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."

Even Apple would have been better

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 a

Re:Even Apple would have been better

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.

O/B Spicoli

"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:You're kidding, right?

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:

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, bu

Re:You're kidding, right?

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:

$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

Re:

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; regard

Old News

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

Re:Old News

Selling lectures online. Brilliant!

Even older news (about Rawls)

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.

Hm

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

Re:Hm

Already been done at Caltech...Nate Lewis Rap Remix [caltech.edu].

Why is this news?

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

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

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:

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

Re:Lazy...Pure and Simple

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).

Everyone seems to be missing a vital point.

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 o

And the problem is?

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:

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?

Yeah, until...

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:

Holy crap, I just watched the Borat trailer http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/borat/ [apple.com] 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...

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.

So how long before they show up for free?

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.

Too bad this hasn't permeated the Stats Dept

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

Re:

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

great idea, no really

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

The Old Tape Recorder

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

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

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:

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 allow

Copyright is Not an Absolute Right

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 [copyright.gov]. I should know, as I rely upon it when creating my podcast, [shameless plug] Life of a Law Student [lifeofalawstudent.com]. 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:The Old Tape Recorder

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.

This is outrages

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

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.

Re:

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.

Does the professor own his lectures?

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 st

CHEAPER!!

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??

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

... 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 Neima

Bullshit

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:

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 intere

Who gets the fee?

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:

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 acade

Conflict of interest

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 [northcarolina.edu]. "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. [umich.edu] (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.

I've Done the Opposite

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.)

I wish I'd had this option

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.)

You think this is expensive?

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:

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 he

Re:^ Mod parent up

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.