ONLINE COURSE OWNERSHIP - Who owns the online course, the teacher or the
institution, is a very muddled question, according to LERN's exclusive national survey of
online instructors. There is one conclusion, however - you don't. Only 15% of teachers
responded by saying they owned their own online course. More than double that, some
36%, say that their institution owns their online courses. But perhaps the most interesting
statistic is that a whopping 32% of faculty say "it is not clear" who owns the course. Another
13% indicate joint ownership, and 4% say there's another arrangement. This currently quiet
issue will become more visible and controversial in the next few years as online faculty teach
for more than one institution, copyrighted material becomes incorporated into courses and
some faculty develop very sophisticated learning modules and try to rent them.
(Teaching OntheNet, 15 May 02)

CENTER FOR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND COPYRIGHT - The Center for
Intellectual Property and Copyright (CIP) of Maryland University Colleges recently
announced the development of an online, interactive tutorial on copyright basics called the
©Primer. The Primer is a free interactive online tool to assist educating faculty, staff and
students about copyright principles and compliance. It's just a simple click away!
http://www.umuc.edu/odell/cip/cprimer

ANTI-PLAGIARISM TOOL MAY INFRINGE ON COPYRIGHT - One of the most
popular anti-plagiarism Web sites, Turnitin.com, has come under scrutiny because of its
practice of adding students' works to its database, sometimes without the students'
knowledge. Unlike other plagiarism-detection Web sites that compare submitted works
only to material on the Internet or to other papers in the class, Turnitin also adds submitted
papers to its database, thereby expanding the reach of its detection program. However, many
students are not told that their papers will be submitted and added to the database at Turnitin.
This has some worried that students' copyright is being violated and has led the University
of California at Berkeley to decide not to use Turnitin. Others have opted to use Turnitin but
only after informing students, giving them the option not to have their work sent to Turnitin.
http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i36/36a03701.htm (Chronicle of Higher Education, 13 May
02 - Edupage, 13 May 02)