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."

Hm

[Umbral Blot]

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

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.

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: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.

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.

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: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.

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.

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: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: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.

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.)

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.