybe refunds are owed to students for failure to deliver on the service). The movie ticket analogy also is faulty, becuase, again, in most Universities, if I miss a class and the same class is offered later, I can sit in on it. Heck, I can even sit in on a lecture periodically, even if I am not enrolled in that class or pay a reduced fee to sit in on it all the time but for no credit.

No, he isn't. He's hosting it on an indie music site. Also, even if it is university equipment he may have to pay for use, or he may have purchased his own equipment. He mentions a cost for the equipment, but not how that cost is incurred.

It is true that he is hosting it on an indie music site, which is interesting. The only valid reason would seem to be to allow a fee to be charged as the University probably isn't set up for that.

If you read the article, and I can tell you didn't, you would also have found out that he does perform editing of the lecture. The extent of the editing is unknown. It could be as simple as taking out any extended pauses or it could include re-recording audio that isn't clear, or taking out ambient noise. Without purchasing one, (and attending the actual lecture), it isnt possible to know what editing is done.


Actually I did read the article, that just doesn't mean I have to agree with it. Yes, it says he edits the lecture, but doesn't define what that means, so it really isn't any information at all. If he edits it too much, then he would be provided different content for those who pay a fee than those who attend class. In short, it wouldn't be his lecture he is selling, but something else. Maybe he edits out student's questions from the recording, since he doesn't have permission to use them? Of course, that would mean that he would be recording his lectures live (which would get rid of the first problem) but basically would be running a second business while on University time, unless of course, the University has given him permission to use their classrooms and courses to generate this additional revenue for himself. Last time I checked, though, most Universities allow research projects but not the selling of services.

don't think he is doing anything wrong with this. Sure, he could do this out of the goodness of his own heart, but there would be students who would then blow off the lecture since they could listen to it later. Statistically, this will result in a lower grade for them, so an educator should try to minimize the number of students who skip class. A small fee seems to provide a good balance between convenience and assisting the students.

Many people seem to share your view that there is nothing wrong with the professor profiting from offering extra help to students. Of course most are assuming the students are skipping class, and some probably are, but attendance tracking is how you deal with that. Many students, however, need help with note taking skills and depending on the subject matter just trying to grasp concepts. They are hardly the dead-beats that the posters

Re:I Pay YOU Jackass, You Work for Me!

[HFh]

In the general case, you don't pay him, and he doesn't work for you. You really should stop thinking of your relationship that way. It leads to consternation and doesn't actually reflect the reality.

Also, he isn't charging extra for something he's obligated to give you, he's charging you for something he isn't obligated to give you.

One can argue that this is a bad idea, but I think your particular position rests on invalid premises.

One view of this effort is that he thinks such things should be available to students who need it, but has no support from the university to do so. As such, he has tried to make the service available himself. Despite his feelings on the matter, he doesn't think HE should be paying for it himself, so he's trying to recoup his cost (and to avoid creating the incentive for students to skip class and pay the price often associated with that). Note the "free" examples thrown around this thread typically involve university and/or department support (in the form of servers, recording equipment and IT support), as opposed to work on the part of the individual faculty member or instructor.

Peace.

Re:^ Mod parent up

[cyberon22]

Great. Let students record the materials as well and there is no problem with it.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[Dcnjoe60]

I agree, use attendance to handle absenteeism. That's what my school did. That's what my son's school does. That's what I do. However, there are many more reasons to want the recording of lecture than the fact that somebody missed the class. In my courses, exams are pretty much based from the lecture, the books supplement the lecture material and is a reference. Very often, students are taking heavy class loads, are distracted by relationship problems, home problems, work, etc. While I don't record my lectures, at any given class, there are probably a dozen recorders sitting on the counter in front of me.

My reaction

[d_54321]

depends on what the prof teaches.
If it's Economics, I say "Good, no surprise there."
Else: "Wow, a non-economics teacher who understands economics."

Re:You're kidding, right?

[thesandtiger]

I don't think he is doing anything wrong with this. Sure, he could do this out of the goodness of his own heart, but there would be students who would then blow off the lecture since they could listen to it later. Statistically, this will result in a lower grade for them, so an educator should try to minimize the number of students who skip class. A small fee seems to provide a good balance between convenience and assisting the students.

