Who Owns the Course?
Inside Higher Ed today carries a story about concerns at UC-Santa Cruz about the ownership of MOOCs. UC-Santa Cruz is the one UC campus at which the local faculty association has collective bargaining rights:
Faculty union officials in California worry professors who agree to teach free online classes could undermine faculty intellectual property rights and collective bargaining agreements. The union for faculty at the University of California at Santa Cruz said earlier this month it could seek a new round of collective bargaining after several professors agreed to teach classes on Coursera, the Silicon Valley-based provider of popular massive open online classes, or MOOCs… The union said the professors lobbied for a 12-year-old California law to guarantee that faculty – not universities – own the intellectual property rights to class lectures and course materials. But before professors can have their courses put on Coursera, they are expected to sign away those rights to the university so the university can give the professors’ work to Coursera…