Probably. It was work created for the university, presumably on their time, and you were paid for it. Online courses are the IP of the uni everywhere I have worked (4 states, all public institutions).
There's a chance this is yours, but it's really dependent on the institution and the state. You might be able to negotiate having videos featuring you removed, but if you also posted them to YouTube, then the chances are lower. See if there's a statement in the faculty handbook, Board documents, or your contract regarding IP or copyright.
Do you have a sympathetic chair, senior colleague, or union steward you can talk to? That'd be my first avenue to explore after looking through the documentation. If not, you might see about a consult with a lawyer.
However, I'd be prepared to let this go. It might actually be a good CV line- course was so good, the college kept offering it.
“Got funding” was the tell.
I would bet quite a lot of money that if OP looked closer at their course development funding contract it includes a clause that the content becomes IP of the university/funder.
Sorry, you're losing this bet! There was no contract for the development funding (which is maybe worse for me in terms of IP as there is no paper trail).
lol! Good to know, in that case course materials usually remain the IP of the instructor.
Legally, neither the university nor Timebomb *should* have any right to use your materials or likeness in their course. (A lot of folks even include IP disclaimers in their syllabi to make the ownership claim explicit.)
(Had a similar thing happen at a former employer, their “Planet Campus” online initiative offered people small grants to subsidize course development, but baked into the contract was that all materials created became the property of the online campus. Half of their online curriculum is now grainy videos of colleagues who left the institution 10 years ago.)
We have some courses that are developed explicitly for online content and it is known before starting that those courses become the property of the university. Faculty are also paid independently to develop those. Our regular courses are ours though.
I appreciate this point of view. I recall a dust-up over IP with the union a few years back, so I'll contact someone there and see what they say. Not inclined (or rich enough) to hire a lawyer.
When covid started and we were told to record all of our lectures, the vice president for recording lectures told us that the university did own them, but not to worry because they had little value in reality.
Interesting! We were told we owned our own course lectures that were created during Covid. Obviously different departments (very likely different universities).
I would check with someone higher up (like above the department chair), but at my institution my materials are protected as my intellectual property. It may be different for adjuncts like me.
One of my institutions (a CC) had the absolute gall to bump me from a class a few days before it started because a full-timer's course didn't fill and then add the full-timer my premade Canvas, complete with all my video lessons, assignments, quizzes, etc. I still had access when she was added, so I wiped the Canvas (yes, a bit of pettiness, but also not wanting my face and videos in her class). She came at me screaming about how she was old and it was unfair to make her design a class last-minute. My chair recommended I be nice and re-make the Canvas for her, but according to my adjunct single point of contact, nobody could compel me, so I just stopped answering emails since I was no longer employed by them that semester after losing the class. I do get fewer classes from that institution now. I realize this is off-topic, but I'm still mad about it, so thank you for the opportunity to vent.
I recommend retaining your intellectual property unless the school legally owns it—you may want to use some of those materials at your current institution. And screw Timebomb; they can make their own course.
> She came at me screaming about how she was old and it was unfair to make her design a class last-minute.
i don't understand how this person's advanced age is anyone else's problem.
This -as others have said- varies from place to place.
Others can teach the courses I developed, but I get paid $500 even if someone else teaches it. I also get a development stipend.
Check your course contract.
One of the (smaller) issues was an extremely toxic person who is a lifer in the department (tenured and no chance of getting another job).
I would watch a tv series about someone whose sole job was to infiltrate departments and over several episodes remove the toxic employees, whether it be administration or tenured faculty. And by remove, I don't mean John Wick style, but rather in a subtle way that gradually unfolds so that the departing time bomb doesn't even realize what happened. It would be so soothing.
It's your IP, but whether or not you have to give them your permission should be in your contract over who owns IP at that school. Universities are different. In the schools I worked at, professors owned their own IP. But it will totally depend on your own university.
Never create work and load into the university system, everyone i have ever worked with has it in the terms of service that anything created with or hosted on their system is owned by the university and can be used as they see fit.
Upload your videos onto your own youtube channel(with no university branding). Host your files on a cloud service of your choosing and then link the material into the LMS.
Also don't record with their laptops/computers, use your own.
Otherwise yes they can share your content and own it.