What's interesting is that charging a fee for the lecture recording might actually increase absenteeism. There was a day care center that had a problem with parents picking their kids up late. So, the center made a new policy - if you're late, you pay $10 for being late as a fine. Turns out, parents felt "Hey, $10 for being late... Not a bad price!" and MORE people picked their kids up late. They felt that the $10 cost excused their behavior.

When I miss a class, I *hate* it - but I could see waking up late, feeling a little sick and saying "Hm, well, I can pay $2.50 and it's like I didn't miss class at all..."

Personally, I think the idea is a fine one - the professor is providing his students what they contracted for (if they show up for class) AND giving ones that missed it (or just want better "notes") what they need. But, beware of unintended consequences....

How about raw DV via bittorrent?

[Cinquero]

Yeah. Distributing your raw DV capture via bittorrent is really a great effort. *g*

Re:You're kidding, right?

[Metzli]

"Many people seem to share your view that there is nothing wrong with the professor profiting from offering extra help to students. Of course most are assuming the students are skipping class, and some probably are, but attendance tracking is how you deal with that. Many students, however, need help with note taking skills and depending on the subject matter just trying to grasp concepts. They are hardly the dead-beats that the posters here are painting them out to be."

Why deal with absentees through attendance tracking? If you're in college, you're almost guaranteed to be a legal adult. Just like any other adult, you should be responsible for your actions. This means you show up or, in this case, you can pay $2.50 to cover your lack of responsibility. As for the note taking skills, learn them. I'm sure I'm not the only one who learned these skills by, well, showing up to class, listening, and actually taking notes. If you can't grasp the concepts, try asking questions or using office hours.

"Again, many, share your view that he's not doing anything wrong, but he is. He's profiting from offering extra help to students. If he was charging for extra for students to have problems or questions answered, it would be considered unethical. How is charging so somebody can re-hear his lecture any different?"

You actually believe this? This professor is recording or re-recording his lectures, doing some type of editing, then having them posted on a web site. He's not being paid for this extra effort by the university, so he's charging a minimal fee to those who want to benefit from his efforts. What if he was to take his lecture notes, edit them, have them bound, and sell them at the university bookstore? Would that be unethical? He's going above-and-beyond, so why shouldn't he be able to do this?

Answering problems and questions is part of the job, it's what professors are paid to do. Those activities are not over-and-above. What he's doing with his lectures _is_ over-and-above, so I still don't see why it would be considered wrong.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

The students have already paid tuition to hear the content of the lecture, why should they pay again.

Because they got what they paid for already.

Tuition is not like a movie ticket that admits you to selected lectures. Should professors be allowed to charge students directly for holding office hours? Answering questions after class?

What the Schrag's supporters seem to be missing is that most professors' academic positions are not directly connected to tuition. They're hired to be creative people and to support the mission of the university. Teaching is a large component of that mission, and professors who teach are paid, partly by tuition, partly by state grants or private endowment, partly by alumni donations, to teach, not to deliver lectures. Likewise, students are not paying to sit in class, they're paying for the opportunity to learn and to interact with recognized experts. If Schrag feels that providing handouts, transcripts or recordings of his lectures contributes to the effectiveness of his teaching, then it's part of his job and not something for which students should be double billed.

One might even make the argument that by offering his lectures for private sale, Schrag is actually in competition with NC State.

He's a Jerk

[fugl]

I don't know if there's anything wrong with what he's doing, legally speaking. Even less clear to me is whether it would be wrong for one student to buy them and then share them with the others (fair use).

One thing is for sure. He's a jerk. Let him do it and let the market forces play. Assuming those courses are taught by at least one other professor, word will get out and students will flock to the other(s). Unless there's something else that offsets the jerk factor.

Although I can't say he's doing anything wrong, per se, his attitude shows that he really doesn't get his profession, and that's a sad thing. Many students don't learn by going to class, they learn by absorbing and using the information taught. If you don't provide enough material for students to learn the basics on their own even if they miss class or fall asleep in class, (at least in the form of a decent recommended textbook) then you are failing your mission. If you believe for one minute that students learn more by frantically scribbling down useless notes that will be inconsistent, incomplete, illegible, and cause the student to miss out on the opportunity to digest and understand what the teacher is saying in class, then you are sorely deluded. I have learned far more in math/physics classes where I didn't have to take notes (because the teacher's provided notes or the book were sufficient). As a sophomore I noticed this effect and vowed not to become a slave to notes. I keep a notepad handy for the occasional gem or logistics, but I read the material (novel idea, I know) and go to class prepared, and then PAY ATTENTION. It's amazing how much more you learn when you're paying attention than when you're frantically scribbling whatever words are floating through the air.

