The impact of online education on our jobs

Bryn Hughes

Many of the hacks discussed in this session involve using the internet to help reorganize how you deliver course content and utilize time in the classroom. These pedagogical approaches necessitate putting ourselves and our materials online, available to varying portions of the public. Today, universities and colleges are encouraging their faculty to make materials available online, either for public consumption, or for profit. In some cases, institutions are even administering fundamental degree content solely through “massive online open courses” (MOOCs).

These efforts raise several questions about copyright, intellectual property, and the changing roles of the classroom music theory teacher.

**Are we teachers or content providers? **

• John Covach wrote about his experience teaching a MOOC on the history of rock music. Notably, Covach mentions it took nearly 300 hours of work to produce the content for the course. Covach also discusses some of the limitations on the content he was able to provide for a public and free course because of copyright, lack of face-to-face interaction, and testing format.
• Ellen McSweeney interviewed Cynthia Cyrus, musicologist and associate provost for undergraduate education at Vanderbilt University, about the specific challenges of offering music MOOCs, including issues of copyright and fair compensation for artists.

Who owns your content?

• The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) fears that online courses are a threat to intellectual property and academic freedom.
• The faculty union at the University of California-Santa Cruz is similarly worried that professors agreeing to teach free online courses are undermining intellectual property and collective bargaining.
• Many faculty have begun to fight for their right to own their online content.
• In a recent radio interview, Kris Shaffer and Mark Werner discussed copyright and intellectual property issues surrounding MOOCs and, more generally, online pedagogical resources

What is our role once we’ve finished creating our online course materials?

• John Covach suggests that the benefit to enduring the heavy workload required to set up a MOOC is that the course will simply run itself going forward:

Of course, once this work is done, subsequent sections of the course require only a few hours per week of maintenance; the course becomes a bit like a machine that can run almost on its own (or so one hopes).

• This could be seen by a tenured faculty member as a tremendous opportunity to create free time for other work. However, many other (likely non-tenured) faculty see this is a potential threat to their livelihood.

Are we suddenly in direct competition with our colleagues at other institutions?

• In a pilot program at San Diego State University, a MOOC developed at another institution and licensed by edX was used as supplemental material for an electrical engineering course (it drew heavily on recorded lectures and other materials from the MOOC). Students’ grades went up, and subsequently, San Diego State’s president, Mohammad H. Qayoumi, contracted edX to provide content for several more courses.
• Faculty members of the department of philosophy at San Diego State reacted negatively, and wrote an open letter explaining why they were refusing to use a MOOC developed at Harvard as part of their course curriculum.
• Sociologist Mitchell Duneier ran a very successful MOOC through Coursera. He ceased teaching the MOOC when Coursera approached him about licensing his course to other colleges. Duneier saw it as an excuse for cutting funding to education. Duneier was also skeptical whether using other materials in this way would be “pedagogically effective.”

Many of the sources cited above suggest that the push for educators to embrace the resources of the internet and develop online courses and materials will cause faculty positions at universities to become viewed as less valuable by administrators and the public. Nevertheless, there others who both embrace the utility of technology in education and yet still find face-to-face student interaction to be irreplaceable. Janet Riggs, President of Gettysburg College, writes that “we are in for an exciting time where thoughtful and creative uses of technology and communication tools will facilitate an extension and enrichment of teaching and learning,” but that online classes will not replace liberal arts colleges. Along similar lines, Will Oremus suggests that the technology used to deliver MOOCs is better suited for local, small, and private classes; essentially as a supplement for the face-to-face classroom experience.

There are obviously numerous issues surrounding our increasing propensity to move our pedagogy online, in one form or another. We hope that you will find the materials cited above to be engaging, and that they will stimulate an interesting discussion at our session.