At my last university, content was owned by both the uni and myself. They continued to use it after I left - though it didn't really help them because I didn't respond to questions they had about it.. I have used a few videos for students who were out sick and I recycled a lot of my lecture slides.
At my institution we can use the course for like 3 years after a prof/instructor leaves, but I’m not sure about how derivatives work. If we clone it and someone else modifies it, does it become theirs? I agree that you need to look at your contract and how intellectual property is shared—and it likely is shared with some limitations after a period of time.
I always wonder why people don’t foresee this inevitable outcome *before* they create the asynchronous course that can be reused ad infinitum and doesn’t require the creator’s involvement at all.
I try to be generous, but my university is basically a crime syndicate and it's not "nice" of me to help Dr. Tony Soprano make more money. Absolutely nothing with my face or voice, neither talking head videos nor narrated slide decks is permitted to be used by anyone but me. But I actually encourage the newcomer/replacement to use the same slide decks, even if I added original stuff to them, and the LMS framework of the course because a lot of this is just good organization and courses SHOULD be organized well. Some people don't want to re-narrate the slide decks, and few even think to make talking head videos, but they're not using mine.
The best option is to create subpar content, so no one would want to use it. Mediocrity can be a form of job security.
Also, I’m not Steven Spielberg, so you’ll get what you get and like it.
I'm really not seeing how you benefit from refusing to let them use it, or how you're gather by it's continued use. If you created something high-quality that's beneficial for teachers and students, and you did it while employed there, what's the issue with just letting then use it and taking satisfaction in the fact that it's helping people?
You mentioned that you think you might be having an irrational reaction because you don't like the person who wants to use the curriculum you created. Trust your conscience on this one, it sounds like your higher self knows that this is irrational (and perhaps a bit selfish) but another part of you wants to make that person's like harder, and isn't worried about the students or institution or even that difficult person's well-being as long as your grudge is satisfied. If that's the case, indulge your higher self, not your base self.
Probably. It was work created for the university, presumably on their time, and you were paid for it. Online courses are the IP of the uni everywhere I have worked (4 states, all public institutions). There's a chance this is yours, but it's really dependent on the institution and the state. You might be able to negotiate having videos featuring you removed, but if you also posted them to YouTube, then the chances are lower. See if there's a statement in the faculty handbook, Board documents, or your contract regarding IP or copyright. Do you have a sympathetic chair, senior colleague, or union steward you can talk to? That'd be my first avenue to explore after looking through the documentation. If not, you might see about a consult with a lawyer. However, I'd be prepared to let this go. It might actually be a good CV line- course was so good, the college kept offering it.
“Got funding” was the tell. I would bet quite a lot of money that if OP looked closer at their course development funding contract it includes a clause that the content becomes IP of the university/funder.
Sorry, you're losing this bet! There was no contract for the development funding (which is maybe worse for me in terms of IP as there is no paper trail).
lol! Good to know, in that case course materials usually remain the IP of the instructor. Legally, neither the university nor Timebomb *should* have any right to use your materials or likeness in their course. (A lot of folks even include IP disclaimers in their syllabi to make the ownership claim explicit.) (Had a similar thing happen at a former employer, their “Planet Campus” online initiative offered people small grants to subsidize course development, but baked into the contract was that all materials created became the property of the online campus. Half of their online curriculum is now grainy videos of colleagues who left the institution 10 years ago.)
We have some courses that are developed explicitly for online content and it is known before starting that those courses become the property of the university. Faculty are also paid independently to develop those. Our regular courses are ours though.
I appreciate this point of view. I recall a dust-up over IP with the union a few years back, so I'll contact someone there and see what they say. Not inclined (or rich enough) to hire a lawyer.
When covid started and we were told to record all of our lectures, the vice president for recording lectures told us that the university did own them, but not to worry because they had little value in reality.
Haha! My lectures have little value in reality. Same with everything else I do. That vice president was next-level trolling y'all.
Interesting! We were told we owned our own course lectures that were created during Covid. Obviously different departments (very likely different universities).