PhD Student, 3.7 GPA

Re:He's a Jerk

[fuzzybunny]

I can't judge whether he's a jerk or not, but I surely wouldn't draw that confusion based on whether he makes lecture notes available for $$.

If what you say is correct, I could have saved myself 5 years of UC Berkeley and just obtained a massive reading list. However, access to really top-notch profs and their lectures really enhanced my experience and allowed me to get context for the material that I wouldn't have been able to pick up in a non-interactive manner. None of my profs, thankfully, used lectures as an opportunity to present "bonus material" that would be on the test, and without which you could not pass the course, but my notes of their discussions sure helped when reviewing the material later, to jog my memory of some of their points, etc. Nobody's a "slave" to that.

Many of my profs put their lecture notes/slides online for free, but we also had a service called Black Lightning which hired professional note takers to (usually) provide fairly high quality outlines of lectures for money. If a prof is going to extra effort to transcribe his lectures for you, there's no reason he shouldn't charge for it.

Crappy Student, 2.3 GPA (but really got a lot out of university.)

Re:You're kidding, right?

[ohearn]

I think you are right in a lot of ways. I really don't get people complaining about the price though. If you miss class you have a few options
a) not have the material
b) get notes from someone who was there (depending on how they take notes this could be a recording)
c) spend extra time reading the material the lecture covered and hope the book has everything the professor talked about
or the added option of
d) pay a small fee to get a recording of the lecture.

I actually agree that the small cost may increase absenteeism. To use the example of a daycare center you mentioned, that is why the daycares around here charge $5 a minute that they have to keep someone there to watch your child after closing time. When you start realizing that 30 minutes late would have paid for the entire next week, very few parents are late. To be fair if it is honestly only a minute or two they usually let people slide on the fee. If lectures start costing $10-20 a recording very very people will rely on it as a way to not have to show up to class. Personally at $2.50 a lecture, I would get all the recordings from the previous semester and listen to all of them ahead of time. This would help give you a really good idea of what parts the professor thought was important in the class ahead of time to have an edge in getting good grades.

Lectures at NCSU sometimes available at library

[Diss Champ]

When I was in grad school at NCSU several years ago, some of the classrooms were set up for video taping and were also sent out to students at remote locations. At least some of these were available for viewing at the library- in fact, in one class I took, rather than meeting in the classroom the whole semester, part of the semester we were supposed to watch the tapes of some past lectures. So reading this story what I'm wondering is whether the professor was using the facilities that would normally lead to the lectures being available freely at the library, or was taping things at his own expense in one of the "normal" classrooms. And whether the lectures were also made available at the library, with the podcast being simply a convenience, or if the prof in this case has a monopoly on the lecture's distribution.

Free Teaching

[Frederico Camara]

Is there is a gray area in teaching for profit? Look from the point of view of the worker. The professor is being paid to teach by the university, and indirectly, by his students. This work is to teach them classes.

Besides this, he is doing some extra work taping and delivering copies of his teaching for a personal fee. If it's not forbidden by the contract of his other job, and permission is given by the university, he is allow to do it. It is his free time and he is allowed to ask whatever price for it.

But Copyright law has evolved to be the prime concern of profitable companies and has the potential to control everything. It is law that rules on creativeness and humans, being naturally creative, are being wrapped in it unintentionally. It is exactly like "The Trial" by Kafka. We have become so entangled in copyright law, that a Professor asking to be paid to teach, rings like trespassing on our individual rights, because of Copyright Law.

The problem is not that he is being paid for teaching, but if are students allowed to learn. When Professor X publishes his work for profit, it is Copyright Law again falling over our heads, and "danger of being sued" alarms sounding all around. It's psychological. Pure and simple fear.

The question is "what can students do with this material"? How is his work Copyrighted and licensed? Should he sue people that take notes in his class? After this, are his students allowed to learn at all? Should them be Joseph Ks waiting in line for trial?

BTW, Kafka's "The Trial"'s Copyright has expired so you can legally read it. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/7849

Enjoy.

You think this is expensive?

