Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Trading notes v. attending class

Some professors are claiming copyright to their lectures, in hope of stopping the trend toward online note-swapping. Their main objection, of course, is that some students see this as a substitute for attending class.

The money quote:

"Missing a class and relying on notes eliminates the context of the discussion," Lindsay said. "It's easy to spot the students who do this, and it shows in their performance."


Then, what's the problem? It's not like we can eliminate every way of being a poor student.

2 comments:

James Hanley said...

I claim copyright on anything I put online for my classes. But a student's notes that say "Dr. X, says...."? Not sure I can claim copyright violations there, particularly since the vast majority of my lectures is made up of material cadged from other scholars!

Scott Hanley said...

You're supposed to draw upon other scholars' work. Just don't forget to send a check to Elsevier.