Ownership of online courses

On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're the 'Wrong' Professor, by Stacy Patton, describes the experience of Karen McArthur, who discovered that an online class she developed on art appreciation without additional compensation, had been given to two others who then taught using her materials, course design, etc. It is an interesting and disturbing story and one that I think will become even more common as online learning expands. The growing use of adjuncts and the commoditization of teaching and learning in higher education, along with the push to put more classes online and the ease with which one course can be copied into another one all contribute to the problem.

I had the experience of teaching an online class developed by someone else only one time and I found it odd to use another person's materials and hear their voice on recordings in the class. It's obviously less work, but for me, it wasn't something I would want to do again.

Almost all of our instructors are hired to teach individual classes, so they are similar to adjuncts at degree-granting institutions. When they are compensated for creating their courses, they give up ownership of the course materials so that others can teach the same course. This happens with a small percentage of courses. In most cases, the same person who develops the course also teaches it and if someone else is hired to teach another section of that class, they develop their own version. Much of the time, there is no additional payment for course development. Whether or not that affects the quality of the courses seems to be based on other factors and not on whether the instructor is paid for course development, in my experience. And unless someone is going to update the course materials regularly, the initial course design and content seems to get old pretty fast.