[Overzeetop]

I'm not saying that he should or should not offer audio of his lecture for an additional fee, but for the price, it's a steal.

Let's say he records the lecture digitally (say, with his ipod he already owned) so that he has to do minimal post processing of the lecture, and the initial investment in equipment is near-zero. Now, if he were to screen the content and make minor edits to clean up the file, you might expect him to spend 30 minutes on a 1.5 hour lecture. I'm assuming he's pretty efficient here, as the last time I recorded a book to CD for my daugter, it took about 20 minutes to combine and clean a book that finished at 7 minutes of audio (I Wish That I Had Duck Feet, if you must know). So 30 minutes to quick-review and prep, another 5 to upload. If he gets 80% of the cost of the product after processing fees and such, that's $2/purchase. Now, if you had to hire a professor at rack rates, you'd be looking at about $150-$350/hr, depending on the purpose (research vs expert witness) and the efficiency of the school's financial system (many have well over 200% overhead).

So for a typical lecture, this guy would would need to sell $200/hr x 35 min / $2 = 58 copies to break even on a "fee for service" basis. Maybe he's got some big lecture classes, but most classes above the freshman or sophomore level rarely have that many students total. I'd say, aside from the ehtical issues, $2.50 is a bargain.

Re:^ Mod parent up

[Maxo-Texas]

There was a great joke about that in Real Genius.

"Math is important! Listen carefully!"

I agree with your point and this could easily get out of hand and that the professor has a conflict of interest here. There are all kinds of equality tho- and I had to trade money for:

a) a $300 calculator (in 1989!) that I joked could make a "B" if I put it down on the test.
b) about $500 worth of "study guides" (big 3" thick books full of problems and solutions)
c) illness (to the extent of and probably including cancer in my junior year)
d) any other advantage (except oddly- tutoring-- no time!) I could get

for

40 to 55 hours a week of free time because the government gave a grant because the person was "too poor". I wasn't lucky enough to be that poor and I wasn't rich enough either. I was stuck in the middle- again.

There are all kinds of equality. Rich kids have their own problems- motivation, drugs, partying too much. Oh if I could have only suffered with those problems...

Re:You're kidding, right?

[legojenn]

"Why deal with absentees through attendance tracking? If you're in college, you're almost guaranteed to be a legal adult. Just like any other adult, you should be responsible for your actions. This means you show up or, in this case, you can pay $2.50 to cover your lack of responsibility. As for the note taking skills, learn them. I'm sure I'm not the only one who learned these skills by, well, showing up to class, listening, and actually taking notes. If you can't grasp the concepts, try asking questions or using office hours." When I was in University and now that I am doing a second diploma, I am meticulous about note taking and because of that, do very well. However, there are times that I would gladly spend a little money to get a copy of a lecture, especially if it includes video and is in an area that I am weak in, or an area that I may want to pursue later on like a master's degree or something like that.

Re:So how long before they show up for free-beatin

[apswartz]

The information is free. You are always welcome to go to the library and gather the information for yourself. You are paying someone to teach it to you. You are paying for that person to research, organize, and present the information to you.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[wandlero]

There is a huge difference between a play and a lecture.

A play is for entertainment, lectures are for education. Lectures are designed to transfer knowledge. The students are paying for the access and presentation of the material - most of which is already known.

Students will be tested on this knowledge and assigned a grade for it. This grade may be used as a part of their overall employment rating. The risk of missing something is quite a bit higher depending on the setting too.

This also leads to ownership questions. If a lecture consists of "facts", which it should, who owns it?

My last question would be: what would the professor's reaction be if a student recorded the lectures and sold them for $1.50 or gave them away?

Who owns the information? To me, tuition is essentially a contract. I pay the instructor to present the information to me, after which I own all the rights and have the responsibility to learn it. Maybe my idea isn't the right one, but paying ever increasing tuition rates for "the same material" as past years just seems wrong.

Re:^ Mod parent up

[jc42]

When I was an undergrad, you could be failed for missing enough lectures. I have no problem with this at all.

There's an alternate theory that you enrole in a class to learn the material. You "pass" and get credit by showing that you've learned the material. You can learn the material by attending class lectures, sure, but if an alternate approach such as reading the lecture notes and textbooks gives you enough information to pass the tests, that should be considered as getting what you paid for. Some profs are good lecturers, some aren't. So maybe you want to attend the lectures for some profs and not for others.

