sending your own power point lectures to student's portals
I have been asked to put my entire lectures that I've made into power points on the student's portal. I have an ethical dilemma with that idea. Those power point lectures have taken me hours and hours to create. To send it to the students seems it is an excuse to not show up in class and to just study my notes without reading the book. Should I make an outline of the notes to send them? What do you suggest about this matter?
Hi Nora,
Good points about how to use PPs in the classroom. They should be guides and facilitate discussion rather than being points the instructor reads to the class.
Gary
As a graduate student, almost ALL of my instructors posted their PowerPoints BEFORE class, but believe me, that was NOT incentive to skip class. I think the key is to not just read the PowerPoints as your lecture...Let the PowerPoints guide and frame your lecture, but expand beyond what is on the slides and make sure your students know that they will need to hear the entirety of the lecture in order to do well in the class. Also, have activities or daily quizzes or class participation points; something that will be part of the grade so students will have to attend class in order to do well. As far as the PowerPoints being intellectual property that must be protected, I'm not sure that is a realistic concern, especially if the PowerPoints are only a framework to the lecture with most of the intellectual content coming from the lecture itself.
Hi Sriram,
You make a number of very good points about intellectual property and when it needs to be protected. This is a hot topic among post secondary instructors throughout the country. Your example of the cake recipe is one that causes one to pause think about how much is general knowledge, and how much is unique and needs to be protected. The mentioning of the study guides also brings up the question of obligation of professional educators. What course materials should be developed as a part offering comprehensive instruction? Previously these questions never come up but with online instruction they have surfaced in increasing numbers. Don't have a answer for you because the legal decisions I have read are mixed so I think we are still working through the refinement of those guidelines.
Gary
Barbara,
I share your concern. My worry is that if I make the Power Point slides available to my students via handouts it will reduce their incentive to both attend class and take notes, thus diminishing their attentiveness during lecture. Perhaps students will be encouraged to pay closer attention in class and engage the material in a more substantive way (through increased note taking, questions, reading of the course book, etc.) absent Power Point handouts.
Best,
Brock Bowman
Barbara & Dr. Gary:
This is an interesting question. I am not sure about the intellectual property ruling requirement here and frankly don't understand why it is even required.
Say you write a recipe list for baking a cake and document it for a culinary class, does it give intellectual proprietary right on baking the cake with that ingredients? Was there adequate research done to ensure that this cake has not been made before by anyone that it requires its own protection?
If we are in a class to teach something, then we are not creating a new body of knowledge necessarily but adding to that body of knowledge with our own experiences, twists, etc. So, we put documents together (mini lectures, lecture notes, slides, cheat sheets, etc.). Now, in my view, I consider them as study guides - a summary of the recommended text or guidelines to make our student's life easier. But, does these materials automatically require property protection? If so, please help justify what *new* knowledge has been created or *new* model of delivery has been created.
If we are only concerned about having people copy our hardwork, then yes, we can put our name to the main slide and the footer in all the slides requiring that people cite the source. In addition, people can actually create a PDF document (although there are programs that exist to covert from PDF to Word/Excel/PowerPoint) to make it difficult for someone to quickly take content over.
What are your thoughts? Please share.
Thanks.
Sriram Rajagopalan, PhD, PMP
It is great to create your own power points with atwist.
Hi Barbara,
You raise a great question that is still being answered. The question is how to protect your intellectual property while sharing information with students? Until we have a Supreme Court ruling on this what I and my fellow instructors have chosen to do is what you mentioned. We share highlights, resource materials and outlines on, in our case Blackboard, online. This way students have the access to the additional material but do not have access to course content that is shared while the class is in session and it protects your work as well.
Gary
