I contacted Joseph Moreau and asked him what issues have been raised in regard to Distance Learning in reference to collective bargaining.
His very informative response follows:
From:
"Moreau, Joseph" <MoreauJA@whccd.cc.ca.us>
To:
Vickie Brown
Subject:
RE: Distance Learning in reference to Collective Bargaining
Message:
Vicki,
Well this is a huge topic and, unfortunately, little has been done in the
way of standards. The three main items that come up in collective
bargaining are workload (how many students will a teacher be responsible
for) compensation for development (will the teacher get paid to put the
course together), and intellectual property rights (who owns the course once
is has been created).
In terms of workload, many online instructors are reporting that teaching
online is much more time consuming that "traditional" instruction. They
report that it is often more like teaching one on one to 30 students as
opposed to teaching 30 students at once. They report the time they need to
be involved with the course is on the order of 10 to 12 hours per week more
than a traditional course. This increase in work load comes from greater
student to student and student to teacher interaction along with counseling
students through a variety of technical issues. Often in a traditional
class only a few students will ask questions or participate. In an online
class many more people will pose questions to the instructor through the
buffer of email or discussion lists. Also, students are really expecting
answers to their email questions in 24 hours or less. This requires the
instructor to be involved with the course daily and sometimes twice a day as
opposed to two hours twice a week. Because of this faculty wish to keep the
number of students in a section low. Some schools have adopted limits for
online course as low a 20. Most schools I am aware of have limits of 25 to
40. Others have used the traditional limit as the online limit.
Administrators would like to have very high numbers since the class size is
not limited by the number of chairs in the room. Obviously, there is great
opportunity for quality to suffer with higher numbers. A couple of colleges
are thinking about higher limits with increased load credit. Example: 30 =
1 class load; 45 students = 1.5 class load; 60 students = 2 class load;
etc.. No real models have surfaced and few colleges have union contracts
that prescribe any of this.
Compensation for development is also a big issue. Full time faculty have
always developed new courses as part of their contract responsibility.
However, many faculty say that the development of online material is above
and beyond their responsiblity. The analogy to a traditional course would
be that the faculty member is not responsibile for building the lecture hall
or installing the lighting and black board in the building in which they
teach. So, why would we expect them to build the web files required to
deliver a course. Also, many faculty will need additional training to be an
effective online teacher. If the institution expects them to "build" the
course they feel they should be compensated additionally. Also, if the
institution wants them to teach online, it should pay them to be retrained.
Administrators generally feel that creating web pages is no different than
creating handouts or overhead transparencies or library reserves.
Subsequently, faculty should create web materials as part of their course
preparation. Many schools are providing instructional designers and
technical support staff for online programs, so development is less of an
issue at these institutions. However, many schools cannot afford those
staff or cannot attract qualified candidates so the task is left to faculty.
Some faculty love it and some hate it. It is too early to tell how this
will play out. Actually, my guess is that web technology will become so
much more easy to use so fast that the issue will go away before it is
resolved. And the current issue becomes more complicated when you are
referring to adjunct faculty developing materials. Let me know if you are
interested in adjunct issues and we can discuss it further.
Now intellectual property (IP) rights is the really hot issue. When a
faculty member creates an online course, who owns the finished product? In
a nutshell the employer owns it. Section 201 of the copyright law says so.
It is officially a work for hire. Now college faculty have enjoyed the
academic exception to the work for hire doctrine for decades, but academic
exception only applies to WRITTEN works such as textbooks and journal
articles. The academic exception is designed to protect academic freedom by
not allowing the institution to own and/or control academic expression. For
so many years the only real form of that expression was writing. Now with
multimedia, online courses, faculty web pages, etc. there is a lot of other
ways for faculty to express themselves, but the courts have upheld that the
exception only applies to writing. Should academic exception apply to other
forms of publishing, namely electronic publishing? What about the
institutions investment in the product. Didn't the institution build the
network, provide the faculty with hardware and software, pay for the
connection to the Internet, provide a web server to house the material,
provide technical support personnel to make sure everything works and the
faculty can get their classes online? Shouldn't the institution have a
stake in the ownership of that material? Shouldn't the institution be able
to decide which teachers should use this material? These are all huge
questions that are largely unanswered. For many faculty this is a very
emotional issue. They don't want anyone controlling their material. And
what about material they developed prior to coming to work for any given
institution? If they incorporate that material with new material into a an
online course, does it then become property of that institution? If they
developed it as a full time faculty member at their previous institution,
does the new institution have to get permission from the previous one to be
able to use this material? A hideous and complex issue! On top of all of
this many administrators think that they can just assign any faculty member
to teach an online course with material developed by one particular faculty
member. Now when has this ever been true in a traditional course.
Certainly faculty share syllabi, tests, ideas, etc., but when has an
instructor just picked up someone else's lecture notes and conducted a
course successfully. I am sure it has happened, but I doubt that it has
happened often.
As I mentioned there is not a lot of good material in the literature on this
topic. However, one of the best sources I have found is an online
publication called Cause/Effect Magazine. You can find it at
http://www.cause.org. One really good article is called Ownership of
Electronic Course Material in Higher Education at
http://www.cause.org/information-resources/ir-library/html/cem9734.html.
This is another good article called Ownership Issues in Online Use of
Institutional Material at the same address as above issue cem9826.html.
Let me know if you have any further questions or need any additional
information. I will be happy to continue the discussion with you.
Joe
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