I often considered that, as a good reader, I could read the lecture notes 3 or 4 times faster, than any lecturer could speak. I could assimilate an hour's lecture in 10 to 15 minutes. And with the notes, I could stop and reread passages, something that's rarely possible in a lecture. So using lecture notes was usually a better use of my time than attending the lecture. The only exceptions were the rare lecturers who put useful things up on the board (or displayed useful pictures), and who would answer questions from the audience. But this was rare, and the pictures could go into the notes, too.

I did once see the cute comment that the lecture system is the best method yet discovered for teaching people who can't read. Rather to the point, I'd say.

Cost Analysis

[bean123456789]

So he charges $2.50 for each person in a lecture, say you have 100 people in the class and about 25% of them actually purchase the download. That would be 25 people @ 2.50 a pop for a total of 62.50. Now for every transaction he "pays" $1.50 to the hosting company (why he doesn't just host the mp3 on the university site is beyond me, except that they probably wouldn't support/condone paying for this). So that leaves him with $25 in his pocket per lecture. At 3 lectures a week that's $75, or roughly $1200 a semester. You expect me to believe that his costs are $1200 a semester. That's total bullshit. He is making money off of this. If I were a student I would record the sessions and undercut his price by half. You could sell the mp3s for $1.25 and get roughly $1500 a semester, that would pay for most state tuitions.

Re:Cost Analysis

[neminem]

More like, he charges $2.50 for a copy of the lecture, then a student buys it and distributes it for free to the whole school. Heck, that's what I'd do.

The university is behind times

[ems2004]

Wayne State University, Detroit,MI,USA MBA program has online classes which are recordings of classroom lectures. Most of the classes give you the option of either going to in session class or accessing the online lectures and other study material.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Actually, that's part of the problem. $1.50 of the cost is because he is explicitly NOT using university equipment to host this.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

My point is that there are some very easy ways he could reduce the cost in both time and materials. I still think he deserves to charge for his work, but even using public systems he could reduce the cost to the end user to about $1 or so, by chosing the right software and equipment. OR the university could just take his idea and use it as a service.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[Bender0x7D1]

Yes, they LET you sit in. They are under no obligation to allow you to sit in, and in some courses, they don't allow it since it would be a distraction/problem. In fact, if you want to have the right to sit-in on the course you have to audit that course - which means you have to pay tuition for those credits.

Re:^ Mod parent up

[john83]

My apologies. The sentence "I have no problem with this at all" referred to TFA rather than the punishment for missing lectures.

I did once see the cute comment that the lecture system is the best method yet discovered for teaching people who can't read. Rather to the point, I'd say.

That's probably fair. However, many drivers would be safe drivers even if there were no legal, enforced speed limits. We keep them regardless. Sometimes we just pander to the lowest common denominator.

Re:So how long before they show up for free-beatin

[wandlero]

"Then why are you all paying for an education?"

Because employers don't tend to take Joe-off-the-street and hire them.

There are some companies that do thorough testing of applicants for knowledge, but for most employers, it takes a college transcript to get in the door.

If this wasn't the case, people could actually be hired based on knowledge/performance. That isn't the way the system works. Employers like to see transcripts to ease the hiring process. They can set a bar: 3.0GPA. Doesn't matter what classes - did they learn? [or play the game well]

A dedicated person could find most/all of the material in any degree much faster/cheaper on the internet or with just textbooks compared to spending $20k/yr for the grade on a piece of paper.

but employers don't have ways to quantify that. Paying tuition gets that piece of paper that gets you in the door.

Re:Sudent Market - Tape class and sell it for $1

[wandlero]

Is it a violation of copyright?

I can see how it might be, but I don't know if all of the facts are in. Consider:

[less likely] This is a public university, supported by the state, hence the professor is a state employee. Anything created by an agent of the state is public domain [may vary by state]

[more likely] Paying tuition is a contract to receive the information. This isn't a license to "use" the material such as a software license, this is a direct "transfer" of knowledge, as in "I am required to demonstrate proficiency in all aspects" to get a good grade. If I contract out for information [even code] I take full ownership of that material - and can do as I please with it. The contract is for the knowledge. The professor can't revoke my knowledge of the material at will.

[unknown] A lecture is a presentation of facts, not for entertainment purposes. Can facts be copyrighted?

specific interpretations of facts can be copyrighted, but is that what we have here?