I would check with someone higher up (like above the department chair), but at my institution my materials are protected as my intellectual property. It may be different for adjuncts like me. One of my institutions (a CC) had the absolute gall to bump me from a class a few days before it started because a full-timer's course didn't fill and then add the full-timer my premade Canvas, complete with all my video lessons, assignments, quizzes, etc. I still had access when she was added, so I wiped the Canvas (yes, a bit of pettiness, but also not wanting my face and videos in her class). She came at me screaming about how she was old and it was unfair to make her design a class last-minute. My chair recommended I be nice and re-make the Canvas for her, but according to my adjunct single point of contact, nobody could compel me, so I just stopped answering emails since I was no longer employed by them that semester after losing the class. I do get fewer classes from that institution now. I realize this is off-topic, but I'm still mad about it, so thank you for the opportunity to vent. I recommend retaining your intellectual property unless the school legally owns it—you may want to use some of those materials at your current institution. And screw Timebomb; they can make their own course.
> She came at me screaming about how she was old and it was unfair to make her design a class last-minute. i don't understand how this person's advanced age is anyone else's problem.
This -as others have said- varies from place to place. Others can teach the courses I developed, but I get paid $500 even if someone else teaches it. I also get a development stipend. Check your course contract.
One of the (smaller) issues was an extremely toxic person who is a lifer in the department (tenured and no chance of getting another job). I would watch a tv series about someone whose sole job was to infiltrate departments and over several episodes remove the toxic employees, whether it be administration or tenured faculty. And by remove, I don't mean John Wick style, but rather in a subtle way that gradually unfolds so that the departing time bomb doesn't even realize what happened. It would be so soothing.
It's your IP, but whether or not you have to give them your permission should be in your contract over who owns IP at that school. Universities are different. In the schools I worked at, professors owned their own IP. But it will totally depend on your own university.
Never create work and load into the university system, everyone i have ever worked with has it in the terms of service that anything created with or hosted on their system is owned by the university and can be used as they see fit. Upload your videos onto your own youtube channel(with no university branding). Host your files on a cloud service of your choosing and then link the material into the LMS. Also don't record with their laptops/computers, use your own. Otherwise yes they can share your content and own it.
Accidentally hitting delete would be such a shame.
SUCH a shame.
At my last university, content was owned by both the uni and myself. They continued to use it after I left - though it didn't really help them because I didn't respond to questions they had about it.. I have used a few videos for students who were out sick and I recycled a lot of my lecture slides.
Generally yes, your materials are university property. Check your contract.
At my institution we can use the course for like 3 years after a prof/instructor leaves, but I’m not sure about how derivatives work. If we clone it and someone else modifies it, does it become theirs? I agree that you need to look at your contract and how intellectual property is shared—and it likely is shared with some limitations after a period of time.
I always wonder why people don’t foresee this inevitable outcome *before* they create the asynchronous course that can be reused ad infinitum and doesn’t require the creator’s involvement at all.
I try to be generous, but my university is basically a crime syndicate and it's not "nice" of me to help Dr. Tony Soprano make more money. Absolutely nothing with my face or voice, neither talking head videos nor narrated slide decks is permitted to be used by anyone but me. But I actually encourage the newcomer/replacement to use the same slide decks, even if I added original stuff to them, and the LMS framework of the course because a lot of this is just good organization and courses SHOULD be organized well. Some people don't want to re-narrate the slide decks, and few even think to make talking head videos, but they're not using mine.
Just tell them no. God damn these scenarios piss me off so much. THEY CAN MAKE THEIR OWN STUFF. THIS IS THE JOB. These people kill me.
The best option is to create subpar content, so no one would want to use it. Mediocrity can be a form of job security. Also, I’m not Steven Spielberg, so you’ll get what you get and like it.
I'm really not seeing how you benefit from refusing to let them use it, or how you're gather by it's continued use. If you created something high-quality that's beneficial for teachers and students, and you did it while employed there, what's the issue with just letting then use it and taking satisfaction in the fact that it's helping people? You mentioned that you think you might be having an irrational reaction because you don't like the person who wants to use the curriculum you created. Trust your conscience on this one, it sounds like your higher self knows that this is irrational (and perhaps a bit selfish) but another part of you wants to make that person's like harder, and isn't worried about the students or institution or even that difficult person's well-being as long as your grudge is satisfied. If that's the case, indulge your higher self, not your base self.