If that was the case, wouldn't discussing research journals in class be considered a copyright violation? The professor is doing a public performance of copyrighted material, and for current research may not have permission to do that from the journal/author [textbooks are probably different].

Copyright guy

[SonicSpike]

You will want to check out this guy if you have not already run into him during your studies:

http://www.emichaelharrington.com/emhintro2006.pdf

I took two semesters of Copyright Law in Nashville (I am an audio engineer) and he was a guest lecturer at one of my class meetings. Great guy, very on top of things, and very knowledgeable.

Re:Act of fraud

[epee1221]

Learning requires the right to reproduce knowledge; to transcribe it verbatim until it sinks in, and to produce derivative works and an expanded understanding from it. Copyright law blocks all these things, so if he's retaining his lectures as "IP", he's actively blocking the student's (paid for) right to learn.

FYI, facts are not copyrighted/patented/trademarked by anyone. The students can do what they want with the information given in the lecture. Since it's for educational/personal use, they can take notes (even verbatim) on his lectures. None of these learning processes is "blocked" by copyright (distributing derivative works is not a learning process -- students can apply concepts without copying content). He has copyright over the way in which he presents the information (the wording of the lecture) and no more. The only "IP encumbrance" is that he's the only one who gets to distribute his lectures.

Then again you probably had no idea what the GP was talking about with "retain IP rights on their work." Some universities let professors keep the copyright on their research/writings, and some don't. It looks like this university does. For someone who pretends to be a slashdotter, you have a dismal grasp of IP.

Re:Why is this on slashdot?

[demondawn]

Yes, several years ago. Try to keep up, please. Oh, by the way we're changing discussion formats again.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[miskatonic alumnus]

Not at the universities I've been to. The kindly professors would let me sit in for FREE. Ergo, I did NOT have to PAY to enter the classroom and take a seat. Which means, as I said, the money the other students paid was for their evaluation --- an evaluation I did not pay for and did not receive.

Down Till Further Notice

[Aradon]

Acording to the Technician (NCSU's Student Newspaper) The University has asked the professor to pull the information from the website. Quote:

"After comunication professor Robert Schrag decided to go public Sept. 7 about his idea to make his communication and technology course lectures available to his students for download, his dean and department head asked him to remove his site Wednesday afternoon until further notice."

It continues

"As a result, Schrag chose to delay his usual lectun class Thursday in an effort to get his students' points of view on the situation."

"The idea of selling vocal intellectual property via the Internet is a new idea not only for the University but also for communication technology. Schrag complied with the University's request to remove the Web site because he said he understood his proposal to sell the information is a new and evolving idea." (Technician 9/15/06)

Linkage: http://media.www.technicianonline.com/media/storag e/paper848/news/2006/09/15/News/University.Asks.Pr ofessor.To.Pull.Information.From.Web.Site-2279161. shtml?sourcedomain=www.technicianonline.com&MIIHos t=media.collegepublisher.com

-Aradon

Re:You're kidding, right?

[Bender0x7D1]

Sure, many profs allow it. However, many can't or don't allow it. Sometimes the room isn't big enough. Sometimes there are too few students in the course. Sometimes they just don't want you there. Yes, kindly professors will let you sit in - they are already going to be giving the lecture so what do they care? BUT, if a room is overcrowded, they are not going to let you sit in since the seats are for registered students.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[miskatonic alumnus]

BUT, if a room is overcrowded, they are not going to let you sit in since the seats are for registered students.

Well, in that case, you won't be able to buy your way in either --- the class will be closed.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[HFh]

BUT, if a room is overcrowded, they are not going to let you sit in since the seats are for registered students.

Well, in that case, you won't be able to buy your way in either --- the class will be closed.

This is one of the reasons students are asked to audit courses as opposed to just walk in. The administration has to figure out which rooms to give to which courses. That's difficult if they can't tell how many folks are really in each course. Of course if almost everyone is playing by the rules, there will be enough slack to let a small number ignore them.

It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Then it's just fun.

Peace.

College lectures as a digital asset

[E-Blakkestad]

Hi there. I've written an article that expands on this topic to discuss lectures as a new digital content category that are ripe for monetization. Check out "Podcast Predictions" at http://vitalpodcasts.com/ Shred at your leisure! Erik